Falke: Eight years later, I finally get the memo

I spent the better part of five years reading books about the most far-flung places and abstract social problems I could find. Fascinated by the Middle East, China and a smattering of cross-sectional studies about random social problems, the place I lived became something of a local-yokel backwater that I relegated to office hours. I came back to Caracas feeling like I needed to give Venezuela the same intellectual attention that I had been giving to Lebanon, the Nagorno Karabakh or the rise of the global sushi industry.

A recommendation from my better-half helped me do just that. I finally picked up Falke, a 2004 historical novel about a failed 1929 invasion meant to topple dictator Juan Vicente Gomez. I’d heard a lot about the book, in part because of somewhat stretched interpretations that it was in fact a veiled comment about modern-day Venezuela. I was as struck by the coherent sweep of Venezuela’s early 20^th century history as I was with its staggering literary depth.

(WARNING: Plot spoilers below. I figured nobody who read this post would actually read the book. My better half called me out about it. Caveat lector.)

The author tells the story of his uncle Rafael Vegas, who he remembers from his childhood as a man burdened by a troubled history as well as the travails of Chagas disease that he picked up as a result of the Falke adventure – named after the boat that carried conspirators from Europe to the provincial capital of Cumana. Falke is told through Vegas’ journals, starting as a 20-year-old medical student in Paris, through the failed putsch and his subsequent escape through eastern Venezuela and eventually Trinidad. It was all the more fascinating to read about Vegas on the lam in the Araya peninsula in eastern Venezuela since I had just gone on vacation out that way. At the same time, few stories have ever conveyed such disappointment and breaking of a human spirit.

Juan Vicente Gomez ruled Venezuela with an iron hand from 1908 until his death in 1935, providing both a ferocious cruelty and a welcome stability after decades of civil war during most of the late 19^th century. Known by the nickname The Catfish, he was a sturdy soldier with a sixth sense both for battlefield tactics and for conspiracies within his own ranks; he made up for his boorish lack of refinement by surrounding himself with intellectuals.  The 1929 Paris-based conspiracy against him had followed many failed assassination attempts and efforts to force him from power. A band of exiled dissidents together with children of wealthy families studying in Paris planned an elaborate arrival to Venezuela that involved them traveling by train through Europe to a port in Poland, in efforts to keep Gomez’s spies off their trail.

The month-long voyage to Venezuela ends with disastrous coordination among the remaining conspirators who were slated to join from other parts of the Caribbean or from Venezuela itself. Their weapons turn out to be inadequate to face down Gomez’s forces in Cumana, who were well aware of the plan from the get-go and showered the Falke force with a rain of bullets. The visionary leader of the gang, Roman Delgado Chalbaud, is shot down on the battlefield, alongside Vegas’ best friend Armando. Vegas himself suffers the humiliation of fainting in the heat of battle, which his comrades varnish over by making up a story that government forces had shot directly into the barrel of his rifle and knocked him out.

He spends the following months on the run in the jungles of Araya, where he picks up the debilitating fevers that plague him for the rest of his life, while paying for protection and the relying on family friends to help him escape the long arm of The Catfish. In one river crossing, he’s attacked by a capybara that he had attempted to save from drowning, giving him the only battlefield wound of the entire adventure but delaying his escape from Venezuela. He passes miraculously below the radar screen of the authorities searching for him, and escapes to Trinidad where he manages to rest and meet up with one of his comrades in arms before returning to Paris.

Just before boarding a boat back to France, he gets a letter from his mother explaining why the law had never tracked him down – Gomez knew where he had been the whole time but chose to let him play hide-and-seek. There were already enough students in jail, and Gomez’s sister had been close to the family of another of the student leaders and protected them from the moment the venture had collapsed. He hadn’t been on the run all those months, he had been in a prison of Gomez’s design. Vegas would never live down the tragedy and the humiliation of the Falke adventure, though Venezuela would move past the dictatorship (falling quickly into the hands of another one).

Since finishing Falke I’ve made it a priority to read more about this country that I live in. I arrived here 11 years ago with a mission to devour Venezuelan literature, but it didn’t go far. I was glad to read Doña Barbara, the classic good-vs-evil struggle that epitomized the culture of the Venezuelan plains, by novelist Romulo Gallegos who would briefly hold the presidency after the death of The Catfish. I was glad to *have read* several novels by Uslar Pietri, whose dry intellect made his literature considerably less valuable than his prescient observations about the debilitating effects of petroleum on Venezuelan society. (His television broadcasts in which he greeted the audience as “my invisible friends” would also go on to inspire the name of Venezuela’s most successful pop group).

I’m not sure I’ll necessarily keep reading novels about Venezuela. But I’ve got some reading on my bookshelf that will keep me busy. One book describes Venezuelans’ innate mischievous streak. Another is a biography of the sister of Simon Bolivar, who viciously opposed independence from Spain despite her brother’s famous leadership of the independence movement (we don’t hear much about her in official discourse). I have enough other projects that I probably won’t be reading at the pace that I used to. But at least I’ve brought the reading back home.