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

by Eduardo Galeano

But for Argentines the dangerous wind of change refuses to die down. The military see the threat of social revolution peeking out of every door and prepare to save the nation. They have been saving the nation for nearly half a century; and more recently, in courses in Panama, have found support in the Doctrine of National Security, which confirms for them that the enemy is within. Certain finishing touches are added to the next coup d’état. The program of national purification will be applied by every means: This is a war, a war against the children of Evita and Marx, and in war the only sin is inefficiency.

  (106, 107, and 134)

  1976: Madrid

  Onetti

  He doesn’t expect to find any messages in any bottles in any sea. But the despairing Juan Carlos Onetti refuses to be alone. He would be alone, of course, if it weren’t for the inhabitants of the town of Santa María, sad like himself, invented by him to keep him company.

  Onetti has lived in Madrid since he came out of prison. The military rulers of Uruguay had jailed him because a story to which he had given a prize in a competition he was judging was not to their liking.

  Hands clasped behind his neck, the exile contemplates the damp stains on the ceiling of his room in Santa María or Madrid or Montevideo or who knows where. From time to time he picks himself up and writes shouts that only seem like whispers.

  1976: San José

  A Country Stripped of Words

  President Aparicio Méndez declares that the Democratic Party of the United States and the Kennedy family are sedition’s best partners in Uruguay. A journalist tapes this sensational revelation, in the presence of the bishop of the city of San José and other witnesses.

  Aparicio Méndez was chosen president in an election in which twenty-two citizens voted: fourteen generals, five brigadiers, and three admirals. The military have forbidden their president to talk to journalists, to anyone, in fact, except his wife. For this particular indiscretion they punish the newspaper that publishes his declaration with two days’ suspension; and the journalist is fired.

  Before silencing their president, the military took the reasonable precaution of silencing the rest of Uruguay. Every word that is not a lie is subversive. No one may mention any of the thousands of politicians, trade unionists, artists, and scientists who have been placed outside the law. The word guerrilla is officially banned; instead, one must say lowlife, criminal, delinquent, or evildoer. Carnival musicians, typically cheeky and disrespectful, may not sing the words agrarian reform, sovereignty, hunger, clandestine, dove, green, summer, or contracanto. Nor may they sing the word pueblo, even when it means a small city.

  In the kingdom of silence the chief jail for political prisoners is called Liberty. The prisoners, held in isolation, invent codes to speak without voices, knocking on the walls from cell to cell to form letters and words so they can continue liking and teasing each other.

  (124 and 235)

  A Uruguayan Political Prisoner, Mauricio Rosencof, Says His Piece

  It is like the struggle of a man who resists being turned into a cow. Because they put us in a cow-making machine and told us that instead of talking we should moo. And that is the question: How a prisoner can resist being animalized in such a situation. It is a battle for dignity … There was one compañero who got hold of a bit of sugarcane, bored a hole in it with his fingernail, and made a flute. And this clumsy, rudimentary thing stammers a sort of music …

  (394)

  1976: Liberty

  Forbidden Birds

  The Uruguayan political prisoners may not talk without permission, or whistle, smile, sing, walk fast, or greet other prisoners; nor may they make or receive drawings of pregnant women, couples, butterflies, stars, or birds.

  One Sunday, Didaskó Pérez, school teacher, tortured and jailed for having ideological ideas, is visited by his daughter Milay, age five. She brings him a drawing of birds. The guards destroy it at the entrance to the jail.

  On the following Sunday, Milay brings him a drawing of trees. Trees are not forbidden, and the drawing gets through. Didaskó praises her work and asks about the colored circles scattered in the treetops, many small circles half-hidden among the branches: “Are they oranges? What fruit is it?”

  The child puts a finger on his mouth. “Ssssshhh.”

  And she whispers in his ear: “Silly. Don’t you see they’re eyes? They’re the eyes of the birds that I’ve smuggled in for you.”

  (204 and 459)

  1976: Montevideo

  Seventy-Five Methods of Torture,

  some copied, others invented thanks to the creativity of the Uruguayan military, punish solidarity. Anyone doubting property rights or the law of obedience ends up in jail, grave, or exile. The danger-meter classifies citizens in three categories, A, B, or C, according to whether they are “dangerous,” “potentially dangerous,” or “not dangerous.” Trade unions become police stations, and wages are cut in half. Whoever thinks or has ever thought loses his or her job. In primary schools, high schools, even the university, speaking of José Artigas’s agrarian reform program is prohibited. Who cares if it was the first in America? Nothing is allowed to contradict this order of the deaf and dumb. Obligatory new texts impose military pedagogy on the students.

  (235)

  1976: Montevideo

  “One Must Obey,” the New Official Texts Teach Uruguayan Students

  The existence of political parties is not essential for a democracy. We have the clear example of the Vatican, where political parties do not exist and nevertheless there is a real democracy …

  The equality of women, badly interpreted, means stimulating her sex and her intellectuality, while postponing her mission as mother and wife. If from the juridical standpoint man and woman are evidently equal, such is not the case from the biological standpoint. The woman as such is subject to her husband and hence owes him obedience. It is necessary that in any society there be a head who serves as guide, and the family is a society …

  It is necessary for some to obey in order that others may exercise command. If no one obeyed, it would be impossible to rule …

  (76)

  1976: Montevideo

  The Head Shrinkers

  Dedicated to the prohibition of reality and the arson of memory, the Uruguayan military have beaten the world record for newspaper closures.

  The weekly Marcha, after a long life, has ceased to be. One of its editors, Julio Castro, has been tortured to death, then disappeared—a dead man without a corpse. The other editors have been sentenced to prison, exile, or silence.

  One night Hugo Alfaro, a movie critic condemned to wordlessness, sees a film that excites him. As soon as it ends he runs home and types a few pages, in a big hurry because it’s late and Marcha closes its entertainment pages in the early hours. As he pecks out the last period, Alfaro suddenly realizes that Marcha hasn’t existed for two years. Ashamed, he drops his review in a desk drawer.

  This review, written for no one, deals with a Joseph Losey film set during the Nazi occupation of France, a film which shows how the machinery of repression grinds up not just the persecuted but also those who think they are safe, those who know what is happening, and even those who prefer not to know.

  Meanwhile, on the River Plata’s other bank, the Argentine military make their own coup d’état. One of the heads of the new dictatorship, General Ibérico Saint-Jean, clarifies things: “First we’ll kill all the subversives. Then we’ll kill the collaborators. Then the sympathizers. Then the undecided. And finally, we’ll kill the indifferent.”

  (13 and 106)

  1976: La Perla

  The Third World War

  From the top of a hill, on a chestnut mount, an Argentine gaucho looks on. José Julián Solanille sees a long military caravan approaching. He recognizes General Ménendez dismounting from a Ford Falcon. Out of trucks, shoved by clubs, tumble men and women, hoods over their heads, hands tied behind their backs. The gaucho sees one of the hooded ones make a break for it. He hears the shots.
The fugitive falls, gets up, and falls, several times before falling for the last time. When the fusillade begins, men and women collapse like rag dolls. The gaucho spurs his horse and takes off. Behind him black smoke rises.

  This valley, in the first undulations of the Córdoba sierra, is one of the many dumps for corpses. When it rains, smoke drifts up from the pits because of the quicklime they throw on the bodies.

  In this holy war, the victims disappear. Those not swallowed by the earth are devoured by fish at the bottoms of rivers or the sea. Many have committed no greater crimes than appearing on a list of phone numbers. They march into nothingness, into the fog, into death, after torture in the barracks. No one is innocent, says Monseñor Plaza, bishop of La Plata, and General Camps says it is right to liquidate a hundred suspects if only five of them turn out to be guilty. Guilty of terrorism.

  Terrorists, explains General Videla, are not only those who plant bombs, but also those who act with ideas contrary to our Western and Christian civilization. This is vengeance for the defeat of the West in Vietnam:

  “We are winning the Third World War,” crows General Menéndez.

  (100, 107, and 134)

  1976: Buenos Aires

  The Choice

  One prisoner, pregnant, is offered the choice between rape or the electric prod. She chooses the prod, but after an hour can no longer endure the pain. They all rape her. As they rape her, they sing the Wedding March.

  “Well, this is war,” says Monseñor Gracelli.

  The men who burn breasts with blowtorches in the barracks wear scapulars and take communion every Sunday.

  “Above us all is God,” says General Videla.

  Monseñor Tortolo, president of the Episcopate, compares General Videla with Jesus Christ, and the military dictatorship with the Easter Resurrection. In the name of the Holy Father, nuncio Pío Laghi visits the extermination camps, exalts the military’s love of God, Fatherland, and Family, and justifies state terrorism on the grounds that civilization has the right to defend itself.

  (106, 107, and 134)

  1976: La Plata

  Bent over the Ruins, a Woman Looks

  for something in her home that has not been destroyed. The forces of order have shattered María Isabel de Mariani’s home, and she pokes through the remains in vain. What they have not stolen, they have pulverized. Only one record, Verdi’s Requiem, is intact.

  María Isabel would like to find in the litter some memento of her children and of her granddaughter, a photo or toy, book, ashtray, anything. Her children, suspected of running a clandestine press, have been gunned down. Her three-month-old granddaughter has been given away or sold as war booty by the officers.

  It is summer, and the smell of gunpowder mixes with the aroma of flowering lindens. That aroma will forever be unbearable. María Isabel has no one to be with. She is the mother of subversives. Seeing her coming, her friends cross the street or avert their eyes. Her telephone is silent. No one tells her anything, even lies. Without help she proceeds to put the shreds of her destroyed home in boxes. Well after nightfall she pulls the boxes onto the sidewalk. Very early in the morning the garbage men collect the boxes, one by one, gently, without knocking them over. The garbage men treat the boxes with great care, as if aware they are full of the bits of a broken life. Silently peering through the remains of a venetian blind, María Isabel thanks them for this caress, the only one she has had since the sorrow began.

  (317)

  1976: Forest of Zinica

  Carlos

  He criticized you to your face, praised you behind your back.

  He had the myopic, fanatical gaze of an angry rooster, sharp brown eyes from which he saw farther than others, a man of all or nothing; but moments of joy made him jump like a small child, and when he gave orders he seemed to be asking favors.

  Carlos Fonseca Amador, leader of the Nicaraguan revolution, has died fighting in the jungle.

  A colonel brings the news to the cell where Tomás Borge lies shattered.

  Together they had traveled a long road, Carlos and Tomás, since the days when Carlos sold newspapers and candy in Matagalpa. Together they founded, in Tegucigalpa, the Sandinista Front.

  “He’s dead,” says the colonel.

  “You’re wrong, colonel,” says Tomás.

  (58)

  1977: Managua

  Tomás

  Bound to an iron ring, teeth chattering, drenched in shit, blood, and vomit, Tomás Borge is a pile of broken bones and stripped nerves, a scrap lying on the floor waiting for the next round of torture.

  But this remnant of himself can still sail down secret rivers that take him beyond pain and madness. Letting himself go, he drifts into another Nicaragua. He sees it.

  Through the hood that squeezes his face swollen by blows, he sees it: He counts the beds in each hospital, the windows in each school, the trees in each park, and sees the sleepers fluttering their eyelids, bewildered, those long dead from hunger and everything else that kills now being awakened by newly born suns.

  (58)

  1977: Solentiname Archipelago

  Cardenal

  The herons, looking at themselves in the shimmering mirror, lift their beaks. The fishermen’s boats are already returning, and behind them swim the turtles that come here to give birth on the beach.

  In a wooden cabin, Jesus is seated at the fishermen’s table. He eats turtle eggs, fresh-caught guapote, and cassava. The forest, searching for him, slips its arms through the windows.

  To the glory of this Jesus, Ernesto Cardenal, the poet-monk of Solentiname, writes. To his glory sings the trumpeter zanate, the homeless bird, always flying among the poor, that freshens its wings in the lake waters. And to his glory the fishermen paint. They paint brilliant pictures that announce Paradise—all brothers, no bosses, no peons—until one night the fishermen who paint Paradise decide to start making it, and cross the lake to attack the San Carlos barracks.

  From the darkness, the owl promises trouble: “Screwed … screwed …”

  The dictatorship kills many as these seekers of Paradise pass through the mountains and valleys and islands of Nicaragua. The dough rises, the big loaf swells …

  (6 and 77)

  Omar Cabezas Tells of the Mountain’s Mourning for the Death of a Guerrilla in Nicaragua

  I never forgave Tello for being killed with one bullet, just one bullet … I felt a great fear, and it was as if the mountain, too, felt fear. The wind dropped and the trees stopped swaying, not a leaf stirred, the birds stopped singing. Everything froze, awaiting that moment when they’d come and kill the lot of us.

  And we set out. When we broke into a marching pace up the ravine, it was as if we were shaking the mountain, as if we were grabbing her and telling her: Who the hell does this bitch think she is?

  Tello lived with the mountain. I’m convinced he had relations with her, she bore him sons; and when Tello died she felt that all was over, her commitment was gone, that all the rest was foolishness … But when she saw the will to fight of the men marching there over her, in her heart she realized that Tello was not the beginning and end of the world. Though Tello may have been her son, though he may have been her life, her secret lover, her brother, her creature, her stone, though Tello may have been her river … he was not the end of the world, and that after him came all of us who could still light a fire in her heart.

  (73)

  1977: Brasília

  Scissors

  Over a thousand Brazilian intellectuals sign a manifesto against censorship.

  In July of last year, the military dictatorship stopped the weekly Movimiento from publishing the United States Declaration of Independence, because in it is said that the people have the right and the duty to abolish despotic governments. Since then the censorship has banned: the Bolshoi Ballet, because it is Russian; the erotic prints of Pablo Picasso, because they are erotic; and the History of Surrealism, because one of its chapters has the word revolution in its title (“Rev
olution in Poetry”).

  (371)

  1977: Buenos Aires

  Walsh

  He mails a letter and several copies. The original letter, to the military junta that rules Argentina. The copies, to foreign press agencies. On the first anniversary of the coup d’état, he is sending a sort of statement of grievances, a record of the infamies committed by a regime that can only stagger in its dance of death. At the bottom he puts his signature and number (Rodolfo Walsh, I.D. 2845022). He is only steps from the post office when their bullets cut him down; and he is carried off wounded, not to be seen again.

  His naked words were scandalous where such fear reigns, dangerous while the great masked ball continues.

  (461)

  1977: Río Cuarto

  The Burned Books of Walsh and Other Authors Are Declared Nonexistent

  IN VIEW OF the measure taken by the ex-Military Intervention of this National University in fulfillment of express superior orders, with respect to withdrawing from the Library Area all reading material of an antisocial nature and whose contents exuded ideologies alien to the Argentine National Being, constituting a source of extreme Marxist and subversive indoctrination, and

  WHEREAS: Said literature having been opportunely incinerated, it is fitting to strike it from the patrimony of this House of Advanced Studies, the Rector of the National University of Rio Cuarto

  RESOLVES: To strike from the patrimony of the National University of Río Cuarto (Library Area) all the bibliography listed below: [Long list follows of books by Rodolfo Walsh, Bertrand Russell, Wilhelm Dilthey, Maurice Dobb, Karl Marx, Paulo Freire, and others].

  (452)