Hooked on Cocaland: monday 10/3/94

[1] The title for Book I, which is the Spanish expression, ‘La Cartagena Terrible’, should be understood to mean: ”The Terrifying City of Cartagena.” Cartagena in 1994 was a blisteringly hot, tempestuous, party-loving, developing-world city full of homeless kids walking the streets, and truckloads by the thousands of very poor immigrants from the back country of coastal Colombia, the people Dr. Lorenzo refers to in his trip journal as ‘costeños’, or coastal people, meaning Colombians living anywhere within one or two hundred miles of the Caribbean Sea; including Robbie’s family, in fact; for they too had come to live in Cartagena from about a hundred miles inland. The people of Cartagena and the Caribbean coast of Colombia have been since its founding a liberal mix of three ‘races’: Spanish ‘white’, who were the conquering people; New World indigenous (Native American) ‘brown’ or ‘rosy-golden brown’, as mj called their bronze color, the conquered people; and ‘black’ African, imported to do slave labor for the Spanish conquerors since the pope forbade enslaving the New World race. Those and a few caucasians from other countries were the three groups of people who had cross-bred to create Cartagena’s many-hued population, starting from the days of its founding in the early-to-mid 1500s, when Spain’s conquest of the New World (‘for God, Gold and Glory’) was in its heyday. In 1994, 450 years later, Cartagena was attracting beach vacationers from as far inland as Bogotá, the capital, and from all over Latin America; but was also attracting Colombian citizens from the boonies of backwater coastal Colombia seeking new life and opportunity, like Robbie’s family.

[2] The quotation is from Augustine’s Confessions, where he describes his profound grief reaction to the death of his best friend when they were young.

[3] Several expressions of Spanish-speakers: (1) ‘Nueva Your’: Spanglish for ‘New York’, nueva being the Spanish word for ‘new’, and ‘your’ being the way many Hispanics pronounce ‘York’, leaving off the 'k'. (‘Spanglish’ refers to the way many Hispanics in the U.S. combine English and Spanish in their speech, often creating new terms that exist in neither parent language.) (2) ‘Aguardiente’ in this case is a Caribbean liqueur usually made from sugar cane, often flavored with anise; generally the word means liquor or a strong liqueur; it is close in meaning to the English word ‘firewater’ (see appendix A glossary); literally aguardiente means 'water your teeth' or 'tooth flush', maybe even 'mouthwash'; (3) Vallenato: a kind of Colombian music and dance which originated in a particular coastal area of Colombia now called ‘the valley’, i.e., the valley about 200 miles straight east of Cartagena, almost on the border with Venezuela, where the principal city is Valledupar; (4) ojalá is a common Spanish expression which native Spaniards borrowed from the Muslim Arabs, who lived in Spain and ruled large parts of it from the 700s to the year 1500; it means ‘if only it – hopefully – may become so’, or, more literally, ‘may God, i.e., Allah, permit it’. For an alphabetical glossary of most of the foreign language terms used in this work, see Appendix A.

[4] taxistas: ‘taxi drivers’ in Spanish; see Appendix A for a glossary of foreign language terms used in this work.

[5] familia: Spanish for ‘family’. See Appendix A for a glossary of non-English terms used in this work.

[6] A photo of all those of Robbie’s family the Dr. met in Cartagena is at the end of subsection 9, on the present page.

[7] One of the most popular books of the very late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in Europe was The Imitation of Christ, or De imitatione Christi (Latin), thought to have been written by Thomas À Kempis, a Dutch monk of the order of The Brethren of the Common Life. The term imitatio, in general, while it had other meanings as well, often was used to refer to a particular kind of ‘spiritual’ exercise practiced commonly in medieval Europe. Educated people who could read, would read and study the life of a particular favorite saint and attempt to emulate or ‘imitate’ that saint’s particular kind of ‘spirituality’, often weird and extremist, as it will seem to many today in post-modern secular America. Often an imitatio, or imitation, involved some form of self-denial or ascetic self-sacrifice turned into a religious ritual behavior. Mj here, by offering Sammy his ‘imitatio’, both in print and in example, is not just poking fun at the medieval practice of emulating saints’ lives, but also mocking his own and some of his followers’ tendency at times in the past to see mj lorenzo as someone ‘very important’ to the future moral perfection of humanity, as for example when he claimed, back in 1970, that he had been ‘born into the world to keep the human race from annihilating itself’. At this point in his life (1994) he is doubting himself and rejecting that lifelong mission of his (temporarily). He is depressed and, as most psychiatric textbooks will point out, all of his present out-of-character behaviors are derived from his depression: his self-doubt, self-hate, anger, unfriendliness, meanness, escapism, isolation, alienation, insolence, sarcasm, defeatism, nihilism, his spurning of food and sex, his ‘somatic delusion’ that he is terminally infected with HIV and will die soon, his apparent delusion that civilization is about to collapse, his ridiculing of Western civilization’s greatest past cultural heroes, like St. Augustine, are all just the many symptoms of a lingering significant depression, which, during the last two years, has been even more severe than at present. Far more, in fact: for if Sammy Martinez had not taken mj lorenzo into his home in San Juan Pueblo in New Mexico and spoon-fed him real food and friendship and love, ‘forever withstanding his inappropriate and rude ire’, as mj’s devoted pundit following have said so many times, and still are saying to the present day (2017), mj lorenzo probably would have died by this point in time, 1994, of insufficient nutrition caused by severe psychotic depression and not eating.

[8] Perennial defenders of mj lorenzo’s ‘true underlying essential sanity’ against all comers (and there have been many ardent and even scholarly souls on both sides of the argument over the decades since the Dr. was first published in 1971) have loved to remind the world that their hero, mj lorenzo, was not the first person in history to imagine the possible eventual disintegration of his own empire and civilization. It certainly was not necessarily a sign of psychosis or severe depression, they said, to think such a thought or even get upset over it. For example, they said, the great Roman general, Scipio Africanus the Younger, whom no fellow Roman ever accused of being crackbrained, had felt inwardly assaulted by catastrophic thoughts like Dr. Lorenzo’s as he watched the great city and empire of Carthage fall to his own conquering Roman forces in the spring of 146 BC. A noted history professor at Cornell, in a webpage defense of the Dr.’s sanity, pointed out that not just one but two Greek historians, Polybius and Appian of Alexandria, subsequently described in their Latin histories Scipio’s thoughts and emotions at the time of this event. Appian wrote: ‘Scipio looked over the city [of Carthage] which had flourished for over seven hundred years since its foundation, which had ruled over such extensive territories, islands, and seas, and been as rich in arms, fleets, elephants, and money as the greatest empires, but which had surpassed them in daring and high courage, since though deprived of all its arms and ships it had yet withstood a great siege and famine for three years, and was now coming to an end in total destruction; and he is said to have wept and openly lamented the fate of his enemy. After meditating a long time on the fact that not only individuals but cities, nations, and empires must all inevitably come to an end, and on the fate of Troy, that once glorious city, on the fall of the Assyrian, Median, and Persian empires, and on the more recent destruction of the brilliant empire of the Macedonians, deliberately or subconsciously he quoted the words of Hector from Homer: ‘The day shall come when sacred Troy shall fall, and King Priam and all his warrior people with him’. And when Polybius, who was with him, asked him what he meant, he turned and took him by the hand, saying: ‘This is a glorious moment, Polybius; and yet I am seized with fear and foreboding that some day the same fate will befall my own country [of Rome – as it did, in fact, 600 years later]’.” From Appian of Alexandria’s Lybica, 132, a history of the people of the Roman province of ‘Africa’ (modern day coastal Tunisia and extreme northeastern Algeria) written during the 2^nd century AD.

Rebuttals came chiefly from Dr. Lorenzo’s ‘psycho’ pundits (mostly Freudians), people who tended to label the Dr. mentally disordered more often than his other followers did. They said that the ‘difference’ between the Dr. and others, such as Scipio, lay in the ‘quality and quantity’ of thought on the Dr.’s side. Scipio confessed to such a strong emotion one time only, then went on with his life as a Roman general and politician. Whereas mj lorenzo dwelt on the thought. He obsessed about it, said the ‘psycho pundits’. He ranted and harangued and went on for weeks and weeks without stopping on the subject, and even wrote a whole diary about it, which he sent to a friend hoping for confirmation of his sentiments. He researched world history looking for past parallels to his premonition that Western and especially American civilization was about to collapse, just as Scipio did when he recalled Hector’s words in The Iliad; but Scipio let it go, while Dr. Lorenzo allowed it to possess him and drive his thinking and behavior for months, even down to writing a book about his ‘sick depressive obsession’, as the psycho pundits called his premonition.

“Even if what you said were true,” returned some of the Dr.’s staunchest defenders, “that would not necessarily mean that sagely wise Dr. Lorenzo’s ‘sick depressive-obsessive’ premonition (that his civilized American and Western world was coming to an end) was just 'crazy psychotic', and not accurate. People in ancient Jerusalem thought the weird and revolting prophet Jeremiah was teched in the head, too, when he wore wooden yoke bars predicting future subjection and slavery to Babylon and would not quit bitching and moaning, ‘weeping day and night’, about his ‘sick depressive obsession’. At various times they beat him and persecuted him, imprisoned him, threw him into a muddy cistern to die, locked him up in stocks and threatened to kill him, until he cried, ‘Cursed be the day wherein I was born,’ but his seemingly crazy premonitory vision was precisely accurate: that the Judaean kingdom was about to be burnt to ashes, Solomon’s temple leveled, and the leading citizens hauled off to Babylon as slaves.”

“Oh, Yeah?” a severer set of critics came back in an internet chat room. “Then how come by the end of the trip your great psychic prophet, mj lorenzo, who could see the future so brilliantly clearly, no longer felt that civilization as he knew it was coming to an end? Huh? Do psychic prophets who can see the future clearly, usually change their view of the future so easily?”

But many mj lorenzo readers continued to believe that he had been right when he predicted an early end to Western and American civilization, mainly because they felt that so many of the characteristics of a falling Rome in its latter days (2-400s C.E.) were observable in America and Europe now.

Whereas the Dr.’s position from 1995 on, once he recovered from his psychotic depression of 1992-4, remained that Western civilization including America could pull itself together if it followed the implied advice of Arnold Toynbee, studied itself, defined which particular kinds of ‘challenges’ it faced, picking from the theoretical ones Toynbee outlined in A Study of History, and, with effective moral leadership, found ways to meet those challenges. “Nothing is impossible,” said Dr. Lorenzo, as quoted by Sammy in his National Geographic article on the Dr.: “Even though practically every other civilization that ever existed died eventually, China, as Toynbee pointed out, has preserved its same civilization and culture for 5000 years and shows no sign of failing; and the Jews, passing through all kinds of hairpulling, angst, and redefinitions of themselves, have preserved their cultural identity for 3500 years, even though dispersed across the globe.”

[9] All chapter and division titles but one are the devising of Sammy Martinez and his editorial board, not of the diary’s author. For a more complete explanation of this, please see the ‘Editors’ Note to Reader’.

[10] Photo of Robbie taken by Dr. Lorenzo in the summer of 1981 in Crested Butte, Colorado, 6 months after they met in Miami Beach. Probably in this photo Robbie had not had a haircut in all those six months, because when they first met in Miami his hair was short and clipped like that of the Emberá men in the black and white photo.

[11] Photo of two Emberá men found in Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff’s Apuntes etnográficos sobre los indios del alto rio Sinú (Transl: Ethnographic notes on the Indians of the upper River Sinú). (See Bibliography under Reichel-Dolmatoff.) The picture may be found on Lámina II (Plate II) following page 40 of the magazine issue, and the caption explains: “dos hombres Emberá.” (“two Emberá men”). The article is about this small tribe. In the late 50s when Reichel-Dolmatoff visited and studied the area, most of the tribe was in the states of Chocó and Antioquia, but a portion remained on the upper branches of the upper Rio Sinú in the state of Córdoba, the state directly west of the state where Robbie grew up, the state of Sucre. And the River Sinú, it should be noted, though it flows into the Caribbean via Montería, is part of the same coastal flood plain wherein lies Robbie Rivera's hometown of Santisima Cruz – the Sinú is only 150 miles away and its tributaries come within inches of those of the Magdalena-Cauca system that encompass and run through and drain (and flood) his hometown; and during the flood season these two tributary systems likely often interconnect, so that during the rains one could canoe from Robbie’s birth town to the country of the Emberá without portage, and vice versa. The indigenous people of the upper reaches of the Sinú, in other words, the Emberá in the black and white photo here, were/are quite likely to be a remnant of, or be very similar in appearance and genetics to, the Sinú tribe that, according to the Colombian encyclopedia in Efren’s apartment, originally inhabited the region around Robbie’s birth town. The Sinú were the tribe from which his family were most likely partly descended, that is. A few years later some of the Dr.’s friends in Santisima Cruz gave him a book which also confirmed that the Sinú were the original Native South American inhabitants of the area now called Santisima Cruz, Robbie’s hometown. (See Bibliography under Álvarez Jaraba, Isidro, p. 18). In any case, when the Dr. happened upon this picture in New York University’s Bobst library in the fall of 2015, he was reminded of how Robbie had looked in 1981 with his cropped mop of dark hair.

[12] Two novels about being marooned on a tropical island. (1) Robinson Crusoe, 1719 adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, a Calvinist Englishman: a shipwrecked English sailor survives alone on a tropical isle, thanks to the kind of orderly, self-disciplined, rational resourcefulness which Dietrich Schwanitz, in his history of Western culture, Bildung, referencing this very novel, explained as an integral part of the ‘Calvinist’ worldview (see Bibliography under 'Schwanitz'). (2) The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) was an adventure novel too, but written by a different author, a Swiss, Johann Rudolf Wyss. In it a Swiss-Protestant family, also Calvinist, consisting of father (who was a church pastor), mother and four young sons, is shipwrecked on a tropical isle, and they survive by wits and mutually respectful family teamwork. Both novels (1) and (2) were likely to have been read by a boy between the ages of 8 and 18 during the years (1940s and 50s) when mj lorenzo was growing up, especially in well-educated, upper-middle-class Protestant, Delaware valley families like his own. The fantastically elaborate tree houses in Disney World and Disneyland, by the way, are based on the tree house which the (fictional) (2) Swiss family, Robinson, built on their tropical isle, while waiting and hoping to be rescued. In Defoe’s novel (1), Robinson Crusoe manages to survive reasonably well; but, after a long time on his island, he rescues a local native about to be cooked in a stew by enemies, and turns him into a constant helper, giving his ‘man’ the name of ‘Friday’. In Hooked on Cocaland, however, the savior-saved roles are somewhat reversed. The one called ‘Robinson’, even though mj felt more comfortable seeing him as his ‘Man Friday’, was actually saving mj’s life, both at the time they met, and on this trip, not the reverse; while mj, most often oblivious to, or even resentful of, the help from Robbie and his family during the trip, helped them in only a very few tiny ways barely worth mentioning, mostly providing the money for food, transportation and all family activities for a two-week extended-family reunion, including a trip to the interior for four (Robbie, Yazmín, Angel and the Dr.); all of which would have been expensive in the U.S., but cost a gringo very little in Colombia, given the rate of exchange between American dollars and Colombian pesos.

[13] In English the Spanish word ‘jungla’ means ‘jungle’, and ‘sabana’ means ‘savannah’, which the dictionary defines as: “a tropical or subtropical grassland usually containing scattered trees or shrubs that develops in areas in which heavy rainfall is interrupted by a distinct dry season, that is often maintained by human action (as of periodic burning or heavy grazing), and that tends to pass on the one hand into steppes and on the other into savanna woodland.” This is a perfect description of the geography around Robbie’s Colombian hometown, as will be seen, and suggests he had a more than adequate high school education, despite Dr. Lorenzo’s preconceived negative prejudices. (Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, digital version for computer, Version 3.0, 2003.)

[14] “¡CLARO!” is a Spanish word which means ‘Of course!’ or ‘I understand perfectly clearly!’ Here, mj is using it to get rid of people. He knows he is not understanding much, and often is not interested in understanding, simply because he is so world-weary; and so he dispatches with people and conversations by saying ‘Of course, I understand everything perfectly’.

[15] See, for example, the Spanish-language article in the Spanish-language version of Microsoft Encarta, “Blas de Lezo,” Microsoft® Encarta® 2006 [DVD], (Microsoft Corporation, 2005) (Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.), quoted here in Spanish, then translated (below) by the Dr. to English: “Blas de Lezo (1687-1741), marino español.... se enfrentó a las fuerzas combinadas de Inglaterra y Holanda en batalla librada frente a Vélez Málaga, y.... Lezo perdió la pierna izquierda.... participó en la defensa de Tolón, donde también resultó herido.... En 1713 fue ascendido a capitán de navío, y un año más tarde, fue destinado al sitio de Barcelona, donde perdió el brazo derecho.... En 1737 regresó a América como comandante general de Cartagena de Indias, plaza que tuvo que defender de los ataques del almirante inglés Edward Vernon. Aunque consiguió rechazarlos, resultó herido y murió en esa ciudad.” (TRANSLATION.: Blas de Lezo, 1687-1741, Spanish sailor.... confronted the combined forces of England and Holland in full battle near the town of Vélez Málaga [Spain], and.... Lezo lost his left leg.... participated in the defense of Toulon [France], where again he was wounded.... In 1713 he was promoted to ship’s captain, and a year later was sent to Barcelona, where he lost the right arm.... In 1737 he returned to the New World as Commander General of Cartegena de Indias, fortress town which he had to defend from attacks by the English admiral, Edward Vernon. Although he succeeded in chasing them off, he ended up wounded, and died in that city.)

The naval confrontations of Malaga and Toulon were described by Winston Churchill in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 3, The Age of Revolution (Malaga, p. 54; Toulon, pp. 67-70), as part of the War of the Spanish Succession, a war that particularly interested Churchill since it had permitted his ancestor, John Churchill, to show his true political and military colors and had won John and his descendants entry into the peerage under the title of 'Duke of Marlborough'. De Lezo fought on the side of the French, whose King Louis XIV wanted to make his grandson, the Duke of Anjou, the first Bourbon king of Spain. De Lezo was only a boy of 17 in 1704 when he signed on as a crew member for a French ship and lost his left leg in the battle at Malaga, apparently quite ardent that his country of Spain and all its possessions should fall to the French Catholic Sun King's realm of influence, and not be parceled out by English and Dutch Protestants. In 1714, when as ship's captain he lost his right arm at Barcelona, he was 27. Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. 3, The Age of Revolution (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1966).

[16] Buque Escuela Gloria 1993, liberally illustrated 20-page brochure in Spanish and mistake-ridden English, produced by Colombia’s general maritime office, Direccion General Maritima, specifically Fondo Rotatorio Armada Nacional, and handed out free by its officers and sailors as a good-will gesture to any interested parties anywhere in the world.

[17] Fodor’s South America, published in 1994, page 336. Exact data was unavailable as of October, 2014, due to the fact that the Dr. was chased out of his rented home in Mexico in 2013 by a super-dangerous Mexican drug-trafficking (and kidnapping and extorting and head-chopping-off) cartel. He left most of his books and papers behind, in his hurry and his need to travel lightly. Info will be added to this webpage when available..... Addendum: additional note, August 5, 2015: see Bibliography for full reference details.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Cadogan Guides: Ecuador, the Galapagos & Colombia (1991), p. 164.

[20] Colombia: a travel survival kit, by Krzysztof Dydynski (published in Australia by Lonely Planet Publications, 1988), pp. 51-54. See, for example, p. 54: “Burundanga is a kind of drug used by thieves and robbers. It is obtained from certain plants and trees commonly called borrachero by a quite simple process, then put into food or drink and given to the potential victim.... Bear this in mind before accepting a cigarette from a stranger in a bus, a beer in a bar from suspicious company, or a drink in any public fiesta....”

[21] Books with titles something like Dying with Dignity were standard help texts for the AIDS community at the peak of the HIV-plague crisis, when so many people were dying slow and disfigured deaths from an epidemic disease no one knew how to stop. This was before the discovery that certain anti-cancer medications helped, and before the discovery of the ‘cocktail’ of three such drugs combined. Other such help texts included Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ On Death and Dying, and her AIDS: the Ultimate Challenge, this last being found in the Dr.’s own personal library.

[22] El Universal, Lunes 3 de Octubre de 1994 (El Universal newspaper published in Cartagena, Oct. 3, 1994), page 11A, bottom: “Al sur de Bolívar: Guerrilla liberó a ex-alcalde y plagió 2 concejales” (transl: “Southern Bolívar state: Guerrillas freed former mayor and kidnapped two town council members”): “Mientras que una columna insurgente liberaba a un ex-alcalde de Achí, otro grupo de sediciosos secuestraba a dos concejales del municipio de San Pablo que se desplazaban a bordo de una chalupa por el conflictivo sur de Bolívar....” (TRANSLATION.: While one band of insurgents [ELN] was freeing the ex-mayor of Achí, another rebel group [FARC] was kidnapping two San Pablo municipal council members as they were traveling by chalupa [motor launch] through the conflict-ridden southern part of Bolívar state.”

[23] Frommer’s Budget Travel Guide: South America on $40 a Day, 1993-94 (New York: Prentice Hall), p. 299: “Important Warning: The running battle between the government and the drug cartels in Colombia poses a significant danger for the traveler, especially in the provincial cities of Medellín and Cali, where the cartels seem to hold sway, and in the capital, Bogotá. Instances of violence continued as we went to press, with bombings in areas visited by tourists.” And, p. 333: “Don’t wander around the walled city [section of downtown Cartagena] after dark – it is not well lighted.”

[24] Dr. Lorenzo could not explain this apparent miracle afterword. Some of the party must have left earlier, he concluded, or they would never have fit in one tiny cab.

[25] How to ‘avoid HIV’. By 1994 it was pretty well understood, especially by M.D.s like Dr. Lorenzo who had studied the matter thoroughly (for not just their patients’ sake, but their own as well), that HIV was spread when the virus in the blood or semen of one person managed to get into the blood of another person, usually via a cut or by sharing needles, or by other means. Whether saliva or other body fluids might also be dangerous was less well understood, but generally not feared as much. Thus mj lorenzo’s fear of another person’s saliva at this point during his first trip to Colombia would have to be understood as part of his then lingering psychosis and set of delusions regarding HIV and other things, a paranoid delusional system which had developed as part of the psychosis accompanying his severe depression, which began in 1992. It is worth noting that several days later, after reaching Santisima Cruz, Robbie’s hometown, he shared aguardiente cups on several occasions without the slightest concern for HIV, just one of many signs that the October 1994 trip was driving away his psychotic depression rapidly.

[26] It was not until a much later date that Dr. Lorenzo learned that Efrén, an officer in the Colombian armed forces, always traveled with a concealed pistol, a fact which might have lessened mj’s anxiety about personal safety, maybe, had he been aware of it.

[27] ‘DSM code’: in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), each psychiatric diagnosis is spelled out and given a (code) number, along with tips for distinguishing one disorder from another that resembles it. See Bibliography, Appendix B, under ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’.

[28] A number of people and groups had fits with this closing thought of the Dr.’s first diary entry. In fact, the whole and entire first day’s diary entry was a severe trial for most of the Dr.’s ardent supporters, and the rest of the world, both. But the closing caused one of the biggest stirs. Right-to-Lifers in the states, Latinos everywhere, and third-world population groups were the most offended. Robbie, on behalf of Fabién, Mariela and the rest of Robbie’s family, protested the ugly prayer personally to his friend mj, and to Sammy, both; and both of them apologized. During a three-way ‘conference’ phone call, Dr. Lorenzo reminded Robbie that he, mj, had been still depressed and half-crazy at the time, in 1994, going back and forth between feeling a little better, and then again feeling rotten, negative, anti-people, and even anti-life at times. He thanked Robbie for taking him to Colombia, so that Robbie and his family, friends and countrymen could pull him out of it. Sammy explained that the editorial board, in keeping with their approach to the diary entire, had left the thought in, hoping to show how dark the Dr.’s depression had gotten, and to preserve reality, including the reality that even cultural leaders and ‘culture heroes’ might have a dark and weak side at times. They didn’t want to ‘paper it over’ with niceties, when in reality the Dr. was not the only famous person on the planet who had ever had such a negative attitude toward life. “Real life,” Sammy said, “is raw at times.” The whole idea of publishing the diary was to show raw reality, hurtful as it might be to some people’s feelings. “Even Jesus Christ had a kind of dark and weak side, you could argue,” Dr. Lorenzo said to Robbie in his own defense, “because, just before the crucifixion he asked God to save him from the horror, if only he would. And the prophet Jeremiah cursed the day his mother bore him during one dark depressed and discouraged period of his life, he suffered so much from people's stupidities.” Robbie protested, on behalf of his family, that if mj wished to protest the day he was born, that was up to him, but the prayer implied that mj ‘felt poor little Fabién should never have been born!’, and that was something else completely. Jesus the Messiah had never said anything like that! “That horrifying thought never entered my mind,” the Dr. said. “But other horrible thoughts did. I was worried about the survival of the human race if the number of children born to a family kept overwhelming its ability to provide love and care, just like what happened to you. Weren’t you upset? Didn’t you feel hurt and left out for years, maybe even now, even still, after your mother gave you away to her aunt to raise, because she was overwhelmed with having too many children at once?” Fortunately this discussion with Robbie occurred in private. Unfortunately the rest of the discussion was too public, from the Paris-Match, to The India News, to the San Francisco Chronicle and Catholic Digest; but, as Sammy pointed out in a letter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, both the public outcry and the public defenses of the Dr. only served to draw more needed attention to the Dr.’s cause of preserving the human race against the anti-human forces which could destroy it. For another picture of Fabién see the Dr.'s diary entry for 10/11, subsection 81.

[29] Basic map borrowed from Microsoft Encarta, Version 15.0.0.0603, copyright 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation, digital encyclopedia for PC. Map then amended by editorial board: it was darkened and enhanced with more contrast and reduced in size; then yellow arrows and yellow city and country names, etc., were added. Note that the flight route to Cartagena avoids Cuba's air space ‘like the plague’, as described by the Dr. in his Oct. 3 diary entry, subsection 16 -- because Cuba still in 1994 was anti-God communist and therefore shunned and shut out by Congress from the USA's Godly Calvinist capitalist trade network and love.