Rex Scrugg Analysis

Ever since he was a little kid, Rex Scruggs has had only one ambition. Win the respect and approval and, heck, maybe even the love, of his difficult grandfather. It isn’t easy to be the grandson of Malcolm Scruggs whose house is filled with trophies and medals from his years as an international-level kayaker, and whose kayaking exploits on the rivers of the Columbian Andes decades earlier earned him a write-up in National Geographic magazine. Now seventeen, Rex, who has inherited from Gramps his fiercely competitive nature, is determined to travel to Columbia and kayak The Furiosos, the river that his grandfather never finished. He is determined to be the first to kayak it from top to bottom, and claim its first descent.
Rex trains every

morning on the river behind Gramps’ house in Milltown, Alberta. He has taken Spanish in high school. He has participated in the world kayaking championships. He has lined up sponsors for his expedition to Columbia, and his mother has somehow talked her father into underwriting the rest of cost. Gramps and his mother have spoken to officials at the Columbian Embassy, and have been assured that the region in which Rex will be travelling is currently safe from guerilla and paramilitary hostilities. The Columbia Tourist Board has offered him a gift certificate for week’s kayak rental from Expediciones del Ríos, River Expeditions. He has persuaded Henrique Coutinho and Tiago Fialho, two Brazilians whom he met at the world championships to accompany him. At long last, Rex Scruggs is ready to take on The Furiosos.
Ever difficult, Gramps imposes some last-minute conditions on Rex’s trip. First, should hostilities break out once again between the Columbian army, the paramilitary and the guerillas, he will quickly get himself out of the country. Second, he will try to find the Calambáses, an indigenous family from whom Malcolm purchased a beautiful old necklace for the price of an avocado sandwich.
Myriam Calambrás lives with her family in a small village in the Andean mountains of southwest Columbia. Also seventeen, she has worked hard to excel in school, and to learn English. Myriam wants to attend university and become a journalist so that she can tell the world about the desperate plight of her people, caught between the guerillas and the paramilitary, hired by wealthy landowners to track them down, and pressed on all sides by the competing interests of these opposing forces. She has secretly written the university entrance exams, though she knows that her family expects her to marry Alberto and train as a healer with Abuelita, her elderly and increasingly frail grandmother. “Indígenas do not go to university, especially indígena girls,” says Abuelita, but Myriam knows that university is free to indígenas and includes room and board. If she must, the girl is prepared to runaway to university; she simply has to find a way to pay for the six-hour bus ride.
Myriam’s boyfriend and the young man who fully expects her to marry him, Alberto is tired of the tightrope their community walks between the army, the guerillas and the paramilitary, tired of the taunts and insults, the casual vandalism and thefts committed by their soldiers. He wants to join the guerillas, and, despite Myriam’s warnings, he has bought their promise of protection, food and money. Alberto is fiercely against Myriam speaking English, as well as any thought of her attending university. Though she has tried to explain to him why it’s important for her to get an education, he can’t, or won’t, listen.
Myriam has grown up with the story of how, when she was a young girl, her Abuelita met a white man hiking in the up the mountainside who saw her necklace and offered to buy it. Starving, she instead traded it for an avocado sandwich. Later, when he became very ill and his companions left him, she took healing plants to this white man’s camp, and tended to him until he was well enough to leave.
Myriam reflects that, in depriving them of that valuable necklace, this stranger took advantage of her family is the same way that her village has been taken advantage of by both the paramilitary soldiers and the guerillas. Paramilitary soldiers stop members of Myriam’s village as they hike down the mountain on their way to market, threaten them, and steal Alberto’s radio. Only days later, guerillas raid the village, abuse the young boy who was standing guard, and steal their coca plants, used by local residents for medicinal purposes and by the guerillas to make cocaine which they sell to pay for uniforms, weapons and salaries. Rumours reach the village that paramilitary have killed several people in a nearby community. Myriam’s family, friends and neighbours know they must be cautious when they leave the village because both sides have planted land mines to kill the other, only too often neutral indígenas are maimed and killed instead.
Landing in Columbia, Rex is collected from the airport by Jock, of Expediciones del Ríos. Jock doesn’t yet know that Rex’ goal is the Furiosos. He believes that the young Canadian plans, instead, to kayak the much calmer Magdalena River. When Rex tells him, Jock tries hard to dissuade the young kayaker, explaining that The Furiosos runs through indígenas land. However Rex figures he can get the natives’ co-operation with a little money or, perhaps, an avocado sandwich.
Installed in his hotel and recalling his second promise to Gramps, Rex heads to the local market and, in his fractured Spanish, asks for the Calambrás family. He meets Abuelita who has come to sell her medicinal plants in the market. The old woman immediately recognizes Rex as Malcolm’s grandson and introduces him to Myriam. Realizing that, with her local knowledge and her ability to speak English, she’d make an excellent guide, Rex quickly hires Myriam, though she demands an exorbitant sum of money to take him to The Furiosos. Though he knows she’s out bargained him, Rex can’t help but notice that Myriam is a beautiful girl.
The following day, Henrique and Tiago, Rex and Jock kayak the Magdalena River. Rex tells Jock he’s hired a guide, and Jock recognizes Myriam from his description of the girl, but warns the young Canadian that he doubts The Furiosos is runnable. In return, Rex tells Jock that his grandfather travelled part of the river decades years earlier and that he has inside information, including Gramps’ journal from that trip.
As agreed, Alberto brings two mules from the village to cart the kayaks up to the headwaters of The Furiosos. Though he fulfills his part of the job, Alberto makes it clear that he neither likes Rex nor will waste any time talking to him. However, he does insist on Rex dressing in his old sweatshirt and bowl-style felt hat when they come upon a group of soldiers because, with his pale skin, the young Canadian sticks out as a foreigner. Rex notices that, as soon as Alberto reaches the village, his demeanour changes. He smiles and laughs, greets the woman and plays with the children. When, at length, Myriam informs her would-be fiancé that she won’t marry him, Alberto will join the guerillas, and expose the people of his village to the very real danger of paramilitary reprisals.
Rex is warmly welcomed to the village by Abuelita. She tells him that he looks like his grandfather, and adds that Malcolm Scruggs became very ill when he visited, which Rex, having read his Gramps’ journal countless times, knows isn’t true. She also mentions something about a necklace. Later, after the old woman has gone to bed, Rex tells Myriam about his talk with her and realizes that his necklace once belonged to Abuelita, that she is the woman who traded it for an avocado sandwich. Myriam concludes the old story by saying the man became ill, his companions left, her grandmother took healing herbs to his camp, and eventually he left. Surprised, Rex confesses that the man was his grandfather, but adds that Abuelita’s story is not correct.
Rex and his two companions begin their descent of the Furiosos. When, on that first day, they stop for a break, Tiago and Henrique share with Rex what they have heard about guerilla and paramilitary activity in the area but the young Canadian refuses to listen to their warnings. Instead, he accuses them of being chicken. That afternoon, a crop duster flies overhead but it’s not dusting crops, it’s dropping poison on the guerillas’ illegal coca fields. Unfortunately, it also kills the fish in the tanks Myriam’s community has recently built along the edge of the river, and destroys the food crops in their fields. The villagers are devastated by this latest development. All of their food and much of their source of income has been destroyed. Presented with this latest evidence of trouble, Tiago and Henrique decide to head home to Brazil. Rex, however, is determined to finish his run down The Furiosos, and claim his first descent.
While sightings of guerillas and paramilitary soldiers mount, and the danger to Myriam’s village and Rex Scruggs increase, the young kayaker ignores every lesson he has ever learned about safety on the water, and battles each new section of the river with only Myriam and a rescue throw rope to fish him out should he run into trouble. Then disaster strikes, and Rex is kidnapped by guerillas who plan to demand a huge ransom for his safe return. At the same time, the paramilitary stages a devastating retaliatory strike against Myriam’s village.
Knowing his grandfather and mother don’t have the means to pay a ransom, the teen falls into a depression and refuses to eat.

Faced with the destruction of her village, Myriam, on the other hand, is more determined than ever to become a journalist and tell the world of her people’s plight. When a very changed Alberto slips him a message from Myriam, Rex begins to take heart. Freed from his prison by Alberto, Rex, the young guerilla and Myriam undertake a desperate run down the most dangerous part of The Furiosos hemmed in by land mines on either side and pursued by the guerillas. During the long hours of their flight, Rex learns that he is far more than merely an expert kayaker and that his quest for a first descent to impress his Gramps means nothing by comparison with the life-and-death struggle of Myriam’s people.
Written by Pam Withers, First Descent is the gripping story of a young man who sets out to conquer a Columbian river and prove his worth to a difficult grandfather, and finds himself, instead, in the middle of a brutal tit-for-tat war between guerillas and paramilitary soldiers in which the real victims are the indígenas, Columbia’s native people. He also discovers the truth behind his grandfather’s failed attempt at running the river decades earlier, and the secret Gramps never revealed in all the years that

followed.