weeks ago, when it was published in New Chronicle 76 my review of the book Vesty Pakos and Tiger's smile that he wrote his friend and fellow naturalist Carlos Farfán Capriles, I remembered the extraordinary personality of Sylvester and I decided Pakos Sofra visit, after many years, the zoo he designed shortly before his accidental death and premature.
Well Pakos Vesty would shudder in his grave if he knew that the zoo of La Paz that bears his name suffers the greatest neglect. Not well understood what the hell do the sixty people on the payroll - "are more employees than animals," said my brother Peter eye peeled because it is clear that the place, Mallasa Park does not receive less attention for a long time.
I have no doubt that the excuse for so procrastination is the lack of budget for the municipal government of La Paz. But if true, the sixty employees should be on all fours cleaning the place and cutting the weeds that invade both cages and gardens. Is a case in an intelligent response attributed to Pope John XXIII when he was asked: "Holy Father, how many people work in the Vatican?" And he answered gravely: "Less than half." In the case of Zoo Pakos Vesty, it seems that the only ones working are the ones who charge the tickets. But surely the sixties receive their full salary to make ends meet.
My brother Peter, who Vesty was very friendly, publicly in the presence (6 of junio1993) the most complete but tight-biographical sketch that I know, where among other things talks about his extraordinary generosity and altruism and a charisma that everyone recognized immediately.
I had not happened before nickname Vesty associate your name, Silvestre, his parents gave him as having been endowed with clairvoyant powers, as wild is the word for nature that grows wild and free, without permission or obligation, and he was well, a free man in a nature that it welcomed fraternally. These are traits that my brother underlines text.
same Vesty got caught in an act of love with a giant boa, who stroked the fur of a tarantula on your shoulder, or melted into hugs with a lion who behaved like a kitten in need of affection . From childhood he showed no fear of snakes or spiders. What many are vermin that goose bumps just see them close to him were cherished friends and let your body take a quiet tour. Minor bugs, he ate: protein ...
coral snake between teeth and the grin that always characterized it appears on the cover of the book Capriles that recalls their friendship and remember the adventures that ran together in the jungles of the Beni and the trips were made from La Paz to San Borja, in that narrow road that descends from the peaks to the sub-tropical Andes. From the first tour of the dangerous "path to the mystery, the way to glory with which the book begins, hovers over the reader a harbinger of fatal outcome, because there Vesty died in an accident in late 1993.
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| Pakos Vesty, photo by Fernando Arispe |
I read the story of Carlos Capriles with familiarity you feel when the events described are confused with personal experience. As teenagers, I Vesty we inhabited in the same neighborhood Obrajes, our houses were three blocks away. The neighborhood was still a relatively isolated area of \u200b\u200bthe city center. Just follow up on the street 5 the bed of a creek surrounded by fruit gardens (from which we drew to hondazos) to reach the plateau of High Obrajes where there was not one building was a plain open for tours and discovery before becoming the "neighborhood of teaching" in the late 1960's and today a citadel populated together with the city of La Paz.
Vesty and I were "lazy", the club district was funny Obrajes motto "If the job gives health, to work sick." On 1 May 1962, International Workers Day, the lazy unveiled in the main square of Obrajes a plaque with that slogan. The carnival that organized the lazy lasted two weeks and were proverbial, more entertaining than the Splendid or Country, the clubs of the neighborhood pitucos Sopocachi or Calacoto. It was a time of mischief but not malice, we were a united community that enjoyed healthy.
Doña Hilde's mother, Vesty, attending a block from the church Obrajes a small grocery store with cheeses, cold meats, and some tin cans. Everyone in the neighborhood knew and liked. Always welcomed us with a melancholy smile. His eyes light condensed memory of his past in Serbia and the paths of no return that he had passed along his life. After Yugoslavia and Austria (where he was born Vesty), Bolivia became the first of January 1950 with a four year old son and a husband who died three months later in an accident.
Capriles devotes several chapters to the Biological Station of Beni (EBB), near San Borja, which he ran a time on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences, where Vesty was countless times, so that knew all the roads and all the people loved him for his treatment always affable and optimistic. At the same time I visited the EBB, my children were still very young, and spent several days there mixing business with pleasure, fear, suffering enjoy biodiversity.
For us city dwellers, as Macedonio Fernández (cited by Cortázar in "The Book of Manuel"), "the field is that awful place where chickens walk around uncooked" but for those who worked at the Biological Station of Beni, the almost virgin forest was a paradise of endless diversity of fauna and flora.
Vesty designed the habitat of the tenants of the new zoo of La Paz, for everyone to enjoy space and natural landscape features of ecological zone from which they came. ; But what remains today is lamentable: the ponds and ditches have no water, spectacled bears, jaguars and condors are hidden behind a bushy network of bars, poorly painted and awkwardly placed, which prevents to see the animals, immersed in an indescribable sadness.
In other zoos around the world, led by intelligent people, glasses are placed to avoid blocking the view, but here are dedicated to building thick metal vines so they do not see anything. The snake, which plays elongated body of a boa, it seems that it was changing its skin, peeled and aged on the outside, inside and very poor in many species. In a country as large biodiversity, it is incomprehensible that the zoo La Paz is limited to a few cats, monkeys, llamas and snakes.
paraphrase Diogenes (and Lord Byron and Groucho Marx), Vesty used to say "The more I see the politicians, the more I love my boa." And that sentence is appropriate for the bureaucrats who have left the zoo.
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