The World, Friday, December 20, 1895
Published by the Press Publishing Company,
New York
If it is considered strange that the question of the Venezuela boundary should involve a dispute between Great Britain and the United States, it is equally strange that the contention should not be between Venezuela and British Guiana. These are really the interested parties, yet no mention is made of British Guiana in the affair for the Reason that British Guiana has no existence except as a part of the British colonial system—a euphemism for the most sordid record of land-grabbing in history.
That the boundary question should be a question between Venezuela and Great Britain, not between Venezuela and British Guiana, is a circumstance which shows the true relations of the rival claimants. British Guiana is not an independent power; it is not a colony in the true sense of the word: it is a piece ot landed property. Its area of 109,000 square miles nearly equals the area of the United Kingdom, but of its population of 278,000 (in 1891), only 2,633 were Europeans. It had 100,000 Africans, 105,000 East Indians—mainly coolies—the rest being chiefly South American Indians. It is a huge plantation, managed by an overseer called a Governor, who receives a salary of £5,000 a year and who is assisted by a council of fifteen members, seven of whom are appointive and eight elected by the 2,500 qualified electors. But the name of British Guiana is a mere geographical expression.
Venezuela, on the other hand, is an independent, self-sustaining, self-governing republic. Its constitution is modeled after our own. It has eight independent States and a federal district. It has a Congress of two houses—a Senate and a House of Representatives. A Federal Council appointed by Congress, chooses its President, who is also President of the Republic and who can serve but one term. The separate States have their Legislatures, as in this country. The frequent revolutions and changes of government since the overthrow of the Spanish domination prove that while Venezuela has the form it is lacking in some of the essential characteristics of a republic. This is easy to understand when we know-that it is a tropical country, that its area of some 600,000 square miles Is occupied by only 2,300,000 inhabitants, and that of these, only one percent are of pure European race.
In spite of a compulsory education law, illiteracy is the rule in Venezuela. It has a nominal army, and, not even a nominal navy. Its public debt is owed entirely in Europe. Its revenue, chiefly from import duties, merely suffices for its current expenses. Its foreign trade is chiefly with Great Britain and this country, its exports being chiefly coffee, cocoa and hides. It has practically no resources. In the future, it may be a real power, capable of some assertion of its rights. At present, while it is nominally an independent republic, it is in reality—like British Guiana—only a geographical expression, with its geographical limits unfortunately only vaguely defined. The idea of the United States going to war with Great Britain over a boundary dispute involving Venezuela and British Guiana is the most fantastic of any that has ever been used to evoke a "brilliant foreign policy."
PUERTO CABELLO
The Port of Puerto Cabello has been important throughout Venezuela's history. It was a smuggling center, the victim if many pirate attacks, and an important battlefield in Venezuela's struggle for independence. It was also the birthplace of the world-famous Simon Bolivar who contributed enormously to the independence of several South American countries (Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia). During the 17th Century, buccaneers made a target of the Port of Puerto Cabello, and Dutch smugglers used the port as a market for their goods. For a time, the Port of Puerto Cabello was under the control of the Dutch. The deep-water harbor at the Port of Puerto Cabello made it a natural center for commerce and trade and an export point for products from the agriculturally rich Valencia Basin. In 1730, Spain took control of the Port of Puerto Cabello after the Royal Guipuzcoana Company, which had a monopoly on Venezuelan trade, had built wharves, warehouses, and forts at the Port of Puerto Cabello to protect the harbor. By the 1770s, the Port of Puerto Cabello was the most fortified town on the coast of Venezuela. It was so fortified, in fact, that it was the last Spanish stronghold to fall during the country's war for independence in 1823.
PORT SUCRE
Founded in 1515 by Franciscan monks, Cumana was named Nueva Toledo in 1521 after being re-established several times when the indigenous people attacked the fledgling village. The city was rebuilt again in 1569 by Diego Fernandez de Serpa. Today, the city boasts that it is the oldest European settlement in South America. Drawn by the pearl fisheries at the island of Cubagua and near Cumana, the Spanish used the local indigenous Guaiqueri as divers and fishermen. The early settlement was plagued by privateers and earthquakes, but it thrived on trade with Spain and neighboring settlements during the colonial period. Unfortunately, little of the 16th Century settlement survived the earthquakes.
The Lost Fleet
: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy. Barry Clifford.
On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy. Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean Comte d'Estrees, "The Lost Fleet" portrays a dark age, when the outcasts of European society formed a democracy of buccaneers, settling on a string of islands off the African coast. From there, the pirates haunted the world's oceans, wreaking havoc on the settlements along the Spanish mainland and -- often enlisted by French and English governments -- sacking ships, ports, and coastal towns. More than three hundred years later, writer, explorer, and deep-sea diver Barry Clifford follows the pirates' destructive wake back to Venezuela. With the help of a lost map, drawn by the captain of the lost French fleet, Clifford locates the site of the disaster and wreckage of the once-mighty armada.
