CHAPTER IX

THE STORY OF CASTRO

If one could but think the Castro incident in Venezuelan history were closed, the following chapter might well be omitted. Even granting that Castro, the man, has disappeared as a factor in the situation, which in my opinion is taking much for granted, Castroism and the things which the ex-Dictator stood for remain, and though under the guns of our ships and under the critical. eyes of a world which is at last aroused, they are not particularly rampant to-day, it would be surprising indeed should they never know a resurrection.

The support of good soldiers was the secret of General Cipriano Castro's military and political successes. The deposed Dictator did not rule Venezuela and disturb the peace of the world at recurrent intervals during ten years, merely because as a soldier he is brave and resourceful, nor because as a politician he is shrewd and unscrupulous, although these are qualities conceded to him by friend and foe alike.

His triumph came because he had a formidable fraction of his fellow-countrymen behind him, the jerkedbeef-eaters of the Andean provinces, who proved immensely superior as fighting men to the "hot country folk of the valleys and the seacoast.

In his treatment of the people of the capital and the commercial cities of the Orientales or eastern province men, Castro was a law unto himself. No rights

were respected and the constitutional safeguards everywhere were thrown aside. But to his own people, the hardy mountaineers of the Tachira and Trujillo provinces, which lie south and west of Maracaibo on the Colombian frontier, he was a generous patron.

When the little Dictator sailed for Europe on a combined health and alliance seeking tour, every military stronghold in the land and every position of authority which carried with it a military command, was held by an Andino. These savages, like most other savages, and indeed the human animal generally, knew upon which side their bread was buttered, and again, like most savages at least, they were faithful to their chief.

During the ten years of his control of the luckless lowland provinces he allowed his mountain soldiers every privilege, including the one which they most coveted, that of enriching themselves at the cost and at the expense of their possibly more law-abiding and certainly less warlike fellow-citizens, the Venezuelans proper, who reside in the maritime and valley districts.

Castro himself never forgets that he is a mountaineer. At table he eats like a ravenous wolf, and there is ever on his lips some laudatory reference to his mountain home, San Cristobal.

"After all, your Excellency should beg your officials to remember that, whatever my personal unworthiness, I am the accredited representative of the Low Countries," said the unfortunate Minister of Holland in his last audience at the Yellow House a few days before diplomatic relations were severed.

"And I," said Castro curtly, as he turned upon his

heel, "would have you remember that I am the supreme chief of the high countries."

The fifteen or twenty thousand men who garrisoned the subjugated provinces of Venezuela worshipped Castro like a god, and to them he has been indeed a benefactor. Ten years ago these men were small landowners or itinerant cattle thieves, and whether cultivators or simply robbers, they were so far from the market that neither their industry nor their looting helped them much to dull the sharp edge of the miserable existence which they seemed doomed to lead for the rest of their lives.

It was Don Cipriano who led them down into a land overflowing with milk and honey, who showed them a world rich beyond all the dreams of Andean avarice, and then bade them pitch in and help themselves.

I consider Castro the most utterly depraved and the most morally and mentally deformed man who ever sat upon a dictator's throne in South America, but nevertheless he has shown himself at times to possess that attribute which is spoken of as "honour among thieves." For the first eight years of his dictatorship Castro, while reserving to himself the lion's share of plunder, as was his right, according to the brigand code by which he shaped his life, fed his followers liberally with the spoils of the enemy.

No soldiers of Venezuela ever drew such pay as did his, or were permitted such perquisites. Never was promotion so rapid in any army, and the only qualification insisted upon was that the applicant be a short-swordsman from the Andes.

Again, while there can be no exaggeration of the

enormous sums Castro stole from the National Treasury or calmly levied upon wealthy individuals who, when the critical moment of the inevitable choice came, preferred their lives to their fortunes, it is not true that the little Dictator simply transferred his booty to Europe and there salted it away against the day of his exile.

To the purist, of course, once granted he stole, and stole largely, it is a matter of little interest what became of his stealings. But to the man who would understand Castro and the deplorable situation which he created in Venezuela and the adjacent States the subject is one of considerable interest.

It is my belief that had the Dictator died four years ago, when for the first time the serious condition of his health could no longer be concealed, he would have died relatively, if not actually, a poor

man.

The millions he is accused of having sordidly banked in Paris were actually squandered in financing revolutions in Colombia, in subsidies to Indian tribes on the Orinoco and in the Guianas, and in paying the expenses of a horde of spies and conspirators who infested all the capitals of northern South America, furthering the dreams of their ambitious employer, who, by fair means or foul, sought to bring about a union of some of the South American States (a revival of the days when Bolivar ruled in Caracas, Bogotá, and Quito) under his presidency and dictatorship.

Once Reyes became President of Colombia Castro recognised, though never admitted, the folly of his larger ambitions, and his weakness of body and increasing ills probably convinced him of his mortality,

which in happier, more vigorous days he had been inclined to ignore, if not to deny.

After this moment of clear sight, his stealings were redoubled and the monopolistic tendencies of his régime became more pronounced. His only expenditures, except in the matter of his large way of living, were for purposes of self-defence. There is probably to-day a large sum of money at his disposal in a European bank, but the $20,000,000 he is credited with having sent abroad to pay the expenses and the doctors' bills of his exile probably could be divided by ten and the remainder would still exceed the actual sum at his disposal.

I dwell on these internal affairs of Venezuela unduly it may appear, but it seems to me that they have been absolutely ignored by other writers and that they have an important bearing upon the international features of the situation.

Gomez was Castro's logical successor, having been his partner and next in rank in all his adventures. Gomez might oppose Castro should the latter return in sound mind and body to the scene of his national triumphs and his international disasters, but the Andean soldiers probably would not. And should Castro not molest his successor, Gomez, a hope which can only be indulged in in the case of his continued physical disability, new causes of friction would soon arise.

After all, it is not an individual, neither Castro nor Gomez, who has been solely responsible for the deplorable state of affairs, but the lawless freebooting troops from the Andes, who now as then are in the saddle and cannot be unhorsed by any known force within the confines of Venezuela.