Marie Arana
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
As for the heroic and unfortunate Venezuela, its events have been so rapid and its devastations such that
One of the richest families in Latin America.
It owned tobacco fields, it owned indigo fields.
His father died when he was very young.
He didn't like the company of the aristocrats.
He'd rather play in the fields with the slaves, and he did.
He was basically rootless, really, until one of his uncles said, well, OK, let's send you to Madrid so you can get some manners.
He said, you know, if she hadn't died, he would have been a very successful landowner.
He would have, you know, potted around his properties and, you know, had children and had a very, very much the same sort of life that his father and his grandparents and his great-grandparents had had.
He weighed all of 120 pounds.
He had no chest to speak of.
He would walk into a room and larger, taller people would be dwarfed really by his presence because he was so dynamic, friendly, the sort of warm personality that inspired people.
While there... He got inspired by some leftist Latin American generals who took a more reform approach to their societies in contrast with...
the right-wing military dictatorships in much of Latin America.
That's when he burst onto the world stage.
He was one of the original guerrilla fighters because he was all about surprise and all about numbers.