Hooked on Cocaland: monday 10/10/94

“think of the vast, peopled paradisal countryside around you”

at dusk a man and a boy paddle a loaded dugout canoe
past a single thatched countryside house near Santisima Cruz
surrounded by high water and beautiful lush vegetation

[1] ‘Aleluia, aleluia, gloria a Dios’ = ‘Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Glory to God’. In some Spanish-speaking congregations it is customary to say this after reading a scripture passage.

[2] The Dr. may have been wrong about this being from the book of Revelation. The story of God’s cursing the earth as a result of man’s disobedient eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (in the paradisal Garden of Eden) is told in the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. See the Frontispiece of the present work for a quotation from Genesis regarding God’s cursing the earth because of the disobedient first man and woman. Or: if the Bible-reader was reading from Revelation, it may have been from Rev. 22:3, which anticipates and describes the eventual undoing, by Christ, of the ‘curse’ laid down by God in Genesis.

[3] For a picture of Ibrahim see end of “Outline.”

[4] ‘Toothless Tio’ can be seen in a picture in subsection 51, in the diary entry for Saturday October 8.

[5] Sincelejo is the capital of the state (or ‘departamento’) of Sucre, the same state in which Santisima Cruz lies; but, to get there El Pescador would have had to take a two-hour motor launch to Magangué and then catch a bus ride for 60 miles (a hundred kilometers) through Sincé and Corozal. It could never have been a daily commute, or probably even a weekly one, for money and time reasons both. All because of Santisima Cruz' extremely remote location.

[6] See the photo of Ibrahim at the end of the Outline.

[7] Where were all of these pictures? At one point when Sammy Martinez and his editorial staff were working in New Mexico on re-publishing Hooked on Cocaland online at the present website, namely in late 2014 and early 2015, all of the Dr.’s photos, papers and books pertaining to his first trip to Colombia were locked up tightly in metal cabinets and hard vinyl storage trunks inside a heavily locked and booby-trapped 6-room house in Mexico (with the Dr.’s small outside Mexican patio garden being cared for by Judith, young Hechizo’s widow) in a tiny traditional village outside Morelia, Michoácan, all of it inaccessible to any smart gringo who wanted to live in this world peaceably, as the Dr. did, and so had moved to a less chaotic country, back to the USA: due to the kidnappings, extortions, dismemberments and decapitations being perpetrated by cartels and maybe by local Mexican police, federales (federal police), vigilantes and other barbarians throughout the Mexican state of Michoacán; all of this precipitated by a struggle for control of the illegal drug production and trafficking. As of the present, the fall of 2016, in Mexico for years the exasperatingly ineffective federal strategy has been to capture the capos (the jefes, the very top dogs in the cartels) one by one, by paying a cartel underling hundreds of thousands of dollars as reward for ratting out his boss to the government, so that the underling could take over the cartel (but henceforth, hopefully, under the thumb of the government, who probably wanted a cut in some form). Once, if ever, the state of Michoacán calmed down from these mafia vs mafia vs government vs vigilante wars, and the Dr. could retrieve his personal possessions from his house finally, many wonderfully beautiful photos could be added to the present website, theoretically. But in 2014-15 it felt like it might be years before it would become safe enough. The government strategy was exasperatingly stupid because every time an underling ratted out a jefe, chaos descended upon that particular cartel, and then also upon the geographic region of Mexico in which that cartel was operating. That entire region of the wonderful country of Mexico would fall into nerve-shaking chaos and unthinkable forms of violence for months or years, affecting the entire population, until a new chief was established – but the peace would last only until the next ratting-out in exchange for government reward. And yet the Mexicans who came up with such bananas strategies, all of whom one might have hoped must have matured into adulthood with a fair amount of street sense, as most normal Mexicans do, seemed unable to see the hopelessness of such a strategy, or the destruction it wrought upon their very own Mexican society and commerce, including their own families and friends: on the very body, soul and mind of the Mexican raza (race), in short. At any rate, things eventually quieted down enough that the Dr. could return to his Mexican house in June of 2015, so that photos he took during his trips to Colombia could be added to this 'look' at Hooked on Cocaland, along with a lot of other material.

[8] The Monroe Doctrine stated that the USA would not allow European nations to interfere in the internal affairs of countries ANYWHERE IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE; and that the USA itself would interfere in a Latin American country only if that country were threatened by a European nation, because the USA would consider that to be a threat to its own peace and stability. It was really President Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine’ which added to this the looser principle by which the USA in the 20^th century began 'interfering' more and more in the internal affairs of Latin American countries, for more and more varied and selfish – and morally questionable – reasons, regardless of whether European nations were involved or not.

[9] The Dr. explained to Sammy Martinez that his own translation of the DEA official’s newly invented term ‘narcodemocracy’ would have been ‘a country whose government was set up as a democracy, but whose economy was based heavily on the illegal cultivation, manufacture and exportation of illegal mafia drugs’. But only an expert in interpreting Spanish language phrases in Colombia could have said for certain whether Hernando’s interpretation of the Spanish translation (narcodemocracia) of the DEA agent’s invented word ‘narcodemocracy’ would have been a standard or acceptable interpretation in Colombia. If it had been, then the DEA official should not have used the term, or course. But, more than likely, before using it he consulted no Colombians as to its usefulness, accuracy, or even exact meaning once translated as such. Later the Dr. said he had discovered from reading another book that the insulting English label ‘narcodemocracy’ had been invented perhaps not by the DEA agent, but by John Kerry, a U.S. senator who began using the term in mid-1994 to describe Colombia. (See In Focus: Colombia: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture, by Colin Harding, page 35.)

[10] President Clinton ordered troops into Haiti in 1994 to restore to power the democratically elected President, Aristide, three years after he had been deposed by a Haitian military coup. Ostensibly Clinton’s purpose was to restore democracy; but there may have been other less talked-about reasons, as there often have been whenever the U.S. has intervened (or 'interfered', as Hernando put it) in the internal affairs of other countries. Often those other reasons have been economic, usually meaning U.S. American ‘big business’ concerns; and/or geopolitical, perhaps 'regional stability'; but especially to prevent the insidious spread of anything that smacked of ‘communism’, which most Americans for most of the 20^th century felt was anti-God, anti-democracy, and anti-free-market, all of which were contrary to the biggest principles that have defined the USA since 1776. Other countries may have the same principles as the Americans, the main difference being, ever since World War II, that the U. S. Americans are quicker than their allies to go to war over their principles, to avoid being almost done in, as in that war, by the now outdated USA tendency toward isolationism.

[11] Such a ‘dark’ way of looking at potential human ‘progress’, including the conviction that outer forces such as governments or human groups or material gains could never bring about any kind of real and true lasting INNER peace, had resulted from mj’s exposure to his friend Joey’s spiritual guide, Guru Garland of India, in the 70s and 80s. The Dr. presented the view in some detail in his fourth book, starting in Chapter 3 of Mrs. Nixon’s Legs. His 1992-4 depression-induced psychosis had interfered for two years with his ability to tap into this kind of ‘spiritual’ (‘inner’) resource, or any other; and so Sammy would have been happy to read these words when the Dr. eventually brought home the diary. It was one more proof his friend mj was finally recovering from one of the worst depressions of his life. (Joey’s guru, Guru Garland, offered a way to combat the darkness of the outer world with a combination of one’s own personal and inner resources, including [but not limited to] feelings of affection for the guru, and four kinds of meditation that required careful instruction to practice properly.) For a broader picture of such a guru, see: The Living Master: quotes from Guru Maharaj Ji, Denver, Colorado: Divine Light Mission, Inc., 1978 (see Bibliography). Another point of access to this kind of teaching (which anchored and consoled mj lorenzo in difficult times at least as much as the Christian faith he had learned from his parents) would be the website for The Prem Rawat Foundation, www.tprf.org . Once at the site, click on ‘Directory’ and then on ‘Videos’ and watch any of the videos where the guru talks about ‘Peace’, such as ‘Peace is Within’ or ‘Peace is a feeling’, etc. Currently (October 25, 2014), for example, there are videos of the guru (Prem Rawat) speaking at educational institutions in Norway and Moscow, speaking and receiving an award in Malaysia, and speaking to imprisoned women in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Usually at this site there are links to many more videos, and to written material.

[12] Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory (of the life of a Christian in this morally mucky world) written by an ardent English Calvinist-Baptist Puritan, John Bunyan, was published in England in 1678. It was, as the Encyclopedia Britannica describes, “...the book that was the most characteristic expression of the [Calvinist] Puritan religious outlook.” It was an allegorically novelized portrayal of Calvinist theology and worldview, the story of a Calvinist's obstacle-ridden trek through this world. Accordingly, it profoundly inspired for generations many of the persecuted extremist Protestants that first colonized the English settlements in North America. Dr. Lorenzo was raised on the book, a fact which reveals a great deal about just exactly what kind of parents and ancestors brought the Dr. into the world, and with what kind of (Calvinist) upbringing they did so. For a period of months or years (during the 1940s or early 50s), whenever the Bible itself was not the chosen reading at the kitchen table after dinner, mj’s Calvinist-Methodist preacher father, Rev Lorenzo, would read from Pilgrim’s Progress, for the edification of parents and children. Those were the only two options for nightly after-dinner family reading. (See Encyclopedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite, article entitled “John Bunyan.”) Along with other stories, Dr. Lorenzo tells the story of his youthfult struggle to sort out bad from good in his strict Calvinist background, in his first book, The Remaking.

[13] Much later, after years of reflection, it suddenly occurred to Dr. Lorenzo one day, as he explained to Sammy Martinez in 2014, that ‘the young fisherman’ had been using the word cazado, not casado. They sounded identical. In other words, if the bird had been ‘cazado’, it had been ‘hunted’ or ‘trapped’. If it had been ‘casado’, it had been married. And the Dr., as in so many other instances during this trip to Colombia, heard the wrong word and meaning, and took off with it into the wild blue yonder, forever thereafter (until 2014) deluded by his own deficient education as to what the heck was happening south of the border, a grave error for which he could blame no one but his own and his nation’s ho-hum attitude toward the vibrant and historically important, fascinating culture and language of Latino neighbors.

But: we are happy to report that, to compensate for these sad and infamous deficiencies, in 2001 the Dr. moved to Mexico and lived with poor Mexicans in rather backward areas and circumstances for 15 years or more, off and on, constantly writing about his experiences in email correspondence and in his widely disseminated (via email) Chockawhoppin Post; until a local drug cartel became so dangerous in his small traditional village he thought it better to return to the USA. But those many years in Mexico became a part of the growing living legend (and education) that was and still is: mj lorenzo. Why did he pick Mexico and not Colombia for retirement? Because in 2001, when he began his retirement from practicing psychiatry, guerrillas were still kidnapping gringos in Colombia, and this was not happening in Mexico.

[14] It took about another ten years for the paperwork to be processed, but Robbie did become a U.S. citizen finally in July 2004. Although he had entered the U.S. illegally in 1981, and had remained illegally for 13 years, he was finally able to obtain a legal ‘green card’ around 1993-94 as a result of President Reagan’s ‘amnesty’ and with Dr. Lorenzo’s help; who had preserved all of Robbie’s paychecks from his work at the Mexican restaurant, Mama Elena’s, in Denver, and a pile of other papers proving he had been in the states continuously and constructively since 1981. A picture of Robbie the day he became a citizen is at the bottom of the webpage, ‘note from B. C. Duvall – how to read this kind of writing’.

[15] caserío = a hamlet; a small village; or a country house and its outbuildings – the word does not mean ‘houses on a river’, as the Dr. wrongly guessed, even though in the countryside around Santisima Cruz most of the villages and hamlets were just that.