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

by Eduardo Galeano

  Useless to nail up doors and windows. The hurricane rips everything off, playing with houses and trees, flipping them into the air. The sky empties of panicky birds, while the sea floods the whole east of the island. From a base at Bayamo, brigades venture forth in launches and helicopters; volunteers come and go rescuing people and animals, vaccinating whatever they find alive and burying or burning the rest.

  (18)

  1963: Havana

  Everyone a Jack-of-All-Trades

  On this hurricane-devastated island, blockaded and harassed by the United States, getting through the day is a feat. Store windows display Vietnam solidarity posters but not shoes or shirts, and to buy the smallest thing, you wait hours in line. The occasional automobile runs on piston rings made of ox horns, and in art schools pencil graphite is ground up to approximate paint. In the factories, cobwebs cover some new machines, because a particular spare part has not yet completed its six-thousand-mile journey to get here. From remote Baltic ports come the oil and everything else Cuba needs, and a letter to Venezuela has to circle the globe before reaching its nearby destination.

  And it’s not only things that are lacking. Many know-it-alls have gone to Miami on the heels of the have-it-alls.

  And now?

  “Now we have to invent.”

  At eighteen, Ricardo Gutiérrez paraded into Havana, rifle held high, amid a tide of rifles, machetes, and palm-frond sombreros celebrating the end of Batista’s dictatorship. On the following day he had to take charge of various enterprises abandoned by their owners. A women’s underwear factory, among others, fell to his lot. Immediately the raw-material problems began. There was no latex foam for the brassieres. The workers discussed the matter at a meeting and decided to rip up pillows. It was a disaster. The pillow stuffing couldn’t be washed because it never dried.

  Ricardo was twenty when they put two pesos in his pocket and sent him to administer a sugar mill. He had never seen a sugar mill in his life, even from a distance. There he discovered that cane juice has a dark color. The previous administrator, a faithful servant with a half-century of experience, had disappeared over the horizon carrying under his arm the oil portrait of Julio Lobo, lord of these cane-fields which the revolution has expropriated.

  Now the foreign minister sends for him. Raúl Roa sits on the floor before a big map of Spain spread over the carpet, and starts to draw little crosses. This is how Ricardo finds out, at twenty-two, that they have made him a consul.

  “But I type with only two fingers,” he stammers.

  “I type with one and I’m a minister,” says Roa, putting an end to the matter.

  1963: Havana

  Portrait of the Bureaucrat

  A black time engenders a red time that will make possible a green time: Solidarity slowly replaces greed and fear. Because it is capable of invention, of creation and madness, the Cuban revolution is making out. But it has enemies to spare. Among those most to be feared is the bureaucrat, devastating as the hurricane, asphyxiating as imperialism. There is no revolution without this germ in its belly.

  The bureaucrat is the wooden man, that bloodless error of the gods, neither decisive nor indecisive, an echo with no voice, a transmitter of orders, not ideas. He considers any doubt heresy, any contradiction treason; confuses unity with unanimity, and sees the people as an eternal child to be led by the ear.

  It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he’ll put his job on the line.

  1963: Havana

  Bola de Nieve

  “This is Yoruba-Marxism-Leninism,” says Bola de Nieve, singer of Cuanabacoa, son of Domingo the cook and Mama Inés. He says it in a sort of murmur, in his enormous little hoarse, fleshy voice. Yoruba-Marxism-Leninism is the name Bola de Nieve gives to the ardor and jubilation of these people who dance the Internationale with swaying hips, in this revolution born of the fierce embrace of Europe and Africa on the sands of America. In this place, gods made by men are crossed with men made by gods, the former descending to earth, the latter launched to conquer heaven; and Bola de Nieve celebrates it all with his salty songs.

  1963: Río Coco

  On His Shoulders He Carries the Embrace of Sandino,

  which time has not obliterated. Thirty years later, Colonel Santos López returns to war in the northern forests, so that Nicaragua may be.

  A few years ago, the Sandinista Front was born. Carlos Fonseca Amador and Tomás Borge gave it birth along with Santos López and others who’d never known Sandino but wanted to perpetuate him.

  The job will cost them blood, and they know it: “So much filth can’t be washed with water, no matter how holy,” says Carlos Fonseca.

  Lost, weaponless, drenched by the eternal rain, with nothing to eat—but eaten up, fucked over, and frustrated—the guerrillas wander the forest. There is no worse moment than sunset. Day is day and night is night, but dusk is the hour of agony, of frightful loneliness, and the Sandinistas are nothing yet, or nearly nothing.

  (58 and 267)

  1963: San Salvador

  Miguel at Fifty-Eight

  Miguel is living, as usual, from hand to mouth, unionizing campesinos and making mischief, when the police catch him in some little town and haul him, hands and feet bound, into the city of San Salvador.

  Here he gets a protracted beating. For eight days they beat him hung up, and for eight nights they beat him on the floor. His bones creak, his flesh cries out, but he utters no sound as they torture him for his secrets. Yet when the captain insults the people he loves, the defiant old man heaves up his bleeding remains; the plucked rooster lifts his crest and crows.

  Miguel orders the captain to shut his swinish trap. The captain buries a revolver barrel in his neck. Miguel defies him to shoot. The two remain face to face, ferocious, both gasping as if blowing on embers: the soldier, finger on trigger, eyes fixed on Miguel’s; Miguel unblinking, counting the seconds, the centuries, as they pass, listening to the pounding of his heart as it rises into his head. Miguel gives himself up for dead now, really dead, when suddenly a shadow dims the furious glitter of the torturer’s eyes, a weariness, or who knows what, and Miguel takes those eyes by storm. The torturer blinks, as if surprised to be where he is. Slowly, he lowers the gun, and with it, his eyes.

  And so occurs the eleventh birth of Miguel Mármol, at fifty-eight years of age.

  (222)

  1963: Dallas

  The Government Decides That Truth Doesn’t Exist

  At noon, on a street in Dallas, the president of the United States is assassinated. He is hardly dead when the official version is broadcast. In that version, which will be the definitive one, Lee Harvey Oswald alone has killed John Kennedy.

  The weapon does not coincide with the bullet, nor the bullet with the holes. The accused does not coincide with the accusation: Oswald is an exceptionally bad shot of mediocre physique, but according to the official version, his acts were those of a champion marksman and Olympic sprinter. He has fired an old rifle with impossible speed and his magic bullet, turning and twisting acrobatically to penetrate Kennedy and John Connally, the governor of Texas, remains miraculously intact.

  Oswald strenuously denies it. But no one knows, no one will ever know what he has to say. Two days later he collapses before the television cameras, the whole world witness to the spectacle, his mouth shut by Jack Ruby, a two-bit gangster and minor trafficker in women and drugs. Ruby says he has avenged Kennedy out of patriotism and pity for the poor widow.

  (232)

  1963: Santo Domingo

  A Chronicle of Latin American Customs

  From the sands of Sosúa, he used to swim out to sea, with a band playing to scare off the sharks.

  Now, General Toni Imbert, potbellied and slack, rarely goes into the water; but he still returns to the beach of his childhood. He likes to sit on the waterfront, take aim, and shoot sharks. In Sosúa, the sharks compete with the poor for the leftovers from the slaughterhou
se. General Imbert is sorry for the poor. From the beach, he throws ten-dollar bills at them.

  General Imbert greatly resembles his bosom friend, General Wessin y Wessin. Even with a cold, both can smell a Communist a mile off; and both have won many medals for getting up early and killing shackled people. When they say “el presidente,” both refer to the president of the United States.

  Dominican graduates of the U.S. School of the Americas in Panama, Generals Imbert and Wessin y Wessin both fattened up under Trujillo’s protection. Then both betrayed him. When, after Trujillo’s death, elections were held and the people voted en masse for Juan Bosch, they could not stand still. Bosch refused to buy planes for the Air Force, announced agrarian reform, supported a divorce law, and raised wages.

  The red lasted seven months. Imbert, Wessin y Wessin, and other generals of the nation have recovered power, that rich honeycomb, in an easy barracks revolt at dawn.

  The United States loses no time recognizing the new government.

  (61 and 281)

  1964: Panama

  Twenty-Three Boys Are Pumped Full of Lead

  when they try to hoist the flag of Panama on Panamanian soil.

  “We only used bird-shot,” the commander of the North American occupation forces says defensively.

  Another flag flies over the strip that slits Panama from sea to sea. Another law prevails, another police keep watch, another language is spoken. Panamanians may not enter the Canal Zone without permission, even to pick up fallen fruit from a mango tree, and they work here at second-class pay, like blacks and women.

  The Canal Zone, North American colony, is both a business and a military base. The School of the Americas’ courses are financed with the tolls ships pay. In the Canal Zone barracks, Pentagon officers teach anticommunist surgery to Latin American military men who will soon, in their own countries, occupy presidencies, ministries, commands, and embassies.

  “They are the leaders of the future,” explains Robert McNamara, secretary of defense of the United States.

  Wary of the cancer that lies in wait for them, these military men will cut off the hands of anyone who dares to commit agrarian reform or nationalization, and tear out the tongues of the impudent or the inquisitive.

  (248)

  1964: Rio de Janeiro

  “There are dark clouds,”

  says Lincoln Cordon:

  “Dark clouds are closing in on our economic interests in Brazil…”

  President João Goulart has just introduced agrarian reform, the nationalization of oil refineries, and an end to the flight of capital. The indignant ambassador of the United States loudly attacks him. From the embassy, rivers of money flow to pollute public opinion, and the military prepare to seize power. A shrill call for a coup d’état is publicized by the media. Even the Lions Club signs it.

  Ten years after Vargas’s suicide the same furor erupts again, several times stronger. Politicians and journalists call for a uniformed Messiah who can put some order into the chaos. The TV broadcasts a film showing Berlin walls cutting Brazilian cities in two. Newspapers and radios exalt the virtues of private capital, which turns deserts into oases, and the merits of the armed forces, who keep Communists from stealing the water. Down the avenues of the chief cities the March of the Family with God for Liberty pleads to heaven for mercy.

  Ambassador Lincoln Gordon excoriates the Communist plot: Goulart, estancia owner, is betraying his class at the moment of choice between devourers and devoured, between the makers and the objects of opinions, between the freedom of money and the freedom of people.

  (115 and 141)

  1964: Juiz de Fora

  The Reconquest of Brazil

  Almost thirty years after Captain Olympio Mourão Filho fabricated a Communist plot at the orders of President Vargas, General Mourão Filho buys a Communist plot fabricated by Ambassador Lincoln Cordon. The modest general confesses that in political matters he is just a uniformed ox, but he does understand about Communist conspiracies.

  In the Juiz de Fora barracks he raises his sword: “I’ll snatch Brazil from the abyss!”

  Mourão has been awake since before dawn. While shaving he recites the psalm of David, the one that declares that all verdure will perish. Then he eats breakfast, congratulates his wife on being married to a hero, and at the head of his troops sets out to march on Rio de Janeiro.

  The rest of the generals fall into line, and from the United States, already heading for Brazil, come one aircraft carrier, numerous planes and warships, and four fuel-supply ships. It’s “Operation Brother Sam,” to assist the rising.

  João Goulart, irresolute, watches it happen. His colleague Lyndon Johnson sends warmest approval to the authors of the coup, even though Goulart still occupies the presidency; the State Department immediately offers generous loans to the new government. From the south, Leonel Brizola’s attempt at resistance produces no echo. At last, Goulart heads into exile.

  Some anonymous hand writes on a wall in Rio de Janeiro: “No more middlemen! Lincoln Gordon for president!”

  But the triumphant generals choose Marshall Castelo Branco, a solemn military man without a sense of humor or a neck.

  (115, 141, and 307)

  1964: La Paz

  Without Shame or Glory,

  like the president of Brazil, President Victor Paz Estenssoro boards a plane that will take him into exile.

  He leaves behind him René Barrientos, babbling aviator, as dictator of Bolivia. Now the U.S. ambassador participates in cabinet meetings, seated among the ministers, and the manager of Gulf Oil draws up economic decrees.

  Paz Estenssoro had been left devastatingly alone, and along with him falls the national revolution after twelve years in power. Bit by bit the revolution had turned around until it had shown its back to the workers, the better to suckle the new rich and the bureaucrats who squeezed it dry. Now, a slight puff suffices to blow it over.

  Meanwhile, the divided workers fight among themselves, as if they were Laime and Jucumani tribesmen.

  (16, 17, 26, and 473)

  1964: North of Potosí

  With Savage Fury

  the Laime Indians fight the Jucumanis. The poorest of poor Bolivia, pariahs among pariahs, they devote themselves to killing one another on the frozen steppe north of Potosí. Five hundred from both tribes have died in the past ten years; the burned huts are beyond counting. Battles continue for weeks, without letup or mercy. The Indians cut one another to pieces to avenge petty grievances or disputes over scraps of sterile land in these lofty solitudes to which they were banished long, long ago.

  Laimes and Jucumanis live on potatoes and barley, all the steppe with great effort will yield them. They sleep on sheepskins, accompanied by lice that welcome the warmth of their bodies.

  For the ceremonies of mutual extermination they cover their heads with rawhide caps in the exact shape of the conquistadors’ helmets.

  (180)

  Hats

  in today’s Bolivia are descended from Europe, brought by conquistadors and merchants; but they have been adapted to belong to this land and this people. Originally they were like cattle brands, compulsory disguises that helped each Spanish master recognize the Indians he owned. As time passed, communities began to deck out their headgear with their own stamps of pride, symbols of joy: stars and little moons of silver, colored feathers, glass beads, paper flowers, crowns of corn … Later, the English flooded Bolivia with bowlers and top hats: the black stovepipe hat of the Potosí Indian women, the white one of those of Cochabamba. By some mistake, the borsalino hat arrived from Italy and settled down on the heads of La Paz’s Indian women.

  The Bolivian Indian, man or woman, boy or girl, may go barefoot, but never hatless. The hat prolongs the head it protects; and when the soul falls, the hat picks it up off the ground.

  (161)

  1965: San Juan, Puerto Rico

  Bosch

  People stream into the streets of Santo Domingo, armed with whatever t
hey can find, and pitch themselves against the tanks. “Thieves, get out!” they yell. “Come back, Juan Bosch, our president!”

  The United States holds Bosch prisoner in Puerto Rico, preventing his return to his country in flames. A man of strong fiber, all tendon and tension, Bosch, alone in his anger, bites his fists, and his blue eyes pierce walls.

  A journalist asks him over the phone if he is an enemy of the United States. No, he is only an enemy of U.S. imperialism.

  “No one who has read Mark Twain,” says Bosch, “can be an enemy of the United States.”

  (62 and 269)

  1965: Santo Domingo

  Caamaño

  Into the melee pour students, soldiers, women in hair curlers. With barricades of barrels and overturned trucks, the rumbling advance of the tanks is stopped. Stones and bottles fly, while from the wingtips of swooping planes machinegun fire sweeps the Ozama River bridge and the thronged streets. The tide of people rises, and rising, separates the soldiers who had formerly served Trujillo: on one side, those commanded by Imbert and Wessin y Wessin, who are shooting people; on the other, the followers of Francisco Caamaño, who break open the arsenals and begin distributing rifles.

  This morning, Colonel Caamaño set off the uprising for Bosch’s return, believing it would be a matter of minutes. By midday, he realized it was a long job, that he would have to confront his comrades-in-arms, that blood was flowing; and had a horrifying presentiment of national tragedy. At nightfall he sought asylum in the Salvadoran embassy.