(Mountains north of Maturín in eastern Venezuela) Mauro Ortega, El Gato, lay on a ridge above the lonely rancho and observed the events below. The morning had dawned bright and sunny, but by early afternoon clouds began to gather in the north along the coast. The November rainy season would bring moisture to the mountains …
PART 2 I flew to Caracas and we met with our attorneys. The attorney had little to say. He observed as my bosses informed me of their decision to renege on the commitment. I returned to Maracaibo and a week later the milling division VP flew out and we had dinner. I informed him of …
PART I(Revisiting the past) Recent events have motivated me to resurrect and edit an unpublished memoir of my years as a mill manager in Venezuela. I may have learned more about life in the real world in the years of 1966 to 1974 than any experience I’ve had before or after. Now, with time for …
In Cali, Colombia, Alberto Hernán Guerra, a young man suddenly found himself as head of the substantial family business when his father, Don Saturno Guerra, was hospitalized in Houston, Texas, and diagnosed with a terminal illness. The milling business in Colombia was just emerging from almost total government control. Prices of inputs and products had …
On 13 August 2005 two scholars, Eduardo Neves, a Brazilian, and James Peterson, Anthropology Department chairman at the University of Vermont, visited a roadside restaurant in the Amazon jungle. Two gunmen walked in and demanded their money. As a departing afterthought, one shot the American in the abdomen. Peterson died before Neves could get him …
The last vestiges of day had fled. The rich spicy aroma of recently trimmed hedges of rosemary permeated the warm evening air.
After a long and futile search the adventurer sighted a mountain of glistening gemstones, (perhaps wet quartz crystals glistening in the setting sun from a recent rain).
