The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

  They explain to Philip II that they cannot reach him in any othc way, because they don’t have the price of the journey, and they tell their story by letter. How shall we speak? Who will speak for us? Unfortunates we.

  They never made war on the Spaniards. They walked twenty leagues to Hernán Cortès and embraced him, fed him, served him, and took charge of his sick soldiers. They gave him men and arms and timber to build the brigantines that assaulted Tenochtitlán. After the Aztec capital fell, the Huexotzingans fought with Cortés in the conquest of Michoacán, Jalisco, Colhuacan, Pánuco, Oaxaca, Tehuantepec; and Guatemala. Many died. And afterward, when they told us to break the stones and burn the carvings that we worshiped, we did it, and destroyed our temples … Whatever they ordered, we obeyed.

  Huexotzingo was an independent kingdom when the Spaniards came. They had never paid tribute to the Aztecs. Our fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors did not know what tribute was and paid it to no one.

  Now, however, the Spaniards are demanding such high tribute in money and in corn that we declare before Your Majesty that little time will pass before our city of Huexotzingo disappears and dies.

  (120)

  1560: Michoacán

  Vasco de Quiroga

  Primitive Christianity, primitive communism: the bishop of Michoacán draws up ordinances for his evangelical communities. He was inspired in founding them by the Utopia of Thomas More, by the biblical prophets, and by the ancient traditions of America’s Indians.

  The communities created by Vasco de Quiroga, where no one is master of anyone or anything and neither hunger nor money is known, will not multiply throughout Mexico as he wished. The Council of the Indies will never take the foolish bishop’s projects seriously nor even glance at the books that he obstinately recommends. But here utopia has returned to America, where it originated. Thomas More’s chimera has been incarnated in the small communal world of Michoacán; and in times to come the Indians here will remember Vasco de Quiroga as their own—the dreamer who riveted his eyes on a hallucination to see beyond the time of infamy.

  (227)

  1561: Villa de los Bergantines

  The First Independence of America

  They crowned him yesterday. Curious monkeys trooped up among the trees. Fernando de Guzmán’s mouth dripped guanábana juice, and there were suns in his eyes. One after the other, the soldiers knelt down before the throne of sticks and straw, kissed the hand of the elect, and swore fealty. Then they signed the declaration with a name or an X, all who were not women or servants or Indians or blacks. The scribe made it official, and independence was proclaimed.

  The seekers of El Dorado, lost in midjungle, now have their own monarch. Nothing binds them to Spain except resentment. They have repudiated vassalage to the king across the sea: “I don’t know him!” cried Lope de Aguirre yesterday, all bone and fury, raising his sword covered with mildew. “I don’t know him or want to know him, nor to have him nor obey him!”

  In the village’s biggest hut the court is installed. By the light of candles, Prince Ferdinand eats endless cassava buns spread with honey. He is served by his pages, cup and ewer bearer, and valet; between buns he gives orders to his secretaries, dictates decrees to his scribes, and grants audiences and favors. The royal treasurer, chaplain, chief majordomo, and steward-taster wear tattered doublets and have swollen hands and split lips. The sergeant at arms is swarthy-skinned Lope de Aguirre, lame in one leg, one-eyed, almost a dwarf, who conspires by night and supervises the brigantine construction by day.

  Ax- and hammerblows ring out. The Amazon currents have ground their ships to pieces, but ahead two new keels rise on the sand. The jungle offers good timber. They have made bellows out of horses’ hides; nails, bolts, and hinges out of horseshoes.

  Tortured by mosquitos and gnats, smothered by humid and fever-laden vapors, the men wait for the ships to grow. They eat grass and vulture meat, without salt. No dogs or horses are left, and the fishhooks bring up nothing but mud and decayed algae, but no one in the camp doubts that the hour of revenge has come. They left Peru months ago in search of the lake where according to legend there are solid gold idols as big as boys, and now they want to return to Peru on a war footing. They won’t spend another day in pursuit of the promised land, because they realize that they already found it and are sick of cursing their bad luck. They will sail the Amazon, emerge into the ocean, occupy Margarita Island, invade Venezuela and Panama …

  Those who sleep dream of the silver of Potosí. Aguirre, who never closes his remaining eye, sees it awake.

  (123 and 164)

  1561: Nueva Valencia del Rey

  Aguirre

  At center stage, ax in hand, appears Lope de Aguirre surrounded by dozens of mirrors. Outlined on the backdrop, the profile of King Philip II, black, enormous.

  Lope de Aguirre (to the audience): On the road of our defeat, passing through death and misadventure, we took more than ten months to reach the mouth of the Amazon, which is a great, fearsome, and ill-starred river. Then we took possession of Margarita Island. There I cashed in twenty-five traitors on gallows or garrote. And then we made our way onto the mainland. King Philip’s soldiers are trembling with fright! Soon we’ll leave Venezuela … Soon we’ll be entering the kingdom of Peru in triumph! (He turns and confronts his own pitiful image in one of the mirrors.) I crowned Fernando de Guzmán king on the Amazon River! (Raises his ax and splits the mirror.) I crowned him king and I killed him! Same with his captain of the guard and the lieutenant general and four captains! (As he speaks he smashes all the mirrors one after the other.) Same with his head steward and his chaplain! … And with a woman who was in on the plot against me, and that fellow born in Greece who thought himself such a big shot, and an admiral … and six more of their allies! … And I appointed new captains and a sergeant major! They wanted to kill me and I hanged them! (Pulverizes the last of the mirrors.) All of them! All of them! … (He sits, almost suffocating, on the ground covered with glass. The ax held high in his fists, his eyes astray. Long silence.) As a lad I crossed the sea to Peru because I was worth more with a lance in my hand … A quarter of a century! … Mysteries, miseries … I dug out whole cemeteries to get silver and gold for others … I put up gallows in the middle of unborn cities … I hunted down crowds of people on my horse … Indians fleeing in terror through the flames … Gentlemen with fancy titles and borrowed silk clothes, sons of something or other, sons of nobody, agonizing in the jungle, frothing at the mouth, eating dirt, blood poisoned by arrows … Up in the mountains, warriors in steel armor pierced right through by blizzards more violent than any arquebus volley … A lot of them found graves in the bellies of vultures … A lot ended up as yellow as the gold they were hunting for … Yellow skin, yellow eyes … And the gold … (Drops his ax. Painfully opens his hands, which are like claws. Shows his palms.) Vanished … Gold turned into shadow or dew … (Looks down incredulously. Long silence. Suddenly he rises. Back to the audience, raises his bony fist toward the huge outline of Philip II, projected with his pointed beard against the backdrop.) Damn few of you kings go to hell, because there’s damn few of you! (Walks toward backdrop, dragging his lame leg.) Ungrateful bastard! I lost my body defending you against the rebels in Peru! I gave you a leg and an eye and these hands that aren’t much use to me! Now the rebel is me! Rebel till death for your ungratefulness! (Faces audience, unsheathes his sword.) Me, prince of the rebels! Lope de Aguirre the Pilgrim, Wrath of God, chief of the cripples! We don’t need you, king of Spain! (Colored lights go on at various points on the stage.) We mustn’t leave any minister of yours alive! (Sword in hand, lunges at a beam of reddish light.) Judges, governors, presidents, viceroys! War to the death against all court whores! (The beam of light stays in place, indifferent to the sword cutting it.) Usurpers! Thieves! (The sword wounds the air.) You have destroyed the Indies! (Attacks beam of golden light.) Lawyers, notaries, ink-shitters! How long must we endure your robberies in these lands won by us? (Sword slashes be
am of white light.) Monks, bishops, archbishops! You won’t even bury a poor Indian! For penitence you keep a dozen girls in the kitchen! Traffickers! Traffickers in sacraments! Swindlers! (The sword’s futile assaults on unblinking beams of light, which multiply across the stage, continue. Aguirre begins to lose strength and looks ever more alone and insignificant.)

  (123 and 164)

  1561: Nueva Valencia del Rey

  From Lope de Aguirre’s letter to King Philip II

  Over here we have got the measure of how cruel you are and how you break your faith and word, so that in this country we give less credit to your promises than to the books of Martin Luther, for your viceroy the Marquis of Cañete hanged Martín de Robles, a man outstandingly dedicated to your service, and the brave conquistador of Piru Tomás Vazquez, and poor Alonso Díaz, who worked harder in the discovery of this land than Moses’s scouts in the desert …

  Listen, listen, Spanish king, stop being cruel and ungrateful to your vassals, because with your father and you comfortably back in Spain away from all worries, your vassals have given you at the cost of their blood and treasure all the many lands and dominions that you have in these parts, and listen, king and sir, you can’t call yourself a just king and take any part of these lands for which you ventured nothing without first rewarding those who toiled and sweated …

  Alas, what a terrible pity that the Imperial Caesar your father should have conquered proud Germany with the forces of Spain, spending so much money brought from these Indies discovered by us, that our old age and exhaustion doesn’t pain you enough for you to relieve our hunger even for a day! …

  (123)

  1561: Barquisimeto

  Order Restored

  Abandoned by his men, who preferred the king’s pardon or indulgences, Lope de Aguirre stabs to death his daughter Elvira, to save her from becoming a mattress for blackguards, and confronts his executioners. He corrects their aim, not this way, not that way, lousy shot, and falls without commending himself to God.

  When Philip reads the letter, seated on his throne a long way from here, Aguirre’s head is fixed on a pike as a warning to all the pawns of European development.

  (123 and 164)

  1562: Maní

  The Fire Blunders

  Fray Diego de Landa throws into the flames, one after the other, the books of the Mayas.

  The inquisitor curses Satan, and the fire crackles and devours. Around the incinerator, heretics howl with their heads down. Hung by the feet, flayed with whips, Indians are doused with boiling wax as the fire flares up and the books snap, as if complaining.

  Tonight, eight centuries of Mayan literature turn to ashes. On these long sheets of bark paper, signs and images spoke: They told of work done and days spent, of the dreams and the wars of a people born before Christ. With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren’s grandchildren should not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so they should know the movements of the stars, the frequency of eclipses and the prophecies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.

  In the center, the inquisitor burns the books. Around the huge bonfire, he chastises the readers. Meanwhile, the authors, artist-priests dead years or centuries ago, drink chocolate in the fresh shade of the first tree of the world. They are at peace, because they died knowing that memory cannot be burned. Will not what they painted be sung and danced through the times of the times?

  When its little paper houses are burned, memory finds refuge in mouths that sing the glories of men and of gods, songs that stay on from people to people and in bodies that dance to the sound of hollow trunks, tortoise shells, and reed flutes.

  (205 and 219)

  1563: Arauco Fortress

  The History That Will Be

  The noose tightens and strangles. In this frontier redoubt, twice burned down and rebuilt, water is almost exhausted. Soon they will have to drink their small urinations. So many arrows have fallen inside that the Spaniards use them as firewood for cooking.

  The Araucanian chief approaches the foot of the rampart on horseback: “Captain! Do you hear me?”

  Lorenzo Bernal leans his head over.

  The native chief announces that they will surround the fort with straw and set fire to it. He says that they have not left anyone alive in Conceptión.

  “Nothing doing!” shouts Bernal.

  “Surrender, Captain! You’ve no way out!”

  “Not a chance! Never!”

  The horse rears up on two legs.

  “Then you’ll die!”

  “So we die,” says Bernal, and yells: “But in the long run we’ll win the war! There’ll be more and more of us!”

  The Indian replies with a chuckle.

  “How? With what women?” he asks.

  “If there are no Spanish ones, we’ll have yours,” says the captain slowly, savoring the words, and adds: “And we’ll make children on them who’ll be your masters!”

  (130)

  1564: Plymouth

  Hawkins

  The four ships, under command of Captain John Hawkins, await the morning tide. As soon as the water rises they will sail for Africa, to hunt people on the coasts of Guinea. From there they will head for the Antilles to trade slaves for sugar, hides, and pearls.

  A couple of years ago, Hawkins made this voyage on his own. In a ship named Jesus, he sold three hundred slaves as contraband in Santo Domingo. Queen Elizabeth exploded with fury when she learned of it, but her anger vanished as soon as she saw the balance sheet of the voyage. In no time at all she made herself a business partner of the audacious Devonshire “seadog,” and the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester and London’s lord mayor bought first shares in the new enterprise.

  As the sailors hoist the sails, Captain Hawkins harangues them from the bridge. The British navy will make his orders its own in centuries to come: “Serve God every day!” Hawkins orders at the top of his lungs. “Love one another! Save your provisions! Watch out for fire! Keep good company!”

  (127, 187, and 198)

  1564: Bogotà

  Vicissitudes of Married Life

  “Tell me, do I seem different?”

  “Well, a bit.”

  “A bit what?”

  “A bit fat, ma’am, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “See if you can guess. Fat from eating or from laughing?”

  “Fat from loving, I’d say, meaning no offense.”

  “No offense, woman, that’s what I called you about …”

  The lady is very worried. Her body has had little patience, unable to wait for the absent husband; and someone has told her that he’s due back in Cartagena. When he sees her tummy, what won’t he do, that dour man who cures headaches by cutting off heads?

  “That’s why I called you, Juana. Help me, you who can fly and can drink wine from an empty cup. Tell me. Is my husband coming in the Cartagena fleet?”

  In a silver washbasin the black woman Juana Garcia mixes waters, soils, bloods, weeds. She dips a little green book into the basin and lets it float. Then she buries her nose in it. “No,” she says, “he’s not coming. And if you want to see your husband, come and take a peek.”

  The lady bends over the basin. By the light of the candles she sees him. He is seated beside a pretty woman in a place of many silks, while someone cuts a dress of fancy cloth. “Oh, you faker! Tell me, Juana, what place is this?”

  “The house of a tailor on the island of Santo Domingo.”

  In the dense water appears the image of the tailor cutting out a sleeve.

  “Shall I stop it?” says the black woman.

  “Yes, stop it!”

  The hand emerges from the basin with a sleeve of fine cloth dripping between the fingers.

  The lady trembles, but with fury.

  “He deserves more fat bellies, the lousy pig!”

  From a corner, a puppy snores with half-open
eyes.

  (194)

  1565: Road to Lima

  The Spy

  On Don Antonio Solar’s hacienda by the Lurín River, the melons have grown as big as suns. It is the first time that this fruit, brought from Spain, has been planted around here, and the foreman sends the master ten samples for his pleasure and pride. The size of these melons is comparable with that of the Cuzapa Valley radishes, of which they say five horses can be tied to their tops.

  Two Indians take the foreman’s offering to Lima in two sacks. He has given them a letter to deliver with the melons to Don Antonio Solar. “If you eat any of the melons,” he warns them, “this letter will tell him about it.”

  When they are a couple of leagues from the city of the kings, the Indians sit down to rest in a ravine.

  “How would this peculiar fruit taste?”

  “Must be marvelous.”

  “How about trying it? One melon, just one.”

  “The letter will sing,” one of the Indians recalls.

  They look at the letter and hate it. They look around for a prison for it. They hide it behind a rock where it can’t see anything, and devour a melon in quick bites, sweet juicy pulp, delicious beyond imagining. Then they eat another to even up the sacks. Then they pick up the letter, tuck it in their clothing, throw the sacks over their shoulders, and continue on their way.

  (76)

  1565: Yauyoa

  That Stone Is Me

  The king’s official is awaiting the witch, skilled in deviltries, who has been summoned to come to explain herself. Face down at his feet lies the stone idol. The witch was caught communing secretly with the idol and will soon pay for her heresy. But before the punishment, the official wants to hear from her own lips her confession of talks with the Devil. While he waits for her to be brought, he amuses himself stomping on the idol and meditating on the fate of these Indians, whom God must be sorry to have made.