1939 VENEZUELA magazine article, South America, Jungle life, natives

Description

Selling is a 1939 magazine article about:
Venezuela
Title: I KEPT HOUSE IN A JUNGLE
Author: Anne Rainey Langley
Subtitled “The Spell of Primeval Tropics in Venezuela, Riotous With Strange Plants, Animals, and Snakes, Enthralls a Young American Woman”
Quoting the first page “In an expanse of steaming jungle, which stretches savagely devoid of habitation to the Caribbean, Quiriquire sprawls like a large spider in the northeast of Venezuela. The small clearing in the matted tropical growth, 250 miles east of modern and sophisticated Caracas, occupies less than a square mile. Within this space is a self-sustaining colony born of the quest for oil and strangely at odds with the surrounding primitive country.
To the west, the low blue fingers of the gigantic Andes are visible-here, only 4,000 feet; but as they climb farther westward they soon reach the imposing height of 16,000 feet. To the south, a rolling savanna stretches toward the town of Maturin, capital of the State of Monagas, some 23 miles distant.
It is a country of sharp contrasts, where day descends into the darkness of night without any interlude of twilight.
With the people it is much the same.
Wide-eyed little girls bloom into woman-hood with a swiftness which ignores adolescence.
There are purple shadows where the mountains meet the sky-shadows that stand like sentinels beyond a row of square frame houses whose peaked red roofs loom up as starkly as tents in the desert. One is sharply aware of utter isolation, yet quite unlonely. For like a living breath comes the sense and the smell of the jungle. The mystery of a thousand unseen living things mingles with the scent of as many flowers, to season the air with magic.
To this lotus land I came with my husband, an American oil company representative.
At the top of scarlet hibiscus hedges, our houses are set on 10-foot stilts, high off the ground, to combat the heat. In the space underneath, the family wash blows gaily, free of daily rains.
Native cooks and nursemaids for the American colony are seen slap-slap-slapping down the sun-baked road in their woven sandals, minus shape or heel. Over their heads they fling a towel to escape the tropic sun; this is replaced by a black veil when they attend Sunday mass.
As servants, they are amusing, but aggravating. They work only when whim dictates, and no bribe of more money will induce dependability. When their mood rebels at work, they invariably come to the door, their arms laden with bright poinsettias, chanting a long lament, "that they are filled with sorrow to leave the good lady for the short space of a day."
Throughout the jungle, which borders us on all sides, lies a constant crisscross of shallow rivers. Here the people of the plains take their baths. Certain hours are reserved in each area for men, and other hours for women. These hours are never violated.
Within the camp we have a commissary containing imported canned goods from the United States. Our own chlorinating system safeguards us against the typhoid and dysentery germs that formerly took heavy toll among Venezuelans in this section. As an additional precaution all fresh fruits, vegetables, and eggs must be washed before eating. A company power plant provides electricity and running water for the entire camp. The latest movies arrive by plane twice each week.
It is a strange sort of civilization we enjoy in the midst of this primeval jungle. For, while we escape the steaming heat in our baths, we are not immune to a snake sharing our shower. It never fails to fascinate me that my husband's shoes and our small shower room should prove such a foil for small snakes. The first time I came upon a mapanare coiled in the corner of the clothes closet, I was so faint with fright that I could only scream feebly for the cook to come and kill it, which she did with amazing nonchalance.
Now, after several years, I have learned…"
7” x 10”, 18 double-sided pages, 38 B&W photos
These are pages carefully removed from an actual 1939 magazine.
39A3
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