Thinking of You at the Port

   When the war of independence in Venezuela ended, and after the death of the Liberator Simon Bolivar in 1830, the country was left in great poverty. The peasants had abandoned their lands to take part in the battles. But the country didn't have a day of peace throughout the 19th century, despite having won the war against Spain. While the Venezuelans continued fighting between them, the inhabitants of the Island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea, decided to leave Europe to seek better fortune in America. This story is how the Corsican Santos Morandi came to the Paria Peninsula in eastern Venezuela and grow cocoa, coffee, and indigo plants in the lands abandoned by their owners, and also how three generations of Corsican descendants made a vast fortune planting and trading cocoa from the Port of Carúpano. Those immigrants stayed forever in Venezuela, and set up large and lucrative commercial houses, renovated a port where foreign ships didn't use to dock, built aqueducts, the tram, and the submarine cable to communicate with Marseille, France. They dedicated time to the arts and formed the French Circle to spread their culture. Amid all these activities, they fell in love and married Creoles women, had children with the mulatto women, became involved in politics, and participated in the endless wars. During peace times, they made fortunes later bequeathed to their children, along with their passion for the Cap Corse on the Island of Corsica.

  This is not a historical novel, although it faithfully conforms to past events that occurred in Venezuela during the 19th century. I decided to narrate, as fiction, all the adventures of love, war, and abundance that were told to me by my Corsican ancestors. Everything is based on real events that happened in this Land of Grace discovered by Christopher Columbus.