Precisely the large “cat-cracking” unit, where high-octane gasoline was produced, had become the defining symbol of the Lago refinery, as it dominated the skyline with its huge cylindrical plant rising monumentally above the rest of the complex. Rude Thompson had been working for less than six months as a gauger at the cat cracker when a new pump system operator was incorporated into the team. His name was Ignacio Ojeda, and he was a Venezuelan graduate carrying out his period of apprenticeship.
Ignacio Ojeda had the confidence of someone who knows that if the shit hits the fan, he can call upon someone else to open an umbrella and keep him from getting stained, though his attitude fell short of arrogance, and his demeanor was always gregarious, and he just had a way about him that made you want to be friends with him. He had a natural inclination to speak, regardless of the situation, and yet he avoided causing annoyance by virtue of an innate rhythm that kept his stories poised at all times between the implausible and the enchanting. Ignacio had finished his degree almost a year before, but he was so up-to-date with the activities of his faculty, so engaged in the day-to-day happenings of his native Caracas, that he seemed to live with one foot in Aruba and the other in Venezuela.
Because, of course, Ignacio Ojeda was a staunch detractor of the military dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who, following rigged elections, had been declared president of the republic in 1953. While a student, Ignacio Ojeda had seen his country go from one constitutional crisis to the next, as a provisional junta took as many steps to negotiate the turbulent waters of political unrest as it did to add further trouble into the mix. Pérez Jiménez, a member of the junta, had been the absolute victor in the power struggle, landing sole control of the country’s government. His first resolution was to reduce the autonomy of the universities, as he feared students were his most dangerous enemies. Three years into his degree, Ignacio Ojeda saw his faculty disappear into thin air. He was forced to switch from oil engineering to mechanical engineering, as the structure of the institution was streamlined and its student base reduced. From that moment, in the summer of 1953, until late 1957, when it was announced that the elections, scheduled for December that year, would be replaced by a referendum to determine by popular vote whether Pérez Jiménez should remain in power, militant factions within the Central University of Venezuela actively demanded the dissolution of government, the resignation of Pérez Jiménez, and the democratic election of a new president. Suddenly, a society used to being led by the whims of the elite and the backing of the military forces was struck by the destabilizing effect of an informed and committed youth, a gadfly in the government’s face, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe.
Ignacio Ojeda, pump system operator at Lago’s cat cracker in Aruba from June to December 1957, somehow managed to remain a part of this dissenting force, of this discerning voice that called for an end to the days of nepotism and abuse, of suppression of liberties and intimidation in one of the fastest-developing countries in South America. Therefore, every time a friend or comrade was captured, every time a meeting was organized or a resolution was taken, Ignacio Ojeda arrived in the morning overcome by excitement, indignation, or exultation. Then he would explain how It cannot be, my friend, that in this day and age a citizen of an independent country should be put in prison for expressing his opinions about the policies of his government, or he would predict the end of all dictatorial rule in Latin America through the integration of the people in search for one common goal, or he would plot the demise of the tyrannical government through the incorporation of all strata of Venezuelan society in a combined initiative that would restore the most elementary of rights in the country: freedom of speech.
On paper, Ignacio Ojeda was just one tier above Rude Thompson in the company’s pecking order, but, ironically, it was Ignacio’s knowledge of the fast rise through the ranks of the refinery which his future had in store for him that allowed him to develop a natural relationship with Rude, unhindered by the nuances that shape the dynamics of direct competitors on the same career path. Because Ignacio was at the cat cracker to learn the practical side of the refining process he had so cleverly dissected during his years at university—he was there to experience and learn to cope with the intense boredom that came with the routine of constantly monitoring temperature and pressure readings, to partake in the feeling, be it pride, or occasionally even antipathy, that came with the sense that, somehow, by opening a valve wide or slamming one shut, by shifting the flow, by altering the mix, this huge concrete and iron beast could be tamed. But, in addition to all of that, Ignacio Ojeda was taking advantage of the opportunity to understand the mentality of the proletariat, to exchange views on an equal footing with members of the working class.
Now, it might seem like nothing could glue together the realities of a neglected little island in the Caribbean atoll with those of a developing industrial country of millions of people in the South American mainland, the realities of a middle-class Latino graduate and those of a poor Antillean migrant worker. But at a time when Venezuelans longed most for universal suffrage, Anguillians had already gained the right to vote—had gained the nominal power to express their opinions about who should represent them in government and how they should act. And so, implausibly, Ignacio Ojeda and Rude Thompson, joined through circumstance by their shared condition as foreigners in this Dutch colony, compared the evils of having no discernible popular voice—strangled by the brute force of a repressive government—with having a voice that was loud and clear but that remained impotent because of the way power had been distributed among the islands forming the territory.
That was how, in the days and weeks leading up to the general elections of November 6 in the presidency of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, which also happened to be the weeks and months preceding the general elections of December 15 in Venezuela, the cat cracker at the Lago refinery in Aruba’s St. Nicolaas Bay became a grand forum for political debate. Every morning when Ignacio arrived in the plant bouncing his revolutionary jargon and his socialistic attitude from wall to wall, Rude Thompson would engage him in conversation and question him, ask him to elaborate his point, to explain himself, becausin’ de man does have a big passion, but he does forget wha’ he passionate ’bout. And so, a simple How you mean people go jail for sitting in de same room? would lead to a heated presentation of the legal framework that authorized the police to break up social gatherings and arrest the participants as troublemakers, which would lead to the usual teeth sucking, followed by an exasperated But dat law stupid, man!
Yet during the previous five years many West Indian islands, from Trinidad to Anguilla, had gone to the polls for the first time, and many were the voices that, washed in coffee or distorted by a mouthful of rice and peas, emerged to discredit Ignacio Ojeda’s idealistic expectations about a functioning democratic society by spewing bluntly, In me country I know only two parties: dey who can afford me vote, and dey who kyan’t; or, So much votes be bought in di bar I nuh understan’ why politicians even waste dey time wit’ public meetings. And yet, despite the inauspicious landscape of experimental democracies where ethnic backgrounds had far more relevance than governmental policies when it came to supporting a candidate, where party politics were shadowed by personal allegiances, and where corruption was not only rampant but indiscreet, Ignacio Ojeda continued to display an enviable—almost candid—resolve in his apology for the most precious right and most pressing duty of any citizen in the civilized world: the opportunity to make a contribution to the decision-making process that would determine the course of the country’s policies.
So, when Ignacio Ojeda found out that Rude Thompson would not be returning to Anguilla for the general elections of November 6, he simply could not understand it: he could not understand how anyone would squander the chance to actively influence the destiny of his country, and he couldn’t understand how anyone would let down his fellow citizens by not taking part in the selection process at all; but w
hat he really could not understand was how financial considerations could stand between a man and his civic responsibility, how they could play any sort of role in a decision that was, ultimately, moral, not rational. Therefore, when Rude Thompson let out one day, No, man—I cannot afford to cast my vote dis time, Ignacio Ojeda read into that particular use of the word “afford” all kinds of connotations; and, later on, when it became official that the Venezuelan dictator, General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, would not allow any opposition candidate to run for the election of December 15, but instead would take the opportunity to consult the electorate in a countrywide referendum on whether he should extend his mandate for another five years, Ignacio Ojeda could not fathom what had ever taken hold of his good friend Rude Thompson when he said, Da’ exactly wha’ Anguilla need: we no need no election—we need only a referendum to aks us wha’ we wan’.
Of course, it would have been easier for Ignacio Ojeda to understand had he noticed the results of the November 6 elections in St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, where independent candidates swept the floor in the small islands of Nevis and Anguilla, to absolutely no avail, as the men from the Labour Party, including Robert Bradshaw, took the seats up for grabs in the larger island of St. Kitts, gaining an overwhelming majority in the presidency’s legislature in the process. But during the days following those general elections, Ignacio Ojeda was far too busy liaising with his militant comrades in Caracas, organizing the logistics of a new plan to openly challenge the authority of the Venezuelan government and demonstrate publicly.
So, between Xeroxing thousands of subversive fliers and coordinating the timing of the operation, Ignacio remained a stranger to the predicament that assailed Rude Thompson and the rest of his fellow islanders. Two weeks later, however, Rude became more than aware of the exact activity that Ignacio Ojeda and his accomplices were planning in Venezuela, as the streets were swarmed with students from all the universities in the country. Violent confrontations between the rioters and military forces led to huge numbers of students being detained and tortured. But a government that remained in place by virtue of intimidation had lost its most precious weapon: fear. And soon enough the protests would turn into a general strike that flipped the country on its head and forced General Marcos Pérez Jiménez to flee to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
Come Christmas 1957, Rude Thompson had spent every single day of the past four years in the settlement located just to the north of the refinery, where most of the migrant workers from all over the Caribbean dwelled when they were not at work. He had been there, on his own, on March 1, 1954, when his sixteenth birthday brought him the best gift he had ever received—legitimacy at his post; he sat there too, no longer by himself, during the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, the very first ones he had ever attended outside his family circle in Anguilla; unaware or uninterested, he had also sat at his home in the settlement near St. Nicolaas Bay during those heady days of 1956—on August 2, when the British Caribbean Federation Act received royal assent, on November 29, when D.C. van Ruijtenbeek exhaled his last breath, on December 2, when sixty of the eighty-two gullible recruits who had traveled aboard the Granma were ambushed and killed by the armed forces loyal to President Rubén “Fulgencio” Batista in Cuba; through the general elections of November 6, 1957 in St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla he had sat too, this time more informed than before, but still not fully certain of how he felt about it—or about anything else.
The village near St. Nicolaas Bay had not been built by the Lago corporation for the benefit of its employees, unlike the more exclusive colony to the southeast, which had been designed to house all the executive personnel of the industry—most of whom were American citizens. Consequently, the settlement to the north of the refinery was shabbier, more crowded, but also much more natural in the way it had grown and developed. Over the past four years, Rude Thompson had been too fascinated by the mixture of cultures and traditions he’d found in this place to think much about what he had left behind in Anguilla. Here he had learned the painful inflection of the Aruban Papiamento, as well as the extravagant excesses of the Trinidadian mas, the musical luridness of the Dominican bachata, the wretchedness of the Colombian vallenato, the theatricality of the Panamanian murga, the sweetness of Grenadian nutmeg, and the reason why Jamaicans call their hot sauce jerk. For four years running, Rude Thompson had religiously sent exactly half of what he earned in Aruba back to his family in Anguilla, and for four years running Rude Thompson had worked every day except Sundays, without ever missing his home island.
Until he met Ignacio Ojeda, that is. Because Ignacio Ojeda, with his crazy talk about choice and change, about people power and integration, struck a distant note that at first inspired nothing but ridicule in his Caribbean coworkers. But little by little, one argument at a time, Ignacio Ojeda managed, perhaps not to convince anyone, but to make them understand that there was, if nothing else, conviction in his speech, and that such conviction made him a stronger, more resolute man. And so, one day, out of nowhere, Rude Thompson awoke feeling the kind of patriotism he had never felt before—the kind that goes beyond the blind pride for belonging to a given piece of land, to a given rock, the kind that makes you take a step back and look at things from a distance and wonder what can be done to improve the island, the country, the situation of the people—of my people.
By this time, Rude Thompson was hooked on the saga that Ignacio Ojeda recreated every morning as he walked into the cat cracker at Lago, he arriving from the colony, Rude approaching from the settlement, both eager to tell and to hear respectively the torrid, dreadful, distressing news of what had happened the day before, or the one before that, in the city of Caracas, where schools and universities had become the laboratories where recipes for change were tried and tested, while on the outside an eerie calm, a tense stalemate, oozed an air of normality that created a false sense of security, occasionally disturbed by a vicious rumor here, by a violent outburst there, all immediately discredited or crushed by the military units deployed all over the city for the safekeeping of peace and quiet in the run-up to the referendum of December 15—which, inexplicably, Marcos Pérez Jiménez claimed to win by an overwhelming majority of over 70 percent of the population.
Thus, round about Christmastime 1957, Rude Thompson made a resolution, and he approached his supervisor at the Lago refinery and requested to have all the days of holiday he had not taken in the past four years put together to allow him to spend some time in his home this season. The head of gauging posed the question to the head of the monitoring process, who subsequently asked the vice president of pump operations, until the request finally landed on the desk of the head of production. In only his second interview with this high executive in the hierarchy of the Lago corporation, Rude Thompson used as excuse the fact that his island would be incorporated into a new administrative entity that required him to travel personally to St. Kitts to get his new documents. At the same time, Ignacio Ojeda decided he would go back to Venezuela and fight the fight that had not yet been taken to the streets, but that he knew would soon erupt. Rude Thompson and Ignacio Ojeda departed Aruba on the same day, the last of 1957. Three days later, on January 3, 1958, as the Federation of the West Indies officially came to exist, Ignacio Ojeda narrowly escaped prison after taking part in a failed coup against President Pérez Jiménez.
Rude Thompson set out to work as soon as he landed on Sandy Ground on the very first day of 1958, going from home to home, from bar to bar, from shop to shop, raising a question that, he soon learned, was also troubling the rest of the population. But Rude Thompson was a man of action, and all he found in Anguilla as he pounded his fist against domino tables, shop counters, and dining tables was agreement about how sour the association with St. Kitts had turned. Nevertheless, there seemed to be not one single proposal, not even a rudimentary plan, to do anything to address the situation. So Rude Thompson came up with a simple idea—a peaceful first step—and he gathered a group of friends who would be
willing to ignore the lessons of history, and together they tried, just like the members of the vestry of Anguilla had done in 1825 and again in 1873, to appeal to the British Crown to find an immediate and satisfactory solution to the neglectful running of Anguillian affairs by the central administrative body located in St. Kitts.
Hence, Rude Thompson was not looking when the opinion of the vast majority of Venezuelans suddenly switched against the despotic rule of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez on the morning of January 21, 1958; nor was he aware of the general strike that quite literally paralyzed his friend’s country for the following seventy-two hours; nor did he learn until many months later that on the morning of January 23, 1958, Ignacio Ojeda and the rest of his gang had finally succeeded in making Pérez Jiménez understand that he was not wanted—that he was not safe—in his own country. Because Rude Thompson was far too busy drafting the memo that turned into the plea that finally contained the threat that was passed from hand to hand and spoken from mouth to mouth for months in Anguilla, for everyone to know and for everyone to sign, so that when the governor of the Leeward Islands received it, he would not have the slightest doubt that this request to Make every exertion which lies within your power to bring about the dissolution of the present political and administrative association of Anguilla with St. Kitts was not only shared by the vast majority of the population of the island—two thousand signatures, or about 70 percent of the electorate—but was also urgent. In a passing moment of inspiration, it occurred to Rude Thompson that it would be pertinent to place the particulars of Anguilla’s situation within the larger context of the social unrest that, from Cuba to Venezuela, was sweeping through the region by explaining how A people cannot live without hope for long without erupting socially; and it is because the people of Anguilla prefer petition to eruption that we implore Your Excellency to use your best endeavours to have Anguilla emancipated from the dead hand of the political leaders of St. Kitts.
The Night of the Rambler Page 9
