mountain. They didn’t feel the story Paulina and her friends had told was reliable. Later, many of them buried their complaints in warm beer on an outdoor patio.
Alex could hear them and understand them as she lay on her own foam mattress, reading a novel in Spanish by Isabel Allende by the light from two candles.
Alex wasn’t so sure that the girls had made up their story. Why would they? And the trampled underbrush suggested larger bodies, and several of them.
Alex had fallen into the habit of sleeping in her clothing, except for the socks and shoes. She also kept her pistol loaded and at her bedside.
Tonight was no exception. Yet the night was calm, the darkness deep in the jungle around the small enclave. The only noise, distantly, were the normal jungle sounds of the feral creatures that lived by night. And the only sounds nearby were the occasional mutterings of some of the village men, slumped on front doorsteps drunk on
SIXTY-NINE
Many of the residents of the Barranco Lajoya left each morning before dawn to make the long trek down the mountain. A jitney, a rusting old minivan with missing windows, would pick them up at daybreak at the base where Manuel had parked his Jeep. The van would take them to either the nearby ranch or a more distant one where they would work in the fields of sugar cane. There they worked for the equivalent of three dollars a day, plus a lunch of beans and rice. This they would do seven days a week for ten hours a day in the torrential subtropical rainy seasons of the winter as well as the sweltering heat of the summer. These were the lucky ones.
The ranchers also owned some of the water rights in the area, excluding the native people from one of their few resources, except in the higher elevations. The people here were used to having nothing and expecting nothing. So when missionaries came in, they were grateful but knew the generosity could end any day and their schools and minimal clinics could disappear. It had been this way for as long as anyone could remember. The armies of Spain had come through in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and had tortured and crushed everyone. Bolivar, el libertador, had lived at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth and had managed to create an independence based on the ideals of the American independence. Now everything in Venezuela was still named after Bolivar. You even paid with a Bolivar if you had any money. But for three quarters of the people, nothing had really changed. There remained poverty and oppression. The people learned not to complain. Once again, the little that these people had could disappear with no warning.
“A couple of years ago,” Father Martin said one evening, “there was an incident at another village named Barranco Yopal.” Martin spoke as he shared a fish dinner by candlelight with the other resident missionaries inside the church. “President Chavez ordered a Christian missionary group working with indigenous tribes to leave the country. They were mostly American from a group based in Florida.”
“Why did Chavez want them out?” Alex asked.
Father Martin laughed ruefully and shook his head. “Chavez accused the missionaries of ‘imperialist infiltration’ and links to the CIA.”
“Was there any truth to it?” she asked.
“No, Chavez was being a demagogue,” the priest said. “The missionaries at Barranco Yopal were dedicated people. They spent several years living among the tribes in order to learn the language, creating a written form for it, and translating the Bible into it. Then they taught Christianity to the people. The missionaries brought along their families. Their kids grew among the native children and didn’t interfere with native culture. All they wanted to do was bring Christ and the Word of God to the people. They dedicated years of their lives to this. Then Chavez turned up one day with his military uniform and his red beret and held a ceremony to denounce ‘colonialism.’ He presented property titles to several indigenous groups. He gave them title to land that they had been on anyway. Title to something that they already had. He came off as a hero and, in truth, hadn’t really done anything.”
Around the table, people shook their heads.
“Chavez accused the missionaries of building luxurious camps next to poor Indian villages,” Father Martin continued. “He accused them of circumventing Venezuelan customs authorities as they freely flew in and out on private planes. The missionaries had built their own compound, but it was hardly luxurious. And they flew their own aircraft in and out so that their supplies wouldn’t be stolen. The most efficient thieves in any South American country are the customs officials, the police, and the army.”
One of the female missionaries at the table, a nurse from Toronto, chipped in. “There are people who resent us for philosophical reasons,” she said. “In primitive societies, there’s no separation of religion and the rest of the society. We are among people who for centuries have followed rituals intended to make the corn grow, bring rain, and remain healthy. The people who criticize us claim that by bringing Christianity to them, even if we leave their own rituals alone, we’ve rendered meaningless the core of the native culture.”
“But we’re here to help them,” someone said.
“All cultures are in transition,” Father Martin added. “We feel we’ve given them something new and joyous.”
“We’re accused of acting the same way the Spaniards and Catholic Church did with less remote Indians when the conquistadores came through,” the nurse said.
“Except the Spaniards and the Catholic Church didn’t try to bring them electricity and health care,” another missionary chipped in.
There was laughter.
“It’s incredible,” Father Martin said. “As soon as you try to bring these people anything, people try to stop you, to take it away. Why?”
Alex had no answer. To the obvious next question of
Leaving dinner that night, Alex watched a group of men assembled on the edge of the field that was contiguous to the village. The men were watching their children, teenage boys for the most part, compete in a soccer game in the dying daylight.
Despite the efforts on the missionaries, everyone she saw was destined for a life of poverty. These men would work in the distant fields, swelter in the sunshine and the humidity, and barely get by day to day, grateful for any small crumbs from life’s table.
She went to bed fitfully that night. Very early the next morning, in the midst of a pleasant dream, she awoke to the staccato sound of gunfire.
The little village of Barranco Lajoya was under attack.
SEVENTY
Alex threw off the mosquito netting that covered her and sprang to her feet. She grabbed her gun belt, which had both her Beretta and her knife hitched to it. She strapped it over her hiking shorts. She shoved her feet into her boots without bothering with socks and went quickly to the window of her hut.
It was just past dawn. She could hear a terrible commotion but couldn’t see it. There was sporadic gunfire and people screaming.
She saw people of the village running in every direction, fleeing into the woods.
She drew her Beretta. Then she moved quickly to her door, opened it slightly, saw that it was safe to leave, and stepped out. The commotion was coming from the center of the village. She headed toward it, her weapon aloft, moving along the wall of the church.
Screaming became louder. Voices pleading. People fleeing past her. She reached the corner and looked around it.
At first she thought that a gang of bandits had invaded. When she looked closer, a greater fear coursed
