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

by Eduardo Galeano

  TÚPAC AMARU: (Raising his head with a tremendous effort, opens his eyes and finally speaks.) Here there are no accomplices but you and me. You as oppressor, I as liberator, both of us deserve death.

  (183 and 344)

  1781: Cuzco

  Areche’s Order Against Inca Dress and to Make Indians Speak Spanish

  Indians are forbidden to wear the dress of the gentry, and especially of the nobility, which serves only to remind them of what the ancient Incas wore, bringing back memories that merely cause them to feel more and more hatred for the ruling nation; apart from looking ridiculous and hardly in keeping with the purity of our religion, since it features in various places the sun which was their first deity; this order extends to all provinces of this Southern America, totally abolishing such clothing … and at the same time all paintings or portraits of the Incas …

  And to the end that these Indians should rid themselves of the hatred they have conceived against Spaniards, that they should dress in clothing prescribed by law, and that they should adopt our Spanish customs and speak the Castilian language, schools shall be more vigorously encouraged than heretofore, with the most stern and just punishment for those who do not use them, after a due period of time for their enlightenment …

  (345)

  1781: Cuzco

  Micaela

  In this war, which has made the earth groan with birth pains, Micaela Bastidas has had neither rest nor comfort. This woman with the neck of a bird has traveled constantly from region to region making more people, and sending to the front new fighters, and a few rifles, and the telescope someone asked for, and coca leaves and ripe ears of corn. Horses galloped incessantly back and forth across the mountains with her orders, safe-conducts, reports, and letters. She sent many messages to Túpac Amaru urging him to hurl his troops upon Cuzco once and for all, before the Spaniards could fortify their defenses and dishearten and disperse the rebels. Chepe, she wrote, Chepe, my dearest one: Enough warnings I’ve given you …

  Pulled by a horse’s tail, Micaela enters the main plaza of Cuzco, which the Indians call the Plaza of Tears, inside a leather bag, the kind in which maté is brought from Paraguay. Horses are also dragging to the gallows Túpac Amaru and Hipólito, their son. Another son, Fernando, looks on.

  (159 and 183)

  1781: Cuzco

  Sacred Rain

  The boy wants to turn his head, but the soldiers force him to look. Fernando sees how the executioner tears out the tongue of his brother Hipólito and pushes him down the steps from the scaffold. The executioner hangs two of Fernando’s uncles, and then the slave Antonio Oblitas, who had painted Túpac Amaru’s portrait, and afterward he cuts him to bits with an ax; and Fernando sees. With chains on his hands and irons on his feet, between two soldiers who force him to look, Fernando sees the executioner apply the garrote to Tomasa Condemaita, the woman chief of Acos, whose women’s battalion has dealt the Spanish army tremendous blows. Then Micaela Bastidas mounts the scaffold and Fernando sees less. His eyes cloud over as the executioner reaches for Micaela’s tongue, and a curtain of tears covers the boy’s eyes when they sit his mother down to finish off the torture: the iron collar does not quite strangle her fine neck and it is necessary to fasten nooses around her neck and pull from different directions, finishing her off with kicks in the belly and breasts.

  Fernando, born of Micaela nine years ago, now sees nothing and hears nothing. He doesn’t see that they are bringing in his father, Túpac Amaru, and lashing him to the cinches of four horses by the hands and feet, his face turned skyward. The horsemen dig in their spurs heading for the four points of the compass, but Túpac Amaru doesn’t split. They have him up in the air, looking like a spider; spurs tear at the bellies of the horses, which rear up on their hind legs to muster all their forces; but Túpac Amaru doesn’t split.

  It is the season of long dryness in the Valley of Cuzco. Precisely at noon, as the horses struggle and Túpac Amaru doesn’t split, a violent downpour bursts from the sky: drops fall heavy as clubs, as if God or the Sun or someone had decided that it was the moment for the kind of rain that leaves the world blind.

  (183 and 344)

  The Indians Believe:

  Jesus has clothed himself in white to come to Cuzco. A child shepherd sees him, plays with him, follows him. Jesus is a child too, and runs between earth and air: he crosses the river without getting wet, and slips very softly through the sacred valley of the Incas, careful not to scrape these recently wounded lands. From the slopes of the peak Ausangate, whose icy breath radiates the energy of life, he walks toward Mount Coylloriti. At the foot of this mountain, shelter of ancient divinities, Jesus lets fall his white tunic. He climbs up the rock and stops. Then he enters the rock.

  Jesus has wanted to give himself to the conquered, and for them he turns into stone, like the ancient gods of this region, stone that says and will say: I am God, I am you, I am those who fell.

  Forever the Indians of the Valley of Cuzco will go up in procession to greet him. They will purify themselves in the waters of the torrent, and with torches in their hands will dance for him, dance to give him joy: so sad is Jesus, so broken, there inside.

  (301)

  The Indians Dance to the Glory of Paradise

  Far from Cuzco, Jesus’ sadness has also stricken the Tepehua Indians. Ever since the new god arrived in Mexico, the Tepehuas had been going to church with a musical band, offering him dances, costume games, tasty tamales, and good drink; but nothing gave him happiness. Jesus continued to grieve, his beard pressed against his breast, and so it went until the Tepehuas invented the Dance of the Old Ones.

  It is danced by two men in masks. One is the Old Lady, the other the Old Man. The two Old Ones come from the sea with offerings of shrimp and traverse the town of San Pedro leaning on feathered canes, their bodies twisted by age. Before altars improvised in the streets, they stop and dance while the cantor sings and a musician beats a turtle shell. The naughty Old Lady waggles her hips and offers herself, and pretends to run away; the Old Man follows her and catches her from behind, embraces her and hoists her shoulder high. She kicks her legs in the air, dying of laughter, and pretends to defend herself with blows from her cane, happily clutching the body of the Old Man, who keeps grabbing at her, staggering and laughing as everyone applauds.

  When Jesus saw the Old Ones making love, he raised his head and laughed for the first time. He laughs now every time the Tepehuas perform this impious dance for him.

  In remote times, the Tepehuas, who have rescued Jesus from his sadness, were born from balls of cotton, there on the slopes of the Sierra of Veracruz. Instead of “it’s dawning,” they say, “God is here.”

  (359)

  1781: Chincheros

  Pumacahua

  In the center gleams the Virgin of Montserrat. Mateo García Pumacahua is on his knees giving thanks. His wife and a group of relatives and captains appear in procession behind him. Pumacahua wears Spanish dress, vest and coat, shoes with buckles. Beyond him, the battle is fought, little soldiers and guns that look like toys: Pumacahua the puma beats the dragon Túpac Amaru. Veni, vidi, vici is written above.

  After several months a nameless artist has finished his work. Over the door of the church of the town of Chincheros appear the images that will perpetuate the glory and the faith of chief Pumacahua in the war against Túpac Amaru.

  Pumacahua, also a descendant of the Incas, has received a medal from the king of Spain and a plenary indulgence from the bishop of Cuzco.

  (137 and 183)

  1781: La Paz

  Túpac Catari

  He spoke only Aymara, the language of his people. He proclaimed himself viceroy of these lands that are not yet called Bolivia, and named his wife vicereine. He set up his court on the heights dominating the city of La Paz, hidden in a hollow, and laid siege to it.

  He walked with a limp and an extraordinary brilliance lit up his eyes, deeply sunk in his young and already furrowed face. He dressed in b
lack velvet, gave orders with a cane and fought with a spear. He beheaded priests suspected of celebrating denunciatory Masses and cut off the arms of spies and traitors.

  Julián Apaza had been a sacristan and a baker before becoming Túpac Catari. Together with his wife, Bartolina Sisa, he organized an army of forty thousand Indians which kept in check troops sent by the viceroy from Buenos Aires.

  Despite the defeats and massacres he suffered there was no way to catch him. Traveling at night he eluded every attempt at encirclement, until the Spaniards offered the governorship of Achacachi, on the banks of Lake Titicaca, to his best friend Tomás Inca Lipe, known as the good.

  (183)

  1782: La Paz

  Rebel Women

  Spanish cities of the New World, born as offerings to God and the king, have an enormous heart of beaten earth. In each city’s main plaza are the gallows and the seat of government, the cathedral and the jail, the courthouse and the market. People stroll around the gallows and the fountain, to and fro in the main plaza, fortified plaza, garrison plaza, pass cavalier and beggar, silver-spurred horseman and barefoot slave, devout ladies taking their souls to Mass, and Indians delivering chicha in potbellied clay jugs.

  Today there is a show in the main plaza of La Paz. Two women, leaders of the native rebellion, will be sacrificed. Bartolina Sisa, wife of Túpac Catari, emerges from the jail with rope around neck, tied to the tail of a horse. Gregoria Apaza, sister of Túpac Catari, is brought out on a donkey. Each of them carries a cross of sticks, like a scepter, in the right hand, and has a crown of thorns fastened on her head. Before them, prisoners sweep the ground clear with branches. Bartolina and Gregoria make several turns around the plaza, suffering in silence the stones and laughter of those who mock them as Indian queens, until the hour of the gallows strikes. Their heads and hands, the sentence reads, will be paraded through the towns of the region.

  The sun, the old sun, also attends the ceremony.

  (183 and 288)

  1782: Guaduas

  With Glassy Eyes,

  from a wooden cage, the head of José Antonio Galán gazes at the town of Charalá. In Charalá, where he was born, they are exhibiting his right foot. A hand of his is nailed up in the plaza of Socorro.

  The cream of colonial society has repented of the sin of insolence, these rich Creoles who prefer to keep paying tribute and obedience to the Spanish monarch, thus avoiding the contagious plague that Galán, like Túpac Amaru, like Tupac Catari, incarnated and spread in their days of fury. Galán, chief captain of the commoners’ insurrection, has been betrayed and hunted down by those who were his comrades. In a hut he fell, after a long pursuit, together with his last twelve men.

  Don Antonio Caballero y Góngora, the pompous archbishop, sharpened the sword that beheaded Galán. While throwing on the fire the treaty of peace, so promising, so deceiving, the Most Illustrious One added infamies against the spiteful plebeian. Galán has been quartered not merely as a rebel, but also as a man of most obscure birth and lover of his own daughter.

  Now the archbishop has two thrones. Besides the apostolic one, he has acquired the viceregal throne of Bogotá.

  (13 and 185)

  1782: Sicuani

  This Accursed Name

  Diego Cristóbal, first cousin of Túpac Amaru and continuer of his war in Peru, has signed a peace treaty. The colonial authorities have promised pardon and a general amnesty.

  Stretched out on the ground, Diego Cristobal swears fidelity to the king. Multitudes of Indians come down from the mountains and surrender their arms. The marshal stages a banquet of merry toasts and the bishop a Mass of thanksgiving. From Lima, the viceroy orders all houses to be illuminated for three nights.

  Within a year and a half, in Cuzco, in the Plaza of Happiness, the executioner will tear to pieces the flesh of this cousin of Túpac Amaru, with red-hot pincers, before hanging him from the gallows. His mother will also be hanged and quartered. The judge, Francisco Díaz de Medina, had passed sentence to the effect that it is not fitting either for the King or for the State that any seed or race of this or any Túpac Amaru should remain, considering the great clamor and impression that this accursed name has aroused in the natives.

  (183)

  1783: Panama City

  For Love of Death

  Ever since dawn the ground has been steaming, pleading for a drink, and the living seek shade and fan themselves. If the heat shrivels the living, what will it not do to the dead, who have no one to fan them?

  The important dead lie in the churches. So much does custom require in the dry tableland of Castile, and so it has to be also in this fiery furnace of Panama. The faithful stand on memorial stones, or kneel on them, and from below death whispers to them: Soon I’ll come for you. More than the panic of dying or the memory of irreparable loss though, it is the stink of putrefaction that brings tears to the eyes.

  Sebastián López Ruiz, sage researcher into nature, writes a report showing that, here, this custom from over there is the enemy of hygiene and fatal for public health, and that it would be healthier to bury the gentry of Panama in some distant cemetery. The reply, when it comes, says in effect that the dead are well placed in the churches; and that what has been and is, will continue to be.

  (323)

  1783: Madrid

  The Human Hand Vindicated

  To the four winds trumpets proclaim that the king of Spain has decided to redeem the human hand. From here on, the gentleman who does manual work will not lose his noble condition. The king says that industriousness dishonors neither him who performs it, nor his family, and that no artisanship is unworthy of Spaniards.

  Charles III wants to bring his reign up to date. His minister Campomanes dreams of promoting industry, popular education, and agrarian reform. From its great imperial feat in America, Spain gets the honors and other European monarchies get the benefits. How long will the silver of the colonies go on paying for merchandise that Spain does not produce? What is the point of the Spanish monopoly if the products leaving the port of Cadiz are English, French, Dutch, or German?

  Knightly gentlemen, who in Spain are as abundant as monks, have hands that serve either to die for Spain or to kill her. Even if they are penniless, they don’t lower themselves to produce anything except glory. A long time ago those hands forgot how to work, as a hen’s wings have forgotten how to fly.

  (175)

  1785: Mexico City

  Lawyer Villarroel Against the Pulque Saloon

  Every pulque saloon is an office where adulteries, concubinages, rapes, pickpocketings, robberies, homicides, brawls, knifings, and other crimes are hatched … They are theaters in which men and women are transformed into the most abominable furies from hell, their mouths spewing the most refined obscenities, the vilest words, and most dissolute, infamous, offensive, and provocative things that the greatest of libertines could hardly utter if they were not perturbed by the fumes of the most fetid and disgusting of drinks … These are the effects of the negligence, the omissions and the tolerance of judges, who are not horrified at the sight of men and women lying in the streets as if they were dogs, exposed to being run over by a coachman as drunk as themselves, as often happens, dispatching them to eternity in such an unhappy situation as the one in which they find themselves.

  (352)

  The Pulque Saloon

  When the viceroy expelled pulque from Mexico City, the outcast found shelter in the suburbs.

  Liquor of the green plants … In taverns on the outskirts, the barman never stops coming and going between the big vats and the eager mugs, you stun me, you kill me, you make me walk on all fours, while a newborn child cries disconsolately in one corner and an old man sleeps off the effects in another.

  Horses, donkeys, and fighting cocks, tethered to iron rings, grow old waiting outside. Inside, the bright colored vats bear defiant names: “Don’t stretch me out,” “The stuff for the strong,” “The brave one” … Inside, law does not exist, nor the time of d
ay. Dice roll on the earth floor and flowery gambling cards are flung down on a barrel-top. Some fool sings to the sound of a merry harp, others pair off to kick up dust in a dance, a monk chats with a soldier and the soldier promises to get tough with a muleteer, I am plenty tough, I’m too tough, and the potbellied barman chimes in: What about another?