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

by Eduardo Galeano

  From town to town along the banks of the River Paraná, the cart’s wooden wheels leave long scars. The name of the puppeteer, conjurer of happiness, is Javier Villafañe. Javier travels with his children whose flesh is paper and paste. The best beloved of them is Master Globetrotter: long sad nose, black cape, flying necktie. During the show he is an extension of Javier’s hand, and afterward, he sleeps and dreams at his feet, in a shoebox.

  1932: Izalco

  The Right to Vote and Its Painful Consequences

  General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, president by coup d’état, convokes the people of El Salvador to elect deputies and mayors. Despite a thousand traps, the tiny Communist Party wins the elections. The general takes umbrage. Scrutiny of ballots is suspended sine die.

  Swindled, the Communists rebel. Salvadorans erupt on the same day that the Izalco volcano erupts. As boiling lava runs down the slopes and clouds of ashes blot out the sky, red campesinos attack the barracks with machetes in Izalco, Nahuizalco, Tacuba, Juayúa, and other towns. For three days America’s first Soviets come to power.

  Three days. Three months of slaughter follow. Farabundo Martí and other Communist leaders face firing squads. Soldiers beat to death the Indian chief José Feliciano Ama, leader of the revolution in Izalco. They hang Ama’s corpse in the main plaza and force schoolchildren to watch the show. Thirty thousand campesinos, denounced by their employers, or condemned on mere suspicion or old wives’ tales, dig their own graves with their hands. Children die too, for Communists, like snakes, need to be killed young. Wherever a dog or pig scratches up the earth, remains of people appear. One of the firing-squad victims is the shoemaker Miguel Mármol.

  (9, 21, and 404)

  1932: Soyapango

  Miguel at Twenty-Six

  As they take them away bound in a truck, Miguel recognizes his childhood haunts.

  “What luck,” he thinks, “I’m going to die where my umbilical cord was buried.”

  They beat them to the ground with rifle butts, then shoot them in pairs. The truck’s headlights and the moon give more than enough light.

  After a few volleys, it’s the turn of Miguel and a man who sells engravings, condemned for being Russian. The Russian and Miguel, standing before the firing squad, grip each other’s hands, which are bound behind their backs. Miguel itches all over and desperately needs to scratch; this fills his mind as he hears: “Ready! Aim! Fire!”

  Miguel regains consciousness under a pile of bodies dripping blood. He feels his head throbbing and bleeding, and the pain of the bullets in his body, soul, and clothes. He hears the click of a rifle reloading. A coup de grâce.

  Another. Another. His eyes misted with blood, Miguel awaits the final shot, but feels a machete chopping at him instead.

  The soldiers kick the bodies into a ditch and throw dirt over them. Hearing the trucks drive off, Miguel, wounded and cut, tries to move. It takes him centuries to crawl out from under so much death and earth. Finally, managing to walk at a ferociously slow pace, more falling than standing, he very gradually gets out, wearing the sombrero of a comrade whose name was Serafín.

  And so occurs the fifth birth of Miguel Mármol, at twenty-six years of age.

  (126)

  1932: Managua

  Sandino Is Advancing

  in a great sweep that reaches the banks of Lake Managua. The occupation troops fall back in disarray. Meanwhile, two photographs appear in the world’s newspapers. One shows Lieutenant Pensington of the United States Navy holding up a trophy, a head chopped from a Nicaraguan campesino. From the other smiles the entire general staff of the Nicaraguan National Guard, officers wearing high boots and safari headgear. At their center is seated the director of the Guard, Colonel Calvin B. Matthews. Behind them is the jungle. At the feet of the group, sprawled on the ground, is a dog. The jungle and the dog are the only Nicaraguans.

  (118 and 361)

  1932: San Salvador

  Miguel at Twenty-Seven

  Of those who saved Miguel, no one is left. Soldiers have riddled with bullets the comrades who found him in a ditch, those who carried him across the river on a chair of hands, those who hid him in a cave, and those who managed to bring him to his sister’s home in San Salvador. When his sister saw the specter of Miguel stitched with bullets and crisscrossed with machete cuts, she had to be revived with a fan. Praying, she began a novena for his eternal rest.

  The funeral service proceeds. Miguel begins to recover as best he can, hidden behind the altar set up in his memory, with nothing but the chichipince-juice ointment his sister applies with saintly patience to his purulent wounds. Lying behind the curtain, burning with fever, Miguel spends his birthday listening to disconsolate relatives and neighbors awash in oceans of tears, extolling his memory with nonstop prayers.

  On one of these nights a military patrol stops at the door.

  “Who are you praying for?”

  “For the soul of my brother, the departed.”

  The soldiers enter, approach the altar, wrinkle their noses.

  Miguel’s sister clutches her rosary. The candles flicker before the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Miguel has the sudden urge to cough. The soldiers cross themselves. “May he rest in peace,” they say, and continue on their way.

  And so occurs the sixth birth of Miguel Mármol, at twenty-seven years of age.

  (126)

  1933: Managua

  The First U.S. Military Defeat in Latin America

  On the first day of the year the Marines leave Nicaragua with all their ships and planes. The scraggy general, the little man who looks like a capital T with his wide-brimmed sombrero, has humbled an empire.

  The U.S. press deplores the many dead in so many years of occupation, but stresses the value of the training of their aviators. Thanks to the war against Sandino, the United States has for the first time been able to experiment with aerial bombing from Fokker and Curtiss planes specially designed to fight in Nicaragua.

  The departing Colonel Matthews is replaced by a sympathetic and faithful native officer, Anastasio Tacho Somoza, as head of the National Guard, now called the Guardia Nacional.

  As soon as he reaches Managua, the triumphant Sandino says: “Now we’re free. I won’t fire another shot.”

  The president of Nicaragua, Juan Bautista Sacasa, greets him with an embrace. General Somoza embraces him too.

  (118 and 361)

  1933: Camp Jordán

  The Chaco War

  Bolivia and Paraguay are at war. The two poorest countries in South America, the two with no ocean, the two most thoroughly conquered and looted, annihilate each other for a bit of map. Concealed in the folds of both flags, Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell are disputing the oil of the Chaco.

  In this war, Paraguayans and Bolivians are compelled to hate each other in the name of a land they do not love, that nobody loves. The Chaco is a gray desert inhabited by thorns and snakes; not a songbird or a person in sight. Everything is thirsty in this world of horror. Butterflies form desperate clots on the few drops of water. For Bolivians, it is going from freezer to oven: They are hauled down from the heights of the Andes and dumped into these roasting scrublands. Here some die of bullets, but more die of thirst.

  Clouds of flies and mosquitos pursue the soldiers, who charge through thickets, heads lowered, on forced marches against enemy lines. On both sides barefoot people are the down payment on the errors of their officers. The slaves of feudal landlord and rural priest die in different uniforms, at the service of imperial avarice.

  One of the Bolivian soldiers marching to death speaks. He says nothing about glory, nothing about the Fatherland. He says, breathing heavily, “A curse on the hour that I was born a man.”

  (354 and 402)

  Céspedes

  On the Bolivian side, this pitiful epic will be related by Augusto Céspedes:

  A squadron of soldiers in search of water start digging a well with picks and shovels. The little rain that has fallen ha
s already evaporated, and there is no water anywhere. At twelve meters the water hunters come upon liquid mud. But at thirty meters, at forty-five, the pulley brings up bucketfuls of sand, each one drier than the last. The soldiers keep on digging, day after day, into that well of sand, ever deeper, ever more silent. And when the Paraguayans, likewise hounded by thirst, launch an attack, the Bolivians die defending the well as if it contained water.

  (96)

  Roa Bastos

  From the Paraguayan side, Augusto Roa Bastos will tell the story. He too will speak of wells that become graves, and of the multitude of dead, and of the living who are only distinguishable from them by the fact that they move, though like drunkards who have forgotten the way home. He will accompany the lost soldiers, who haven’t a drop of water, not even to shed as tears.

  (380)

  1934: Managua

  Horror Film: Scenario for Two Actors and a Few Extras

  Somoza leaves the house of Arthur Bliss Lane, ambassador of the United States.

  Sandino arrives at the house of Sacasa, president of Nicaragua.

  While Somoza sits down to work with his officers, Sandino sits down to supper with the president.

  Somoza tells his officers that the ambassador has just given his unconditional support to the killing of Sandino.

  Sandino tells the president about the problems of the Wiwilí cooperative, where he and his soldiers have been working the land for over a year.

  Somoza explains to his officers that Sandino is a communistic enemy of order, who has many more weapons concealed than those he has turned in.

  Sandino explains to the president that Somoza won’t let him work in peace.

  Somoza discusses with his officers whether Sandino should die by poison, shooting, airplane accident, or ambush in the mountains.

  Sandino discusses with the president the growing power of the Guardia Nacional, led by Somoza, and warns that Somoza will soon blow him away to sit in the presidential chair himself.

  Somoza finishes settling some practical details and leaves his officers.

  Sandino finishes his coffee and takes leave of the president.

  Somoza goes off to a poetry reading and Sandino goes off to his death.

  While Somoza listens to the sonnets of Zoila Rosa Cárdenas, young luminary of Peruvian letters who honors this country by her visit, Sandino is shot in a place called The Skull, on Lonesome Road.

  (339 and 405)

  1934: Managua

  The Government Decides That Crime Does Not Exist

  That night, Colonel Santos López escapes the trap in Managua. On a bleeding leg, his seventh bullet wound in these years of war, he climbs over roofs, drops to the ground, jumps walls, and finally begins a nightmare crawl northward along the railroad tracks.

  The next day, while Santos López is still dragging his wounded leg along the lake shore, a wholesale massacre takes place in the mountains. Somoza orders the Wiwilí cooperative destroyed, and the new Guardia Nacional strikes with total surprise, wiping out Sandino’s former soldiers, who were sowing tobacco and bananas and had a hospital half built. The mules are saved, but not the children.

  Soon after, banquets in homage to Somoza are given by the United States embassy in Managua and by the most exclusive clubs of León and Granada.

  The government issues orders to forget. An amnesty wipes out all crimes committed since the eve of Sandino’s death.

  (267 and 405)

  1934: San Salvador

  Miguel at Twenty-Nine

  Hunted as ever by the Salvadoran police, Miguel finds refuge in the house of the Spanish consul’s lover.

  One night a storm sweeps in. From the window, Miguel sees that, far over there where the river bends, the rising waters are threatening the mud-and-cane hut of his wife and children. Leaving his hideout in defiance of both gale and night patrol, Miguel hurries to his family.

  They spend the night huddled together inside the fragile walls, listening to the roar of wind and river. At dawn, when winds and waters subside, the little hut is slightly askew and very damp, but still standing. And so Miguel says goodbye to his family and returns to his refuge.

  But it is nowhere to be found. Of that solidly built house not a brick remains. The fury of the river has undermined the ravine, torn away the foundations, and carried off to the devil the house, the consul’s lover, and the servant girl.

  And so occurs the seventh birth of Miguel Mármol, at twenty-nine years of age.

  (126)

  1935: The Villamontes-Boyuibe Road

  After Ninety Thousand Deaths

  the Chaco War ends. It is three years since the first Paraguayan and Bolivian bullets were exchanged in a hamlet called Masamaclay, which in the Indian language means place where two brothers fought.

  At noon the news reaches the front. The guns fall silent. The soldiers stand up, very slowly, and even more slowly emerge from the trenches. Ragged ghosts, blinded by the sun, they lurch across the no-man’s-land between Bolivia’s Santa Cruz regiment and Paraguay’s Toledo regiment—the scraps, the shreds. Newly received orders prohibit fraternization with those who just now were enemies. Only the military salute is allowed; and so they salute each other. But someone lets loose a great howl, and then there is no stopping it. The soldiers break ranks, throw caps, weapons, anything, everything into the air and run in mad confusion, Paraguayans to Bolivians, Bolivians to Paraguayans, shouting, singing, weeping, embracing one another as they roll in the hot sand.

  (354 and 402)

  1935: Maracay

  Gómez

  The dictator of Venezuela, Juan Vicente Gómez, dies and keeps on ruling. For twenty-seven years no one has been able to budge him, and now no one dares crack a joke about his corpse. When the coffin of the terrible old man is unquestionably buried beneath a heap of earth, the prisoners finally break down the jail doors, and only then does the cheering and looting begin.

  Gómez died a bachelor. He has sired mountains of children, loving as if relieving himself, but has never spent a whole night in a woman’s arms. The dawn light always found him alone in his iron bed beneath the image of the Virgin Mary and alongside his chests filled with money.

  He never spent a penny, paying for everything with oil. He distributed oil in gushers, to Gulf, Standard, Texaco, Shell, and with oil wells paid for the doctor who probed his bladder, for the poets whose sonnets hymned his glory, and for the executioners whose secret tasks kept his order.

  (114, 333, and 366)

  2935: Buenos Aires

  Borges

  Everything that brings people together, like football or politics, and everything that multiples them, like a mirror or the act of love, gives him the horrors. He recognizes no other reality than what exists in the past, in the past of his forefathers, and in books written by those who knew how to expound that reality. The rest is smoke.

  With great delicacy and sharp wit, Jorge Luis Borges tells the Universal History of Infamy. About the national infamy that surrounds him, he doesn’t even inquire.

  (25 and 59)

  1935: Buenos Aires

  These Infamous Years

  In London, the Argentine government signs a commercial treaty selling the country for halfpence. In the opulent estates north of Buenos Aires, the cattlocracy dance the waltz in shady arbors; but if the entire country is worth only halfpence, how much are its poorest children worth? Working hands go at bargain prices and you can find any number of girls who will strip for a cup of coffee. New factories sprout, and around them tin-can barrios, harried by police and tuberculosis, where yesterday’s maté, dried in the sun, stifles hunger. The Argentine police invent the electric prod to convince those in doubt and straighten out those who buckle.

  In the Buenos Aires night, the pimp seeks a girl wanting a good time, and the girl seeks a man who’ll give her one; the racetrack gambler seeks a hot tip; the con man, a sucker; the jobless, a job in the early editions. Coming and going in the streets are the bohemian, the r
oué, and the cardsharp, all solitary in their solitude, while Discepolín’s last tango sings that the world was and will continue to be a dirty joke.

  (176, 365, and 412)

  1935: Buenos Aires

  Discepolín

  He is one long bone with a nose, so thin that injections are put through his overcoat, the somber poet of Buenos Aires in the infamous years.

  Enrique Santos Discépolo creates his first tangos, sad thoughts that can be danced, as a touring-company comedian lost in the provinces. In ramshackle dressing rooms he makes the acquaintance of huge, almost human-size fleas, and for them he hums tangos that speak of those with neither money nor faith.

  (379)

  1935: Buenos Aires

  Evita

  To look at, she’s just a run-of-the-mill stick of a girl, pale, washed-out, not ugly, not pretty, who wears secondhand clothes and solemnly repeats the daily routines of poverty. Like the others, she lives hanging on to each episode of the radio soaps, dreams every Sunday of being Norma Shearer, and every evening goes to the railway station to see the Buenos Aires train pass by. But Eva Duarte has turned fifteen and she’s fed up; she climbs aboard the train and takes off.

  This little creature has nothing at all. No father, no money, no memories to hold on to. Since she was born in the town of Los Toldos, of an unmarried mother, she has been condemned to humiliation, and now she is a nobody among the thousands of nobodies the trains pour into Buenos Aires every day, a multitude of tousle-haired dark-skinned provincials, workers and servant girls who are sucked into the city’s mouth and are promptly devoured. During the week Buenos Aires chews them up; on Sundays it spits out the pieces.