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