Written for the Jack Heart Organization by Alec Newald celebrated abductee and author of Coevolution
This is not a travel documentary, and if you have read about my exploits into the area of the Maya in Mexico, you know I don’t travel because I’m bored and have money to waste. Jack already knows a little of my family background, and I won’t bore you with all of it here either. I’ll give you just enough to understand my hunger for an answer, and why I ended up deep in the Amazon jungle 15 years ago. I doubt you will get anyone else writing about this subject from the inside. With me, do I care, hardly likely. - Alec
But before I expand on that, it suddenly occurred to me how much Jack and I think alike. Joined at the hip I have often commented to him privately. I’m sure most of you are very familiar by now, with Jack’s life path, and how he got to be where he is today, writing on Substack and telling it like it is.
His are startlingly amazing accounts of his personal involvements, and subsequent research by himself and friends. What they write here is in my opinion, comments you will not find easily anywhere else in this whole wide world. So, savior them and treat them as if they were solid gold nuggets.
I can say this with confidence, as I too have searched the World Wide Web for every scrap of worth-while information, and I have more resources open to me than most. Anyway what I thought I’d do, before I get on to the main topic of this report, is share with you a small section of my own background, as a young boy growing up on earth in the 50’s and 60’s, so you can see how totally different my youth was to Jack’s. Then consider, here we both are sharing things on Substack with you all, as if we were brothers, and grew up in the same surroundings, being fed similar stories. Maybe this is testimony that there is only one truth, and if you seek to find it, it will find you, no matter where you originate from, or what path you take in the beginning.
Jack grew up in the hustle and bustle of New York City, or at least the area of Long Island and surrounding townships. New York, with a population of what, ten million or thereabouts? I grew up in a small country town of a few thousand residence, in a small country with a total population even today of only 5 million. When I was growing up as a boy, the population was around 3 million. My country is the size of Great Britten, or Italy. I wonder if those of you living in a big city overseas can even contemplate how different the mindset of the two of us must have been?
There is, however, one slim connection. New York sits close to latitude 41 degrees north. Part of New Zealand sits on latitude 41 degrees south. A late friend of mine whom I have written of here at least once, Bruce Cathie, has found the latitude of 41 degrees more than a little interesting when it comes to performing magick or hi-tech tricks, with military hardware. Wi-Fi, or radar is what I’m mostly referring to here.
That aside I grew up as a quiet shy country boy, who lived a life more akin to Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn than a boy from the suburbs of NY. My backyard was more a mangrove swamp, than a city back-alley. The ether whispered to me though the elementals, wisp like creatures than you never really saw, but felt. But still they guided and touched your inner mind, so you knew if this was a good idea, or maybe do that instead. All I know from that, is my life was full of passion for the sea and sailing, and nature was my carpet to play on. Later as a young man, I discovered the trill of speed on land, and motor sport was my second true love. But always below all this was a thirst for technical know-how. I counted myself lucky to have a bent for nature and technology and the love to get the most from both worlds. As many may already know, both those aspects of life came knocking at my door in my early 40’s, with an alien interaction changed my life from ordinary to extraordinary, in the space of just 10 days.
30 years on from that adventure, here I am shoulder to shoulder with Jack Heart, Jack a writer extraordinaire who constantly amazes me with his inherent knowledge of the occult. Here he is, trying to tell the world nothing is as it appears, magick is not a parlor trick, and beings from unimaginable realms exist alongside us. Ignore them at your peril!
So, I guess I’d better get back to the main reason I decided to write today. Now all this just feels like an extension of my first few paragraphs. My Grandfather travelled to New Zealand and decided to stay. This was about the same time as one his bothers had immigrated to South America (Columbia from what could tell).
I this was sometime between the two world wars. I’d seen some of the correspondence between them both, as a child. A work accident had blinded my grandfather, and I used to read to him when I stayed over during school holidays in the late 1950’s. Family rumor has it our adopted surname could have been miss-spelled, during the immigration process. Changed from the original Newall, or Newell, to Newald. However research suggests all these spellings hold up as German possibilities. Going further back into family history the surname ‘Xavier’ appears to have been our true original family name, at least for about 500 years. This would take us right back to the Spanish conquistadors, and maybe more. The Family had its roots in the Basque area of Europe, on the French Spanish, boarder, better known to the locals as Euskal Herria.
This might help to explain my rhesus negative blood type, as it has one of the highest concentrations of this blood grouping in the world. More accurately the village of Zugarramurdi, appears to have a connection to the family line. Because my Grand Father had some very old family memorabilia amongst his belongings, and I used to play with it. I strongly remember a checker-board crest, or coat or arms, on an old silk flag, that I used to wave around, pretending I was a knight in not so shining armor. I have since traced that coat of arms to the municipality of Zugarramurdi.
It seems all the male descendants have carried the name Francis within the line, my father and myself are no exceptions. I used to think this was to remind us of our roots in France, and perhaps that is the case, but one of the more outstanding, infamous, or famous members of the Xavier family, also went by the name of Francis.
All this eventually fits into the reason for leaving that area of France in the first place. This was because of religious persecution during the Middle Ages. The family took flight to Germany, to escape the witch hunts. Zugarramurdi still celebrates ‘the day of the witch’ on the summer solstice of each year, my personal aim is to attend one of those celebrations when I eventually get to France.
However, it would appear not all the family left the area, from the little I could find, there are ties to the shipping of spices, and other types of trading, concerning even the ownership of some sailing vessels out of Portugal. So now the timing gets really interesting, because this must have overlapped with the first, or early, missions to the new world, to supply the Spanish conquistadors, or at least a little later the churches and their missionary work.
During those stayovers with my grandparents, I would often read sections of the daily newspaper to my grandfather, in the morning or evening, but he was especially keen to have me re-read his brothers letters. I guess he was trying to live the adventure of his brother’s life through these letters, because fate had prevented him from having such a lifestyle. His brother eventually ended up in the gemstone industry in Columbia if the letters are to be believed (Emeralds I think but can’t be sure). My Grandmother would have read them to him of course, but in me, he had a captive audience, and had me read some of them over to him several times, during those early years, hence I remember aspects of them very well indeed. Talk of cities in the jungle, but not of existing civilizations? Talk of a Berlin to be rebuilt, but not in Germany! Do you think this does not influence the thinking of a small boy, that one day vows to himself to find these places for himself?
Look up Tabatinga on a map, talk about the Devil’s Triangle, it’s a point between Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, many call it the drug smuggling capital of the world ha ha!
Tabatinga is only half of a town, the other half is called Leticia. One half is in one country, the other half in a different country. What drew me there, was not so much my grandfather’s letters, but it’s old Spanish name. Forte de sao Francisco Xavier de Tabatinga. Yes, what better place to try and find distant relatives.
Everything you hear about the remoteness of this area is true. Well, it was back in the time of my travels. There are no public roads that transverse the Amazon, you fly in to only one or two destinations, or you travel by river boat. Once in one of these outpost townships, the only way to explore anything further is by jungle expedition on foot, or riverboat adventure, and the best town for this in my opinion is Iquitos.
Iquitos is a squalid mud flat township, too poor to describe in a way any westerner could understand. Some of the population live in house boats that are close to liquid slums, sitting on mosquito infested brackish back waters of the Amazon tributaries. I saw workshops with dirt floors in the center of town.
If it were not for people like me drifting through and spending a few dollars I don’t know how they’d survive. Sure, its river boat town, but dozens of these are tied up and don’t look to move very often. The one I travelled on was little short of a floating dumpster, and I’d say it was as good as most others I saw. It was owned by a guy that was the spitting image of a poor Marlon Brando, and it’s just the sort of place you might expect to find him, making another of those Indiana Jones movies. I even visited a place called Indiana while on the river boat.
Iquitos was made even more interesting, or is that sinister, when I’m sure I picked up a tail. You just had to go out to experience the night life, but don’t expect that to mean night clubs, I found an extraordinary bar that cooked the most amazing wood fire pizzas, and the bonus was it was a few minutes stroll from the waterfront promenade. Though that name might bring to your mind some form of grandeur that it did not deserve. Still there were teenage girls or younger there dancing with snakes. Amazonian Indians with smoking fires to drive away your evil spirits. And the odd bar to cool your thirst. Mind you don’t fall in the stagnant mosquito invested river while you’re at it though. Now the interesting thing about me acquiring a tail was how could they follow me on a river boat without my finding out. Oh, just another aside? To add some spice to the coming trip down river there were two European guys on the river boat that had obviously purchased a couple of Peruvian house boys for their personal entertainment, such is life on a river boat. It’s not all downside here, as this was one hell of an adventure from start to finish and I enjoyed every moment of it. You expect to get ripped off in these sorts of places but to be fair I never was. It is just as likely my tail was a minder of a sort. Because I acquired another once I arrived at Tabatinga. Anyway, another plus was I meet three American girls on the river boat. This was their second year doing a similar trip. We got drunk together a few of the nights on the boat and shared some jokes and it was great to have good company on the trips ashore on the way down the Amazon.
Another stop was a little village called Pevas, you’ll need a detailed Amazon map to even find these places. They are isolated communities, which are truly not of this world, if you are a privileged westerner like me. Of course, you can still find the locals in a village hall watching a soccer match, TV gets everywhere it would seem. I stopped off at Pevas to meet with a local artist, well I call him local, but he is of European extraction and world famous, it is not an exaggeration to say he owns this small village township. He seems to take a new local girl for his wife every few years and then exchange her for a later model when the novelty wears off. He goes by the name of Francisco Grippa.
His Amazonian art is truly outstanding and is sold the world over. I thought if anyone knows what’s going on in this part of the world he did. Of course, you don’t just rock up to a guy like this and start talking Nazi conspiracy theories. But still I introduced myself using a fake or at least a long-ago family name, (Xavier) just to see his reaction. I could tell a bomb went off internally with him, but he covered it well enough as a true man of the world would. So, we carried on drinking and talking art and I let him drift off in conversation with others, knowing I’d come back to the subject when the time was right. Well, I didn’t even need to do that, because later as I was looking over his studio and partly finished art works, he takes me aside and out of earshot of others grills me about my family background. I tell him I’m looking for a relative on my grandfather’s side of the family, that sent himself up in the emerald business before the Second World War, and how might I link up with this side of my family. I said he would or might have used a more modern family name of Newald, or Newall.
He suggested I give him some time to make enquires. The river boat was to stay overnight tied up at the village, so I said I’d try and get back before we sailed. He gave me his card and said if all else failed I could contact him at a later time, and he would tell me if he had any news.
He did not say much the next morning except, I should travel on further down the river and inspect a certain business establishment in my family’s old town. I played dumb, which is not so hard for me. I said I was not aware of my family having such a presence or influence in this part of the world. He replied that my family has had a presence here for many hundreds of years. How can this be so? I asked. In Europe, he said, everything is connected, Spanish and German relations in the past several hundred years run deeper than you think, do you not remember the Franco Spanish uprisings? The civil war? Key of that for your grandfathers, brothers’ arrival. Oh, I said then you’ve heard about him, or have news of him. Go to Tabatinga is all he would say.
Tabatinga is the sort of town you can walk into and never be seen again. If it were not for the embarrassment of having to answer to a western embassy, I’m sure many more of my type could have arrived here and never been heard from again. There is a military presence more than a police presence. I woke up one morning in Iquitos to a military parade, right out the front door of the hotel.
Anyway, I should think it has the feel of the old Wild West of cowboy fame. Some of the streets are wide but there is virtually no traffic. Motorbikes or a few jeeps and 4x4’s and supply trucks. If you are out at midday, you won’t meet anyone, they are all indoors sheltering from the heat. There is a really big food market in the center of town, I guess it’s the biggest or only place to buy this for miles and I should imagine most would grow their own food. So, I had a particular business to find, no address or street name but a 30 min walk would cover most of the business area. Do I tell you more, I think not. Maybe I’ve said too much already. I know there are all the wrong people reading Jack’s pages as well as all the right people. What I ‘might’ have found, Jack has fairly well covered in his lengthy South American ramblings. You know this better than I. So, I’ll leave the rest to your imaginings. Just so I can live to write another story. But just so you know this adventure was not all hard work I’ll post one more picture.
Comments
Post a Comment
Moderation is off as a courtesy. Please treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. Posts a few calories short of a happy meal will be marked spam.