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

by Eduardo Galeano

  (45 and 329)

  1880: London

  In Defense of Indolence

  Run out by the French police and mortified by the English winter, which makes one piss stalactites, Paul Lafargue writes in London a new indictment of the criminal system that makes man a miserable servant of the machine.

  Capitalist ethics, a pitiful parody of Christian ethics, writes Marx’s Cuban son-in-law. Like the monks, capitalism teaches workers that they were born into this vale of tears to toil and suffer; and induces them to deliver up their wives and children to the factories, which grind them up for twelve hours a day. Lafargue refuses to join in nauseating songs in honor of the god Progress, the eldest son of Work, and claims the right to indolence and a full enjoyment of human passions. Indolence is a gift of the gods. Even Christ preached it in the Sermon on the Mount. Some day, announces Lafargue, there will come an end to the torments of hunger and forced labor, more numerous than the locusts of the Bible, and then the earth will tremble with joy.

  (177)

  1881: Lincoln City

  Billy the Kid

  “I’m gonna give you a tip, doc.”

  Until a minute ago, Billy the Kid was awaiting the gallows in a cell. Now he aims at the sheriff from the top of the stairs.

  “I’m gettin tired, doc.”

  The sheriff throws him the key to the handcuffs and when Billy bends down there is a burst of revolver fire. The sheriff topples with a bullet in his eye and his silver star in smithereens.

  Billy is twenty-one and has twenty-one notches in the butt of his Colt, not counting a score of Apaches and Mexicans, who died unrecorded.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you, stranger.”

  He began his career at twelve, when a bum insulted his mother, and he took off at full gallop, brandishing a razor that dripped blood.

  (131 and 292)

  1882: Saint Joseph

  Jesse James

  Jesse and his lads, the “James Boys,” had fought with the slaver army of the South and later were the avenging angels of that conquered land. To satisfy their sense of honor they have plucked clean eleven banks, seven mail trains, and three stage coaches. Full of braggadocio, reluctantly, without taking the trouble to draw his gun, Jesse has sent sixteen fellowmen to the other world.

  One Saturday night, in Saint Joseph, Missouri, his best friend shoots him in the back.

  “You, baby, dry them tears and set ’em up all around. And see if they can get that garbage out of the way. I’ll tell you what he was. Know what he was? Stubbornest damn mule in Arizona.”

  (292)

  1882: Prairies of Oklahoma

  Twilight of the Cowboy

  Half a century ago, the legendary wild horse of Oklahoma, amazed Washington Irving and inspired his pen. That untameable prince of the prairies, that long-maned white arrow, is now a meek beast of burden.

  The cowboy, too, champion of the winning of the West, angel of justice or vengeful bandit, becomes a soldier or a peon observing regular hours. Barbed wire advances at a thousand kilometers a day and refrigerator trains cross the great prairies of the United States. Ballads and dime novels evoke the howls of coyotes and Indians, the good times of covered-wagon caravans, their creaking wooden axles greased with bacon; and Buffalo Bill is demonstrating that nostalgia can be turned into a very lucrative business. But the cowboy is another machine among the many that gin the cotton, thresh the wheat, or bale the hay.

  (224 and 292)

  1882: New York

  You Too Can Succeed in Life

  The happiness road no longer leads only to the prairies of the West. Now, it is also the day of the big cities. The whistle of the train, magic flute, awakens youth from its rustic drowsiness and invites it to join the new paradises of cement and steel. Any ragged orphan, promise the siren voices, can become a prosperous businessman if he works hard and lives virtuously in the offices and factories of the giant buildings.

  A writer, Horatio Alger, sells these illusions by the millions of copies. Alger is more famous than Shakespeare and his novels have a bigger circulation than the Bible. His readers and his characters, tame wage earners, have not stopped running since they got off the trains or transatlantic ships. In reality, the track is reserved for a handful of business athletes, but North American society massively consumes the fantasy of free competition, and even cripples dream of winning races.

  (282)

  1882: New York

  The Creation According to John D. Rockefeller

  In the beginning I made light with a kerosene lamp. And the shadows, which mocked tallow or sperm candles, retreated. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

  And on the second day God put me to the test and allowed the Devil to tempt me, offering me friends and lovers and other extravagances.

  And I said: “Let petroleum come to me.” And I founded Standard Oil. And I saw that it was good and the evening and the morning were the third day.

  And on the fourth I followed God’s example. Like Him, I threatened and cursed anyone refusing me obedience; and like Him I applied extortion and punishment. As God has crushed his competitors, so I pitilessly pulverized my rivals in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. And to the repentant I promised forgiveness and eternal peace.

  And I put an end to the disorder of the Universe. And where there was chaos, I made organization. And on a scale never before known I calculated costs, imposed prices, and conquered markets. And I distributed the force of millions of hands so that time would never again be wasted, nor energy, nor materials. And I banished chance and fate from the history of men. And in the space created by me I reserved no place for the weak or the inefficient. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

  And to give my work a name I coined the word “trust.” And I saw that it was good. And I confirmed that the world turned around my watchful eyes, while the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

  And on the seventh day I did charity. I added up the money God had given me for having continued His perfect work and gave twenty-five cents to the poor. And then I rested.

  (231 and 282)

  1883: Bismarck City

  The Last Buffalos of the North

  The buffalo has become a curiosity in Montana and the Blackfeet Indians gnaw old bones and tree bark.

  Sitting Bull heads the last hunt of the Sioux on the northern prairies. After traveling far they meet a few animals. For each one they kill, the Sioux ask forgiveness of the Great Invisible Buffalo, as tradition requires, and promise him they will not waste one hair of the body.

  Soon afterwards, the Northern Pacific Railroad celebrates the completion of its coast-to-coast line. This is the fourth line to cross North American territory. Coal locomotives, with pneumatic brakes and Pullman coaches, advance behind the pioneers toward the prairies that belonged to the Indians. On all sides new cities spring up. The giant national market grows and coheres.

  The Northern Pacific authorities invite Chief Sitting Bull to make a speech at the great inauguration party. Sitting Bull arrives from the reservation where the Sioux survive on charity. He mounts the rostrum covered with flowers and flags, and addresses himself to the president of the United States, the officials and personalities present, and to the general public: “I hate all the white people,” he says. “You are thieves and liars …”

  The interpreter, a young officer, translates: “My red and gentle heart bids you welcome …”

  Sitting Bull interrupts the clamorous applause of the audience: “You have taken away our land and made us outcasts …”

  The audience gives the feather-headdressed warrior a standing ovation; and the interpreter sweats ice.

  (224)

  1884: Santiago de Chile

  The Wizard of Finance Eats Soldier Meat

  “Our rights are born of victory, the supreme law of nations,” says the victorious governor.

  The War of the Pacific, the nitrates war, has ended. By sea and by land Chile has crushed
its enemies. The immense deserts of Atacama and Tarapacá become part of the map of Chile. Peru loses its nitrates and the exhausted guano islands. Bolivia loses its outlet to the sea and is bottled up in the heart of South America.

  In Santiago de Chile they celebrate the victory. In London they collect on it. Without firing a shot or spending a penny, John Thomas North has become the nitrates king. With money borrowed from Chilean banks, North has bought for a song the bonds that the Peruvian State had given to the deposits’ old proprietors. North bought them when the war was just beginning; and before it was over, the Chilean State had the kindness to recognize the bonds as legitimate property titles.

  (268 and 269)

  1884: Huancayo

  The Fatherland Pays

  Against the Chilean invaders of Peru, Marshal Andrés Avelino Cáceres and his Indian guerrillas have fought over two hundred mountain leagues without letup for three years.

  The Indians of the communities call their marshal, a man with fierce whiskers, “Grandpa”; and many have lost their lives following him, shouting “vivas” for a fatherland that despises them. In Lima, too, Indians were cannon fodder, and the social chronicler Ricardo Palma blames the defeat on that abject and degraded race.

  In contrast, Marshal Cáceres was saying until recently that Peru was defeated by its own merchants and bureaucrats. Until recently he also rejected the peace treaty that amputated a good piece of Peru. Now Cáceres has changed his mind. He wants to be president. He has to earn merits. He must demobilize the armed Indians, who have fought against the Chileans, but have also invaded haciendas and are threatening the sacred order of great estates.

  The marshal summons Tomás Laimes, chief of the Colca guerrilla fighters. Laimes comes to Huancayo with fifteen hundred Indians. He comes to say, “At your orders, my Grandpa.”

  But no sooner does Laimes arrive than his troop is disarmed. When he has barely crossed the barracks threshold, he is felled by a rifle butt. Later they shoot him, blindfolded and sitting down.

  (194)

  1885: Lima

  “The trouble comes from the top,” says Manuel González Prada.

  Peru groans under the domination of a few privileged beings. Those men would roll us flat between the crushers of a sugar mill, they would distill us in an alembic, they would burn us to a crisp in a smelting oven, if they could extract from our residuum just one milligram of gold … Like land with a curse on it, they receive the seed and drink the water without ever producing fruit …

  In the war against Chile they proved their cowardice, not even having the guts to defend the guano and nitrate deposits … We were insulted, trodden on, and bloodied as no nation ever was; but the war with Chile has taught us nothing, nor corrected us of any vice.

  (145)

  1885: Mexico City

  “All belongs to all,”

  says Teodoro Flores, Mixtec Indian, hero of three wars.

  “Repeat that!”

  And the sons repeat: “All belongs to all.”

  Teodoro Flores has defended Mexico against North Americans, conservatives, and the French. President Juárez gave him three farms with good soil as a reward. He didn’t accept.

  “Land, water, woods, houses, oxen, harvests. To all. Repeat that!”

  And the sons repeat it.

  Open to the sky, the roof is almost immune to the smell of shit and frying, and it is almost quiet. Here, one can take the air and talk, while in the patio below, men fight with knives over a woman, someone calls loudly upon the Virgin, and dogs howl omens of death.

  “Tell us about the Sierra,” asks the youngest son.

  And the father tells how people live in Teotitlán del Camino. There, those who can work do so and everyone gets what he needs. No one is allowed to take more than he needs. That is a serious crime. In the sierra, crimes are punished with silence, scorn, or expulsion. It was President Juárez who brought the jail, something that wasn’t known there. Juárez brought judges and property titles and ordered the communal lands divided up. “But we paid no attention to the papers he gave us.”

  Teodoro Flores was fifteen when he learned the Spanish language. Now he wants his sons to become lawyers to defend the Indians from the tricks of the doctors. For that purpose he brought them to the capital, that deafening pigsty, to squeak by, crammed among rowdies and beggars.

  “What God created and what man creates. All belongs to all. Repeat that!”

  Night after night, the children listen to him until sleep overcomes them.

  “We are all born equal, stark naked. We are all brothers. Repeat that!”

  (287)

  1885: Colón

  Prestán

  The city of Colón was born thirty years ago, because a terminal station was needed for the train that crosses Panama from sea to sea. The city came to birth on the Caribbean Sea swamps, and offered fevers and mosquitos, seedy hotels, gambling dens, and brothels to adventurers who streamed through in pursuit of the gold of California, and miserable hovels for the Chinese workers who maintained the tracks and died of plague or sadness.

  This year, Colon burned. The fire devoured wooden arcades, houses, and markets, and Pedro Prestán took the blame. Prestán, teacher and doctor, almost black, always wearing a derby hat and bow tie, always impeccable in the mud streets, had led a popular insurrection. A thousand U.S. Marines went into action on Panamanian territory, purportedly to protect the railroad and other North American properties. Prestán, who defended the humiliated people with life and soul and derby, hangs on the gallows.

  The crime puts a curse on Colón. For expiation, the city will burn every twenty years from now on and forever.

  (102, 151, and 324)

  1886: Chivilcoy

  The Circus

  At dawn a circus trailer appears out of the mist, amid the leafy groves of Chivilcoy.

  By afternoon, colored banners flutter over the tent.

  A triumphal parade around the city. The Podesta Brothers’ Equestrian, Gymnastic, Acrobatic, and Creole Drama Company has a Japanese juggler and a talking dog, trained doves, a child prodigy, and four clowns. The program claims that the harlequin, Pepino the 88th, and the trapeze team have earned the admiration of audiences in London, Paris, Vienna, Philadelphia, and Rome.

  But the main dish the circus offers is Juan Moreira, the first Creole drama in Argentine history, a pantomime with duels of couplets and knives, which tells the misfortunes of a gaucho harassed by an officer, a judge, a mayor, and the grocer.

  (34)

  1886: Atlanta

  Coca-Cola

  John Pemberton, pharmacist, has won some prestige for his love potions and baldness cures.

  Now he invents a medicine that relieves headaches and alleviates nausea. His new product is made from a base of coca leaves, brought from the Andes, and cola nuts, stimulant seeds that come from Africa. Water, sugar, caramel, and certain secrets complete the formula.

  Soon Pemberton will sell his invention for two thousand three hundred dollars. He is convinced that it is a good remedy; and he would burst with laughter, not with pride, if some fortuneteller revealed to him that he had just created the symbol of the coming century.

  (184)

  1887: Chicago

  Every May First, They Will Live Again

  The gallows awaits them. They were five, but Lingg got death up early by exploding a dynamite capsule between his teeth. Fischer dresses himself unhurriedly, humming “La Marseillaise.” Parsons, the agitator, who used words like a whip or knife, grips his comrades’ hands before the guards tie them behind their backs. Engel, famous for his marksmanship, asks for port wine and makes everyone laugh with a joke. Spies, who has written so much portraying anarchy as the entrance to life, prepares in silence for the entrance to death.

  The spectators, in theater seats, fasten their eyes on the scaffold. A signal, a noise, the trap is sprung … There, in a horrible dance, they died spinning in the air.

  José Martí writes reportage of th
e anarchists’ execution in Chicago. The world’s working class will revive them every First of May. That is still not known, but Martí always writes as if hearing, where it is least expected, the cry of a newborn child.

  (199)

  1889: London

  North

  Twenty years ago, he jumped onto the pier at Valparaíso, eyes of blue stone, fuzzy red whiskers. He had ten pounds sterling in his pockets and a bundle of clothing on his back. In his first job he got to know saltpeter the hard way, in the cauldron of a small deposit in Tarapacá, and later he was a merchant in the port of Iquique. During the War of the Pacific, while Chileans, Peruvians, and Bolivians were disemboweling each other with bayonets, John Thomas North performed conjuring tricks that made him owner of the battlefields.

  Now North, the nitrates king, makes beer in France and cement in Belgium, owns streetcars in Egypt and sawmills in black Africa, and exploits gold in Australia and diamonds in Brazil. In England, this Midas of plebeian stock and quick fingers has bought the rank of colonel in Her Majesty’s army, heads the Masonic lodge of Kent county and is a prominent member of the Conservative Party; dukes, lords and ministers sit at his table. He lived in a palace whose big iron doors were, they say, lifted from the Cathedral in Lima by Chilean soldiers.

  On the eve of a voyage to Chile, North gives a farewell ball in the Hotel Metropole. A thousand English people attend. The Metropole’s salons gleam like suns, and so do the dishes and drinks. The letter N blazes in the center of immense chrysanthemum coats of arms. An ovation greets the almighty host as he descends the stairs disguised as Henry VIII. On his arm is his wife dressed as a duchess; and behind comes the daughter, as a Persian princess, and the son in Cardinal Richelieu costume.