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

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The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Page 37

by Eduardo Galeano


  1792: Rio de Janeiro Tooth-Puller

  1794: Paris “The remedy for man is man,”

  1795: Mountains of Haiti Toussaint

  1795: Santo Domingo The Island Burned

  1795: Quito Espejo

  Espejo Mocks the Oratory of These Times

  1795: Montego Bay Instruments of War

  1795: Havana Did the Gallilean Rebel Imagine He Would Be a Slave Overseer?

  1796: Ouro Prêto El Aleijadinho

  1796: Mariana Ataíde

  1796: Sāo Salvador de Bahiā Night and Snow

  1796: Caracas White Skin For Sale

  1796: San Mateo Simón Rodríguez

  1797: La Guaira The Compass and the Square

  1799: London Miranda

  Miranda Dreams of Catherine of Russia

  1799: Cumaná Two Wise Men on a Mule

  1799: Montevideo Father of the Poor

  1799: Guanajuato Life, Passion, and Business of the Ruling Class

  1799: Royal City of Chiapas The Tamemes

  1799: Madrid Fernando Túpac Amaru

  1800: Apure River To the Orinoco

  1800: Esmeralda del Orinoco Master of Poison

  Curare

  1800: Uruana Forever Earth

  1801: Lake Guatavita The Goddess at the Bottom of the Waters

  1801: Bogotá Mutis

  1802: The Caribbean Sea Napoleon Restores Slavery

  1802: Pointe-à-Pitre They Were Indignant

  1802: Chimborazo Volcano On the Roofs of the World

  1803. Fort Dauphin The Island Burned Again

  1804: Mexico City Spain’s Richest Colony

  1804: Madrid The Attorney General of the Council of the Indies advises against overdoing the sale of whiteness certificates,

  1804: Catamarca Ambrosio’s Sin

  1804: Paris Napoleon

  1804: Seville Fray Servando

  1806: Island of Trinidad Adventures, Misadventures

  1808: Rio de Janeiro Judas-Burning Is Banned

  1809: Chuquisaca The Cry

  1810: Atotonilco The Virgin of Guadalupe Versus the Virgin of Remedios

  1810: Guanajuato El Pípila

  1810: Guadalajara Hidalgo

  1810: Pie de la Cuesta Morelos

  1811: Buenos Aires Moreno

  1811: Buenos Aires Castelli

  1811: Bogotá Nariño

  The World Upside Down, Verses for Guitar Accompanied by Singer

  1811: Chilapa Potbelly

  1811: East Bank Ranges “Nobody is more than anybody,”

  1811: Banks of the Uruguay River Exodus

  1812: Cochabamba Women

  1812: Caracas Bolivar

  1813: Chilpancingo Independence is Revolution or a Lie

  1814: San Mateo Boves

  1815: San Cristóbal Ecatepec The Lake Comes For Him

  1815: Paris Navigators of Seas and Libraries

  1815: Mérida, Yucatan Ferdinand VII

  1815: Curuzú-Cuatiá The Hides Cycle on the River Plata

  1815: Buenos Aires The Bluebloods Seek a King in Europe HO

  1815: Purification Camp Artigas

  1816: East Bank Ranges Agrarian Reform

  1816: Chicote Hill The Art of War

  1816: Tarabuco Juana Azurduy,

  1816: Port-au-Prince Pétion

  1816: Mexico City El Periquillo Sarniento

  1817: Santiago de Chile The Devil at Work

  1817: Santiago de Chile Manuel Rodriguez

  1817: Montevideo Images for an Epic

  1817: Quito Manuela Saenz

  1818: Colonia Camp The War of the Underdogs

  1818: Corrientes Andresito

  1818: Paraná River The Patriot Pirates

  1818: San Fernando de Apure War to the Death

  1819: Angostura Abecedarium: The Constituent Assembly

  1820: Boquerón Pass Finale

  You

  1821: Camp Laurelty Saint Balthazar, Black King, Greatest Sage

  1821: Carabobo Páez

  1822: Guayaquil San Martin

  1822: Buenos Aires Songbird

  1822: Rio de Janeiro Traffic Gone Mad

  1822: Quito Twelve Nymphs Stand Guard in the Main Plaza

  1823: Lima Swollen Hands from So Much Applauding

  1824: Lima In Spite of Everything

  1824: Montevideo City Chronicles from a Barber’s Chair

  1824: Plain of Junín The Silent Battle

  1825: La Paz Bolivia

  1825: Potosí Abecedarium: The Hero at the Peak

  1825: Potosí England Is Owed a Potosí

  The Curse of the Silver Mountain

  1826: Chuquisaca Bolivar and the Indians

  1826: Chuquisaca Cursed Be the Creative Imagination

  The Ideas of Simon Rodriguez: Teaching How to Think

  1826: Buenos Aires Rivadavia

  1826: Panama Lonely Countries

  1826: London Canning

  1828: Bogotá Here They Hate Her

  1828: Bogota From Manuela Sáenz’s Letter to Her Husband James Thome

  1829: Corrientes Bonpland

  1829: Asunción, Paraguay Francia the Supreme

  1829: Rio de Janeiro The Snowball of External Debt

  1830: Magdalena River The Boat Goes Down to the Sea

  1830: Maracaibo The Governor Proclaims:

  1830: La Guaira Divide et Impera

  1830: Montevideo Abecedarium: The Oath of the Constitution

  1830: Montevideo Fatherland or Grave

  1832: Santiago de Chile National Industry

  Street Cries in the Santiago de Chile Market

  1833: Arequipa Llamas

  1833: San Vicente Aquino

  1834: Paris Tacuabé

  1834: Mexico City Loving Is Giving

  1835: Galapagos Islands Darwin

  1835: Columbia Texas

  1836: San Jacinto The Free World Grows

  1836: The Alamo Portraits of the Frontier Hero

  1836: Hartford The Colt

  1837: Guatemala Morazán

  1838: Buenos Aires Rosas

  1838: Buenos Aires The Slaughterhouse

  More on Cannibalism in America

  1838: Tegucigalpa Central America Breaks to Pieces

  1839: Copán A Sacred City is Sold for Fifty Dollars

  1839: Havana The Drum Talks Dangerously

  1839: Havana Classified Ads

  1839: Valparaíso The Illuminator

  1839: Veracruz “For God’s Sake, a Husband, Be He Old, One-Armed, or Crippled”

  1840: Mexico City Masquerade

  Mexican High Society: Introduction to a Visit

  A Day of Street Cries in Mexico City

  Mexican High Society: The Doctor Says Goodbye

  1840: Mexico City A Nun Begins Convent Life

  1842: San José, Costa Rica Though Time Forget You, This Land Will Not

  1844: Mexico City The Warrior Cocks

  1844: Mexico City Santa Anna

  1845: Vuelta de Obligado The Invasion of the Merchants

  1847: Mexico City The Conquest

  1848: Villa of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Conquistadors

  1848: Mexico City The Irishmen

  1848: Ibiray An Old Man in a White Poncho in a House of Red Stone

  José Artigas, According to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

  1848: Buenos Aires The Lovers (I)

  The Lovers (II)

  1848: Holy Places The Lovers (III)

  1848: Bacalar Cecilio Chi

  1849: Shores of the Platte River A Horseman Called Smallpox

  1849: San Francisco The Gold of California

  1849: El Molino They Were Here

  Ashes

  1849: Baltimore Poe

  1849: San Francisco Levi’s Pants

  1850: Son Francisco The Road to Development

  1850: Buenos Aires The Road to Underdevelopment: The Thought of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

  1850: River Plata Buenos Aires and Montevideo at Mid-Century

 
; 1850: Paris Dumas

  1850: Montevide Lautréamont at Four

  1850: Chan Santa Cruz The Talking Cross

  1851: Latacunga “I Wander at Random and Naked …”

  The Ideas of Simón Rodríguez: “Either We Invent or We Are Lost”

  1851: La Serena The Precursors

  1852: Santiago de Chile “What has independence meant to the poor?” the Chilean Santiago Arcos asks himself in jail.

  The People of Chile Sing to the Glory of Paradise

  1852: Mendoza The Lines of the Hand

  1853: La Cruz The Treasure of the Jesuits

  1853: Paita The Three

  1854: Amotape A Witness Describes Simon Rodriguez’s Farewell to the World

  1855: New York Whitman

  1855: New York Melville

  1855: Washington Territory “You people will suffocate in your own waste,” warns Indian Chief Seattle.

  The Far West

  1856: Granada Walker

  1856: Granada Stood

  Walker: “In Defense of Slavery”

  1858: Source of the Gila River The Sacred Lands of the Apaches

  1858: Kaskiyeh Geronimo

  1858: San Borja Let Death Die

  1860: Chan Santa Cruz The Ceremonial Center of the Yucatan Rebels

  1860: Havana Poet in Crisis

  1861: Havana Sugar Hands

  Sugar Language

  1861: Bull Run Grays Against Blues

  1862: Fredericksburg The Pencil of War

  1863: Mexico City “The American Algeria”

  1863: London Marx

  1865: La Paz Belzu

  From a Speech by Belzu to the Bolivian People

  1865: La Paz Melgarejo

  1865: La Paz The Shortest Coup d’État in History

  1865: Appomattox General Lee Surrenders His Ruby Sword

  1865: Washington Lincoln

  1865: Washington Homage

  1865: Buenos Aires Triple Infamy

  1865: Buenos Aires The Alliance Woven of Spider-Spittle

  1865: San José Urquiza

  1866: Curupaytí Mitre

  1866: Curupaytí The Paintbrush of War

  1867: Catamarca Plains Felipe Varela

  1867: Plains of La Rioja Torture

  1867: La Paz On Diplomacy, the Science of International Relations

  Inscriptions on a Rock in the Atacama Desert

  1867: Bogota A Novel Called María

  1867: Querétaro Maximilian

  1867: Paris To Be or to Copy, That Is the Question

  Song of the Poor in Ecuador

  1869: Mexico City Juárez

  1869: San Cristóbal de Las Casas Neither Earth nor Time Is Dumb

  1869: Mexico City Juárez and the Indians

  1869: London Lafargue

  1869: Acosta Ñú Paraguay Falls, Trampled Under Horses’ Hooves

  1870. Mount Corá Solano López

  1870: Mount Corá Elisa Lynch

  Guaraní

  1870: Buenos Aires Sarmiento

  1870: Rio de Janeiro A Thousand Candelabra Proliferate in the Mirrors

  1870: Rio de Janeiro Mauà

  1870: Vassouras The Coffee Barons

  1870: Sāo Paulo Nabuco

  1870: Buenos Aires The North Barrio

  1870: Paris Lautréamont at Twenty-Four

  1871: Lima Juana Sánchez

  1873: Camp Tempú The Mambises

  1875: Mexico City Martí

  1875: Fort Sill The Last Buffalos of the South

  Into the Beyond

  1876: Little Big Horn Sitting Bull

  1876: Little Big Horn Black Elk

  1876: Little Big Horn Custer

  1876: War Bonnet Creek Buffalo Bill

  1876: Mexico City Departure

  1877: Guatemala City The Civilizer

  1879: Mexico City The Socialists and the Indians

  1879: Choele-Choel Island The Remington Method

  1879: Buenos Aires Martín Fierro and the Twilight of the Gaucho

  1879: Port-au-Prince Maceo

  1879: Chinchas Islands Guano

  1879: Atacama and Tarapacá Deserts Saltpeter

  1880: Lima The Chinese

  1880: London In Defense of Indolence

  1881: Lincoln City Billy the Kid

  1882: Saint Joseph Jesse James

  1882: Prairies of Oklahoma Twilight of the Cowboy

  1882: New York You Too Can Succeed in Life

  1882: New York The Creation According to John D. Rockefeller

  1883: Bismarck City The Last Bufelos of the North

  1884: Santiago de Chile The Wizard of Finance Eats Soldier Meat

  1884: Huancayo The Fatherland Pays

  1885: Lima “The trouble comes from the top,” says Manuel Gonzalez Prada.

  1885: Mexico City “All belongs to all,”

  1885: Colon Prestán

  1886: Chivilcoy The Circus

  1886: Atlanta Coca-Cola

  1887: Chicago Every May First They Will Live Again

  1889: London North

  1889: Montevideo Football

  1890: River Plata Comrades

  1890: Buenos Aires Tenements

  Man Alone

  Tangoing

  1890: Hartford Mark Twain

  1890: Wounded Knee Wind of Snow

  Prophetic Song of the Sioux

  1891: Santiago de Chile Balmaceda

  1891: Washington The Other America

  1891: New York The Thinking Begins to Be Ours, Believes José Martí

  1891: Guanajuato 34 Cantarranas Street. Instant Photography

  1891: Purísima del Rincón Lives

  1892: Paris The Canal Scandal

  1892: San José, Costa Rica Prophesy of a Young Nicaraguan Poet Named Rubén Darío

  1893: Canudos Antonio Conselheiro

  1895: Key West Freedom Travels in a Cigar

  1895: Playitas The Landing

  1895: Arroyo Hondo In the Sierra

  1895: Dos Rios Campo Martí’s Testament

  1895: Niquinohomo His Name Will Be Sandino

  1896: Port-au-Prince Disguises

  1896: Boca de Dos Rios Requiem

  1896: Papeete Flora Tristán

  1896: Bogotá José Asunción Silva

  1896: Manaos The Tree That Weeps Milk

  1896: Manaos The Golden Age of Rubber

  1897: Canudos Euclides da Cunha

  1897: Canudos The Dead Contain More Bullets Than Bones

  1897: Rio de Janeiro Machado de Assís

  1898: Coasts of Cuba This Fruit Is Ready to Fall

  1898: Washington Ten Thousand Lynchings

  1898: San Juan Hill Teddy Roosevelt

  1898: Coasts of Puerto Rico This Fruit Is Falling

  1898: Washington President McKinley Explains That the United States Should Keep the Philippines by Direct Order of God

  1899. New York Mark Twain Proposes Changing the Flag

  1899: Rome Calamity Jane

  1899: Rome The Nascent Empire Flexes Its Muscles

  1899: Saint Louis Far Away

  1899: Rio de Janeiro How to Cure by Killing

  1900: Huanuni Patiño

  1900: Mexico City Posada

  1900: Mexico City Porfirio Díaz

  1900: Mexico City The Flores Magón Brothers

  1900: Merida, Yucatán Henequén

  From the Mexican Corrido of the Twenty-Eighth Battalion

  1900: Tabi The Iron Serpent

  The Prophet

  The Sources

  Index

  “I believe in memory not as a place of arrival, but as point of departure—a catapult throwing you into present times, allowing you to imagine the future instead of accepting it. It would be absolutely impossible for me to have any connection with history if history were just a collection of dead people, dead names, dead facts. That’s why I wrote Memory of Fire in the present tense, trying to keep alive everything that happened and allow it to happen again, as soon as the reader reads it.”
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  EDUARDO GALEANO

  Preface

  This book

  is the second volume of the trilogy Memory of Fire. It is not an anthology, but a work of literary creation. The author proposes to narrate the history of America, and above all the history of Latin America, reveal its multiple dimensions and penetrate its secrets. In the third volume this vast mosaic will reach to our own times. Faces and Masks embraces the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  At the head of each text is indicated the year and place of occurrence of the episode. The numbers in parentheses below show the principal works consulted by the author in his search for information and points of reference. Documentary sources are listed at the end of the book.

  Literal transcriptions are italicized.

  I don’t know who I am,

  nor just where I was bedded.

  Don’t know where I’m from

  nor where the hell I’m headed.

  I’m a piece of fallen tree,

  where it fell I do not know.

  Where can my roots be?

  On what sort of tree did I grow?

  (Popular verses

  of Boyacá, Colombia)

  Promise of America

  The blue tiger will smash the world.

  Another land, without evil, without death, will be born from the destruction of this one. This land wants it. It asks to die, asks to be born, this old and offended land. It is weary and blind from so much weeping behind closed eyelids. On the point of death it strides the days, garbage heap of time, and at night it inspires pity from the stars. Soon the First Father will hear the world’s supplications, land wanting to be another, and then the blue tiger who sleeps beneath his hammock will jump.

  Awaiting that moment, the Guaraní Indians journey through the condemned land.

  “Anything to tell us, hummingbird?”

  They dance without letup, ever lighter and airier, intoning the sacred chants that celebrate the coming birth of the other land.

  “Shine your rays, shine your rays, hummingbird!”

  From the sea coasts to the center of America, they have sought paradise. They have skirted jungles and mountains and rivers in pursuit of the new land, the one that will be founded without old age or sickness or anything to interrupt the endless fiesta of living. The chants announce that corn will grow on its own and arrows shoot into the thickets all by themselves; and neither punishment nor pardon will be necessary, because there won’t be prohibition or blame.

  (72 and 232)*

  * These numbers refer to the documentary sources consulted by the author as listed on pages 261–76.

  1701: Salinas Valley

  The Skin of God

  The Chirigua Indians of the Guaraní people sailed down the Pilcomayo River years or centuries ago, and reached the frontier of the empire of the Incas. Here they remained, beneath the first of these Andean heights, awaiting the land without evil and without death.

 

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