1925 November The Mentor Magazine Venezuela Somoa Tito Salas Simon Bolivar

Description: 1925 November The Mentor Magazine Venezuela Somoa Tito Salas Simon Bolivar. Acceptable condition. VENEZUELA IMPRESSIONS OF THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE, GATHERED DURING RECENT MONTHS OF TRAVEL AND OBSERVATION BY THOMAS F. LEE Illustrated with Photographs Made by the Author THOMAS F. LEE IN THE ANDES This picture was taken at an altitude of somewhat more than ten thousand feet, and shows one of the little shrines to be found on the mountain tops. Within the shrine is a picture of Christ, before which candles are constantly kept burning TO MR. LEE FROM THE CONFIDENTIAL FRIEND AND ADVISER OF PRESIDENT GOMEZ OF VENEZUELA "NO ONE is better able than you to tell the story of Venezuela and its progress as it has been carried on under our beloved President, because you have taken the opportunity to visit the whole country and have yourself seen the conditions just as they are. I do not believe that any other foreigner has ever done anything similar to what you did, and I know that no one is better prepared than you are. At the same time I wish to congratulate you on the fact that no other writer has ever been able to approach General Gomez as you did. I hope that, with your clear vision and with the understanding which you have of General Gomez personality and of the conditions of the country, you may do a truly helpful work in bringing closer relations between our two countries."-RAPHAEL REQUENA, Caracas, Venezeula, September 21, 1925. ----------- 2 ----------- THE MΕΝTOR Vol. 13 No. 10 + NOVEMBER, 1925 + Serial No. 273 IBIUR IT WAS A SCENE LIKE THIS THAT SUGGESTED THE NAME VENEZUELA" The discoverer, Amerigo Vespucci, on seeing scenes of this sort on his voyage of exploration, called the settlement that he found at Maracaibo Venez-uela (Little Venice) HE STORY OF VENEZUELA Its Discovery and How It Came to be Named "Little Venice" Four and a quarter centuries ago a Florentine merchant on a Spanish ship sailed into what is now the Gulf of Maracaibo, on the north coast of South America. Along the low banks of the lake he saw a cluster of Indian huts built on piles over the water. They so reminded him of his beloved Venice that he called the country "Venez-uela"-"Little Venice." The Florentine merchant was Amerigo Vespucci. He named Venezuela-and his own name is written across the map of the Western World. Directly south of New York and closer to it than is Galveston, de- scendants of the same Indians still build and live in the same style of stilted hut raised above the water. Within its present borders Germany and France might be spread out, with space left into which Belgium and Holland could be fitted. It is a great area of llanos (pronounced yan'-oce and meaning "plains") and mountains with Colombia, Brazil, Guiana and the Caribbean hemming it in. ----------- 3 ----------- people with a firm hand in which the three functions of government unite- CLOSE POR- TRAIT OF GOMEZ The Most Loved and Most Hated Man of His Continent "There is little of pain-there is little of regret that I have not known-but I have tasted much of satisfaction." He said it with a curiously appeal- ing smile-this Porfirio Diaz of South America-the remarkable man who, in sixteen years, has turned Venezuela from bankruptcy to solvency; who has converted international enmities into friendships, given peace and industry in place of revolution and idleness; who, with the building of roads, has tied an isolated group of communi- tics into federal unity; whose motto is, "Peace, Work and Country," Juan Vicente Gomez, president of Venezuela, last of the great caudillos, preëminently the most striking ruler in Latin America to-day, is sixty-eight years of age. To his friends he is Restorer, Savior, Benemerito-to his foes Dictator, Despot, Tyrant. He is the most loved and the most hated man of his continent. In the eyes of Washington and the North American people he is perhaps the most important figure in Spanish American politics. I had traveled months in the republic before I attempted to see the man who controlled its destiny. Wherever I went this man Gomez was there in spirit or influence. I knew him for his works long before I saw him. A hundred and fifteen kilometers southwest from Caracas, in the town of Maracay, the general has built his little capital, and there I went to see him. The presidential home is a large, solid building of the Spanish type, with deep-set, barred windows, one entrance, and a cool patio filled with palms and shrubs. We passed through the long entryway into the patio, where awaited their turn with the general. One by one they went into his presence. As they came out their faces did not trouble to conceal satisfaction, appre hension, disappointment, fear. General Gomez rules his followers and his JUAN VICENTE GOMEZ Dictator of Venezuela. This picture was taken many years ago groups of men his word is final. We crossed the patio, then on past guards and through Spanish door- 24 ----------- 4 ----------- LIFE IN VENEZUELA IMPRESSIONS OF THE PEOPLE, THEIR LIFE, THEIR WORK AND THEIR AMUSEMENTS Illustrated With Photographs Recently Made by Thomas F. Lee A YOUNG LADY OF CARACAS, VENEZUELA Quite as modish and generally up-to-date as are her aisters of Paris, New York or Buenos Aires. Much of the anclent social restraint has been removed, to be supplanted by an independence which gives to "Miss Venezuela" an added charm THE upper strata of Venezuelan social life may claim a cultural development that equals that of any other prople. This group is limited in number-probably not more than five per cent of the whole. It is made up of the intellectuals who have preserved higher racial strains and traditions. They know the world's art, music and literature. They speak the languages of other peoples and are at home in other lands. The question of daily existence has never vexed them, for their material welfare has always been assured. This has developed culture-the birthright of leisure, fine breeding and high intellectual endowments. This group serves as the thin steel reinforcement in the concrete mass of Venezuela's sociological structure, which not only makes it possible for it to bear its own weight but, at the same time, permits the uplifting of the inferior masses lo higher levels. 20 ----------- 5 ----------- HAPPY DAYS IN SAFUNÉ, SAMOA THE SIMPLE LIFE OF A JOYOUS, PEACE- LOVING NATION IN THE SOUTH SEAS BY FREDERICK O'BRIEN Author of "White Shadows in the South Seas," "Mystic Isles of the South Seas" and "Atolls of the Sun" Illustrations by Frances Flaherty SUMMONING A VILLAGE CONCLAVE Lupa'ga, the chief, is blowing a conch to call the elders of Saluné to gather in the guest house. The triton shell, always used for this purpose, can be heard at a great distance A DORNED always with flowers, with necklaces of sweet-smelling buds and nuts about their necks, exquisitely clean in their persons, the smiles and tears ever at the beck of emotion, the people of Safuné are set apart from all the races I have known in the diversified world. The inventions of mankind, the machine monster in whose maw we struggle, the sweep of history and the rage of philosophies affect them as liule as the theory of Einstein. They dwell in a peace and detachment incredible to the Occidental, and it is good to have lived among them ere, as is in- evitable, they fall before the encroaching march of civilization.–FREDERICK O'BRIEN. 37 ----------- 6 ----------- A PORTION OF SAFUNÉ SEEN FROM THE RIVER One may see, from this picture, the kind of airy fales (houses) in which the Samoans live. In the foreground is the river where twice a day, young and old bathe SAFUNÉ BOYS IMITATING ELDERS Pe'a, the village "Huck Finn," has seized the war knife of a man and is plaving pranks with it to amuse his companion. The men have been practicing for a ceremonial dance in which they exhibit their skill with these weapons, formerly utea in their battles with enemy tribes 50 ----------- 7 ----------- The photograph shows him at work on fiis lat ITO SALAS, me VENEZUELAN wa ol- he ARTIST of ar Tito Salas is brilliant, lovable, talented and still young. Tito Salas and Zuloaga h. studied together in Paris. One went back to immortalize Spanish types on canvas, the other returned to Venezuela to play with the gorgeous colors of the tropics. I watched him-and photographed him- as he worked on a canvas as large as a wall in an average room, and I marveled at his freedom and certainty. The colorist, in his eagerness to produce effect, is apt to be a careless draftsman, but the uncanny color sense of Salas is coupled with precision as to form and design. It is a rare combination. His finished work is harmonious and its colors glow until one thinks of orchids, poinsettias and the flame tree, the gaudy poncho of the Indian, crimson sunsets, yellow Orinoco and the dark greens, and blues of tropiç jungle, sky and sea. I dined with him in the Salas eighteenth- century homewith its tapestry-covered walls and colorful paintings, old mahogany of the colonial period, flower-filled patio, all В a a t 53 ----------- 8 ----------- mellowed by the touch of time. was his father, now ninety, an aristocrat of old Spain, who speaks English and French as he does Spanish, and knows New York, Paris and London as he knows Caracas. In the National Palace, the House of Bolivar and other of the nation's buildings hang many of Tito Salas' great paintings. His color tones support a central motif just as a rich orchestral accompaniment supports a singer's voice. In his "Emigration from Caracas 1814" he has shown in color the tragic ending of a nation's hopes. In the canvas which he is painting to-day, "The Beginning of Commerce," the Spanish Jew is shown offering a piece of cloth for the rope of pearls about the Indian girl's neck. The photograph above shows only form in black and white, but the painting itself is glorified with brown and yellow, orange, crimson and dark green-the vivid, vital, passionate colorings that harmonize with vivid sunshine and the gorgeous, garish, bewildering color masses that Nature has woven into the mantle of the tropics. Tito Salas has observed the brilliant work of his fellow student Zuloaga. He himself plans to reflect on canvas the colors and people of Andes and llanos, so that the world may recognize the art of Venezuela. ----------- 9 ----------- Inspector of The wall of a house in a restored street of Pompeii bears this notice in handsome letters: "Twenty pairs of gladiators, at the expense of Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens, priest of Nero Cæsar, and ten pairs of gladiators belonging to Decimus Lucretius, junior, will fight in Pompeii, from the day preceding the none of April (from April 4th). There will be a wild beast hunt, and the great awning will be spread." Right next to this bold announcement is a modest election notice inviting the passerby to vote for Satrius, host of the festival. Life has changed little in its ambitions, vanities and pastimes since those ancient times. The inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii mirror life just as we know it-life with its big and its little ways, and with the illusions and passions, the desires and aspira- tions that eternally stir the hearts of men. ELECTION ANNOUNCEMENTS ON THE WA DWELLING IN POY ----------- 10 ----------- Excavations and of the Naples worthy group of inscriptions discovered i thoroughness, Victor Spinazzola carried were noted and studied not very long after the first lucky finds in Pompeii were made under the auspices of King Charles of the Bourbons And the facts acquired relative to the manner in which the elections were held in Pompcii and information about the personalities of the candidates in the years that immediately preceded the Vesuvian conflagration of 79 A. D. are practically the same as the facts shown by the new excavations in the "Street graphs," or electoral "programs," of Abundance." In twelve years, on a strect frontage which measures not much over four hundred yards, more than a thousand new inscriptions have been uncovered. In the remainder of Pompeii the traces of conflict for the prize of supreme political power appear much more infrequently; and these same traces, mutilated by the falling away of the plas- ter and discolored by the action of the weather, end by being lost in the gray uni- formity of the walls. The Pompeian walls the record, as has been seen, election notices of the years which immediately precede 79 A. D.; the year of the fearful reawakening of volcanic activity in Veşuvius after a sleep of several thousand years. These elec- tion notices are superim- posed one upon another, and were often effaced and painted over at night. A whitewasher would slap a handful of quicklime over the programs of preceding years and the scriptor would then paint the new program. propaganda was car- ried on in a spirited way. The

Price: 20 USD

Location: Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin

End Time: 2024-11-18T10:23:11.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD