The Arcturus Man (15 page)

Born in 1988, Rubio Collazo Ignacio Matos spent his early years in the El 23 de
Enero barrio outside of Caracas.
This is the same barrio where his father, Gustavo, was
born in 1966. Today, many barrios stretch almost from Simón Bolívar Airport near Maiquetía to Caracas, a distance of more than 17 miles.

The barrios are an unseen squatter city outside the oil-rich downtown, draped
along the mountainsides beneath the verdant misty Avila Mountain. Various corrupt land
reformation and anti-poverty programs arranged it so that the wealthy never had to travel
anywhere where the slum classes slaved and died. They were the invisible people. Every
morning when he went with his brothers to pick the trash heaps of the wealthy for anything of value, young Rubio passed a giant mural of Che Guevara that was painted on the
side of the only clinic in the barrio.
The mural imprinted into Rubio’s soul.
His father
admired Che and often spoke of him to the boy.
His father was 1 when Che was executed by the Bolivian army in 1967 with the help of the CIA.
Rubio wanted to be like
his father and his father wanted to be like Che.

The poor stole from the poor.
The weak suckled the strong.
The labyrinth of
slum alleys was filled with gun shots, disease, drugs, and prostitution. It was a Darwinian
caldron of the survival of the fittest. Rubio learned how to survive.

With the help of his maternal grandfather who had managed to save some money,
Rubio’s father, Gustavo, briefly attended the Daniel Florencio O’Leary School.
It was
far from Caracas in Barinas.
He lived with his grandfather and for a short point in time
life was easier for Gustavo. He became good friends with another student, Hugo Chávez
Frias, the son of school teachers and a bright student.
Gustavo spent many weekends
with Hugo’s family being tutored in reading and writing. Rubio’s father was a good student and read voraciously. The good time didn’t last. Gustavo’s father became seriously
ill, and as the oldest son, the young boy had to return to Caracas to begin to take over his
father’s duties in sustaining the family. However, his two years of special schooling and
his friendship with Hugo Chavez would unalterably change Gustavo’s life forever and the
life of his son, Rubio.

His father, Gustavo, with the help of some education learned to be a good drop
forge worker and, in the hope of a better life, moved his family to Cartagena on the Colombian coast in 1990. He had been told that a German-owned foundry was looking for
experienced workers. At fifteen dollars for a ten-hour day, the wages weren’t any better,
but it least it would be steady work.
And so, they became Colombians.
They lived in a
shanty on a hill side on land that no one else wanted. The house had no water, electricity,
or sanitation.
It was little more than boards and heavy cardboard nailed together. The
roof was made of rusted corrugated iron sheets. It leaked badly but it did keep most of the
rain out. They lost their house twice during heavy downpours. Each time his father constructed a new house.
The hillside was so crowded by shanties that they were forced to
rebuild on the same spot, knowing that the mud slides would eventually strike again.

Rubio had dysentery so many times growing up that everyone regarded it as a
normal condition.
A Cuban doctor sometimes attended to the boy, but he had 15,000
slum dwellers to care for. People come to expect what they are accustomed to.
So too,
the barrio was home to Rubio.

Every day young Rubio would bring his father his mid-day meal. It was wrapped
in a worn red bandana. The meal usually consisted of little more than bread and fruit.
These were things his family could afford. Once a week, but not every week, there would
be some meat. His father always shared part of the meal with his son.

The boy adored his father.
His father was exceptionally handsome, strong, and
virile, the very personification of South American machismo. Cartagena was always hot
and sultry and the heat from the foundry made it almost unbearable for Rubio to visit the
foundry, but he would do anything for his father.
The young boy couldn’t imagine how
his father could endure the heat.
His father would tell him that each man has his own
garden to cultivate. His father had read Voltaire.

Year after year, he saw his father slowly waste away and age before his young
eyes. It broke his heart.
He vowed to some day avenge the suffering his father endured
for him and his brothers, and most of all for his mother.

The work never stopped so as his father took a few minutes to eat, another man
would come off a break and pick up his father’s job. White hot iron rods were inserted in
a series of rolling mills and squeezed into thinner and thinner rods. His father would have
to catch the end of the hot iron stock with tongs and to muscle it back into the rollers to
pass through again and again as the metal was squeezed thinner and thinner. As the metal was heated by the compression and then cooled in the air, it would whip wildly on the
concrete floor of the foundry like it was a writhing steel snake. The workers called it
grabbing the anaconda by the head. It was difficult to catch. The only protection his father had was a leather apron.
On one of his visits Rubio had witnessed one of the other
workers almost cut in two by the white hot snake when he missed a grab.
Men died in
the foundry every year. On those rare days that the owner would walk to survey his property, the men said nothing, but there was hatred in their eyes. Rubio learned how to show
loathing in his eyes too.

His father would read to his boys from his Bible every night by the light of a candle. And there were other books from time to time. When Rubio was older his father gave
him
The Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla,
by Carlos Marighella.
The Brazilians had
given it to him many years ago during a rally in São Luis. After his father died, being the
eldest son, Rubio kept the thin book and treasured it for the rest of his life.

When Rubio was ten, in 1998, his father had to attend a labor union party gathering in Bogotá. He was the union leader at the foundry and a devote Marxist. His friends
had donated enough money for a bus ticket for him. His father hoped that the bus driver
would ignore the fare for a very small boy if he sat in his lap. The driver did. He was a
Marxist too.

Rubio was excited about going to a big city. It was the most famous Andean city
in all of South America. The inhabitants were a unique mix of Indio, Negro and Spanish
blood. That interested Rubio as well. It was the land of exotic things.
Rubio was proud
of his Indio blood line and although they would never be permitted to enter the Gold Museum, the Museo del Oro, at least he would see from a distance where the Incan treasures
were kept. His ancestors were the Incas. He was proud of his ancestors.

His father warned him that the air was thin because the city was high in the mountains.
He couldn’t wait for the experience. He practiced gasping for air as his jealous
brothers watched.
He was told to sleep so he wouldn’t be so tired when they arrived in
Bogotá, but he just couldn’t. He also wasn’t accustomed to going to bed in the early afternoon. It was too hot and he wasn’t tired. His five brothers had to stay at home. Rubio
was the eldest and old enough to travel with his father.

The bus ride took ten hours. The bus left Cartagena at 7 p.m.
They entered the
outskirts of Bogotá by 5 a.m.
His father said that the traffic in the city was horrible, but
in the very early morning hours the streets were almost empty.
The bus drove through
every red traffic light without slowing down. The boy watched with big eyes as the huge
vehicle careened through the intersections. His father told him to think nothing of it. He
said that everyone in Bogotá ignored the traffic lights, even during the busiest times. He
told him that the government had wasted everyone’s money installing the lights. A man
should never be a slave to a machine. He said that the lights were as useful to the city as a
bicycle was to a fish.
The boy laughed as he visualized a fish on a bicycle.
His father
laughed too. He rarely saw his father laugh. He couldn’t remember when he saw his father laugh before, but he must have laughed some time. He was pretty sure he laughed
sometimes with his mother late at night. He heard them sometimes. He held on to his father’s leg even tighter so the wonderful feeling would last longer.

His father glanced to the side and saw a group of very young boys squatting inside the portico of a large office building entrance.
There were about six of them. They
were all leaning over a drip pan from an automobile.
They had large ragged towels
draped over their heads so that their faces were invisible. They looked like priests.

“What are they doing, Papá?”
“They are sniffing the fumes of gasoline,” said Gustavo.
“I would never do that, Papá. It is a sin.”
“They are not doing it to become intoxicated by the fumes—or at least not for the

reasons you are imagining. It is very cold in the morning in this city. It is not like Cartagena. The fumes stupefy them and it helps them bear the cold.”
“Oh,” said Rubio. He had never heard of such a thing.
“This city has thousands of boys and girls like that. They live in the streets. They
are orphans, or at least many have been abandoned by their families who can’t afford to
feed them. They steal for a living and they will even steal from the poor. You must stay
away from these children. They are very dangerous,” said Gustavo.
“Oh,’ said Rubio.
He held on to his father even tighter. He didn’t want to be
abandoned and forced to live in the street like a bad boy.
“Always remember, Rubio.
There is nothing more dangerous than a man who
believes that he has nothing more to lose. It is an important lesson.”
“I will Papá.” Rubio never forgot any of his father’s lessons.
“And you must read, Rubio. You must study hard. Remember, knowledge is the
enemy of faith. When you are a man, faith will not keep your family warm or feed your
children, but education will. Pray to God and read the Bible, but never ask God for a favor…never. It is not God’s work to protect your family. It is the man’s work. Faith is for
women.”
“I will remember, Papá.”
“It is also important that you be strong. Learn to endure. Learn to be hard. When
you cut down a line of trees at the edge of the forest, the trees behind that have never felt
a strong wind are the first to fall in a storm.
Do not avoid the strong winds in life, Rubio,” said his father.
“I will remember, Papá.”
The bus pulled into the Chapineros district.
That made Rubio laugh again. That
was a funny name.
His father took the boy by the arm as they climbed off the crowded bus.
They
entered a small restaurant,
La Papa
. It specialized in large stuffed potatoes. The two potatoes cost more than they could scarcely afford, but his father told him many times that
this was the food of their ancestors. It was virtually a religious experience for the boy. It
was wonderful, even this early in the morning. It was filled with meat and cheese. Rubio
had never tasted anything so good. His father told him that Pizzaro had described the potato in his journals.
The Gods had given the potato to the Incas and now his father had
given it to Rubio. Life was good for Rubio.
They walked the city together for several hours to stay warm. The city could get
very cold at night and Rubio and his father weren’t used to the chill. The rally wouldn’t
start for hours yet. Gustavo stopped across from the Tequendama Hotel.
“Look Rubio!
Watch your enemy and understand him.
We read Sun Tzu Wu
many evenings. You must not forget him. He was a very wise man.”
“Yes, Papa!” Young Rubio read
The Art of War
as other children were read fairy
tales.
He also read Voltaire, and Cervantes, and Goethe, and the Greeks.
The boy memorized every word of
Art of War
written by Sun Tzu Wu in 500 B.C.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear
the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the
enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If
you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in
every battle.”

Rubio never forgot these lessons or any lessons he learned from his father especially that all war was based on deception. They sat on a railing and watched wealthy
businessmen in expensive suits and white shirts come streaming out.
They had gold
watches on their hands that glinted in the morning sun. They all carried expensive leather attachés. These were the Americans, Germans, Chinese and Japanese.
Some had
open shirts with gold chains around their necks. They were probably the Mexicans, the
Norte Americanos reviled by the poor in South America—no better than the Yankees.
They were all soft, fat and sweating. They all looked the same even though they dressed
differently. They were the enemy.

His father pointed across the plaza. Rubio could see dozens of street boys lurking
in the shadows of the buildings watching their prey leaving their sanctuary.
He pointed
again back to the hotel.
Rubio could see the armed guards watching over the entrances
and chasing away the street boys who got too close. These were things Rubio had not
seen before.
It was all interesting.
Cartagena was a dangerous place, but it was nothing
like this.
The wealth in Bogotá was flaunted.
Every now and then a few men would
come out dressed like the locals. They wore suits, but they were simple suits. They
flashed no jewelry.
They wore no watches.
There was no bulge in their back pocket
where a wallet might be. If they carried anything, it was bundled together.

“And these, they are the experienced ones. They understand this city. They are to
be watched even closer because they are more dangerous. Many are CIA.”
“Yes, Papá.”
Rubio often tried to remember that wonderful morning with his father.
Like all
memories, it was hollow. He would never feel that safe and happy again.