Ghosts in the High Part

With black shirt neatly ironed, Patrick looks like a young priest and I told him so. He laughed and confirmed that, indeed, he is a church leader, not in the Catholic church but in his Pentecostal temple. He sings, plays the electric guitar and gives sermons. I asked him what it was like to live in the Galapagos.

"I was born here, one of the few who have lived all of their lives on this island. I was born in Progreso, the village made famous by the sugar planter named Cobos. He was successful for two reasons: he was ahead of his time in machinery and his workers were prisoners. The way Cobos is honored today is not with photos or a statue. Instead, some of the gears from his sugar mill are in the Progreso roundabout."

I told Patrick that the gears are surprising. What about statues? Even statues of animals. After all, Puero Ayora, the largest town on the Galapagos, has statues of a tortoise, albatross, iguana and sea lion. Yellow gears????

"We want to remember Manuel J. Cobos since he was the first successful capitalist on the islands. However, we don't want a statue because Cobos beat his workers. Even though his sugar plantation employees were prisoners, they deserve rights, too. The prisoners might have been bad people, but they could not take it any more so they killed him. One inmate stole his revolver, shot him and then another finished Cobos off with his machete.

Ever since then, the spirits of the dead dictator and the prisoners rise up from time to time. They are around Progreso and I hear them all the time."

Patrick's tale brought back memories of the "Enchanted Isles" and an obscure poem by Herman Melville. Melville visited the Galapagos and was horrified by what he saw. His observations were incorporated in Moby Dick and a poem, excerpted below:

THE ENCANTATAS

(Enchanted Isles)

The Isles at Large

-- "That may not be, said then the ferryman,
Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;
For those same islands seeming now and than,
Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,
But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne
In the wide waters; therefore are they hight
The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;
For whosoever once hath fastened
His foot thereon may never it secure
But wandreth evermore uncertain and unsure."

"Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,
Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,
And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl."

Because life is hard here, you have to be very innovative and persistent to survive. Cobos somehow managed to build roads and canals, a pipeline and a waterworks all before the 20th century.

"Cobos paid the price, though. According to legends, he had told the workers that they were not allowed to pick any fruit from his prized guava trees. One day, he discovered that a boy had taken a piece of fruit. He called the boy out of his hut and whipped him to death. The mother, outraged by his cruelty, yelled to Cobos that the guava trees would never again bear fruit. Furthermore, she cursed him in vowing that he would never leave the islands alive. Today, you will notice that the tens of thousands of guava trees yield no fruit at all. And, by the way, Cobos was killed by the workers who hacked him to death."

"