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

by Eduardo Galeano

  1983: Mérida

  The People Set God on His Feet,

  and the people know that to stand up in the world, God needs their help.

  Every year, the child Jesus is born in Mérida and elsewhere in Venezuela. Choristers sing to the strains of violins, mandolins, and guitars, while the godparents gather up in a big cloth the child lying in the manger—delicate task, serious business—and take him for a walk.

  The godparents walk the child through the streets. The kings and shepherds follow, and the crowd throws flowers and kisses. After such a warm welcome into the world, the godparents put Jesus back in the manger where Mary and Joseph are waiting for him.

  Then, in the name of the community, the godparents stand him up for the first time, and make sure he remains upright between his parents. Finally the rosary is sung and all present get a little cake of the old-fashioned kind with twelve egg yolks, and some sweet mistela wine.

  (463)

  1983: Managua

  Newsreel

  In a Managua barrio, a woman has given birth to a hen, according to the Nicaraguan daily La Prensa. Sources close to the ecclesiastical hierarchy do not deny that this extraordinary event may be a sign of God’s anger. The behavior of the crowd before the Pope may have exhausted the Divine Patience, these sources believe.

  Back in 1981, two miracles with equally broad repercussions occurred in Nicaragua. The Virgin of Cuapa made a spectacular appearance that year in the fields of Chontales. Barefoot, crowned with stars, and enveloped in a glowing aura that blinded witnesses, the Virgin made declarations to a sacristan named Bernardo. The Mother of God expressed her support for President Reagan’s policies against atheistic, Communist-inspired Sandinismo.

  Shortly afterward, the Virgin of the Conception sweated and wept copiously for several days in a Managua house. The archbishop, Monseñor Obando, appeared before his altar and exhorted the faithful to pray for the forgiveness of the Most Pure. The Virgin of the Conception’s emanations stopped only when the police discovered that the owners of the plaster image were submerging it in water and shutting it in a refrigerator at night so that it would perspire when exposed to the intense local heat, before the crowd of pilgrims.

  1984: The Vatican

  The Holy Office of the Inquisition

  now bears the more discreet name of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It no longer burns heretics alive, although it might like to. Its chief headache these days comes from America. In the name of the Holy Father, the inquisitors summon Latin American theologians Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Gutiérrez, and the Vatican sharply reprimands them for lacking respect for the Church of Fear.

  The Church of Fear, opulent multinational enterprise, devotee of pain and death, is anxious to nail on a cross any son of a carpenter of the breed that now circulates within America’s coasts inciting fishermen and defying empires.

  1984: London

  Gold and Frankincense

  Top officials of the United States, Japan, West Germany, England, France, Italy, and Canada, forgather at Lancaster House to congratulate the organization that guarantees the freedom of money. The seven powers of the capitalist world unanimously applaud the work of the International Monetary Fund in the developing countries.

  The congratulations do not mention the executioners, torturers, inquisitors, jailers, and informers who are the functionaries of the Fund in these developing countries.

  A Circular Symphony for Poor Countries, in Six Successive Movements

  So that labor may be increasingly obedient and cheap, the poor countries need legions of executioners, torturers, inquisitors, jailers, and informers.

  To feed and arm these legions, the poor countries need loans from the rich countries.

  To pay the interest on these loans, the poor countries need more loans.

  To pay the interest on the loans on top of loans, the poor countries need to increase their exports.

  To increase their exports, products condemned to perpetually collapsing prices, the poor countries need to lower production costs.

  To lower production costs, the poor countries need increasingly obedient and cheap labor.

  To make labor increasingly obedient and cheap, the poor countries need legions of executioners, torturers, inquisitors …

  1984: Washington

  1984

  The U.S. State Department decides to suppress the word murder in its reports on violations of human rights in Latin America and other regions. Instead of murder, one must say: illegal or arbitrary deprivation of life.

  For some time now, the CIA has avoided the word murder in its manuals on practical terrorism. When the CIA murders an enemy or has him murdered, it neutralizes him.

  The State Department calls any war forces it lands south of its borders peace-keeping forces; and the killers who fight to restore its business interests in Nicaragua freedom fighters.

  (94)

  1984: Washington

  We Are All Hostages

  Nicaragua and other insolent countries still act as if unaware that history has been ordered not to budge, under pain of total destruction of the world.

  “We will not tolerate …” warns President Reagan.

  Above the clouds hover the nuclear bombers. Farther up, the military satellites. Beneath the earth and beneath the sea, the missiles. The Earth still rotates because the great powers permit it to do so. A plutonium bomb the size of an orange would suffice to explode the entire planet, and a good-size discharge of radiation could turn it into a desert populated by cockroaches.

  President Reagan says Saint Luke (14:31) advises increasing military funding to confront the Communist hordes. The economy is militarized; weapons shoot money to buy weapons to shoot money. They manufacture arms, hamburgers, and fear. There is no better business than the sale of fear. The president announces, jubilantly, the militarization of the stars.

  (430)

  1984: São Paulo

  Twenty Years after the Reconquest of Brazil

  The last president of the military dictatorship, General Figueiredo, leaves the government to civilians.

  When they ask him what he would do if he were a worker earning the minimum wage, General Figueiredo replies: “I would put a bullet through my head.”

  Brazil suffers a famished prosperity. Among countries selling food to the world, it stands in fourth place; among countries suffering hunger in the world, sixth place. Now Brazil exports arms and automobiles as well as coffee, and produces more steel than France; but Brazilians are shorter and weigh less than they did twenty years ago.

  Millions of homeless children wander the streets of cities like São Paulo, hunting for food. Buildings are turning into fortresses, doormen into armed guards. Every citizen is either an assailant or assailed.

  (371)

  1984: Guatemala City

  Thirty Years after the Reconquest of Guatemala,

  the Bank of the Army is the country’s most important, after the Bank of America. Generals take turns in power, overthrowing each other, transforming dictatorship into dictatorship; but all apply the same policy of land seizure against the Indians guilty of inhabiting areas rich in oil, nickel, or whatever else turns out to be of value.

  These are no longer the days of United Fruit, but rather of Getty Oil, Texaco, and the International Nickel Company. The generals wipe out many Indian communities wholesale and expel even more from their lands. Multitudes of hungry Indians, stripped of everything, wander the mountains. They come from horror, but they are not going to horror. They walk slowly, guided by the ancient certainty that someday greed and arrogance will be punished. That’s what the old people of corn assure the children of corn in the stories they tell them when night falls.

  (367 and 450)

  1984: Rio de Janeiro

  Mishaps of Collective Memory in Latin America

  Public accountant João David dos Santos jumped for joy when he managed to collect his many overdue accounts. Only payment in kind, but som
ething. For lack of funds, a social science research center paid him its whole library of nine thousand books and over five thousand magazines and pamphlets devoted to contemporary Brazilian history. It contained very valuable material on the peasant leagues of the Northeast and the Getulio Vargas administration, among other subjects.

  Then accountant dos Santos put the library up for sale. He offered it to cultural organizations, historical institutes, and various ministries. No one had the money. He tried universities, state and private, one after another. No takers. He left the library on loan at one university for a few months, until they started demanding rent. Then he tried private citizens. No one showed the slightest interest. The nation’s history is an enigma, a lie, or a yawn.

  The unhappy accountant dos Santos feels great relief when he finally succeeds in selling his library to the Tijuca Paper Factory, which turns all these books, magazines, and pamphlets into tinted toilet paper.

  (371)

  1984: Mexico City

  Against Forgetting,

  the only death that really kills, Carlos Quijano wrote what he wrote. This grouch and troublemaker was born in Montevideo as the century was born, and dies in exile, as Uruguay’s military dictatorship is falling. He dies at work, preparing a new Mexican edition of his magazine Marcha.

  Quijano celebrated contradictions. Heresy for others to him was a sign of life. He condemned imperialism, humiliator of nations and multitudes, and proclaimed that Latin America is destined to create a socialism worthy of the hopes of its prophets.

  (356)

  1984: Mexico City

  The Resurrection of the Living

  The Mexicans make a custom of eating death, a sugar or chocolate skeleton dripping with colored caramel. In addition to eating it, they sing it, dance it, drink it, and sleep it. Sometimes, to mock power and money, the people dress death in a monocle and frock coat, epaulettes and medals, but they prefer it stripped naked, racy, a bit drunk, their companion on festive outings.

  Day of the Living, this Day of the Dead should be called, although on reflection it’s all the same, because whatever comes goes and whatever goes comes, and in the last analysis the beginning of what begins is always the end of what ends.

  “My grandfather is so tiny because he was born after me,” says a child who knows what he’s talking about.

  1984: Estelí

  Believing

  They preside over childbirth. Giving life and light is their profession. With practiced hands they straighten the child if it’s coming out wrong, and communicate strength and peace to the mother.

  Today, the midwives of the Estelí villages and mountains close to Nicaragua’s border are having a party to celebrate something that truly deserves joy: For a year now not one new baby in this region has died of tetanus. The midwives no longer cut umbilical cords with a machete, or burn them with tallow, or tie them off without disinfectant; and pregnant women get vaccines that protect the child living inside. Now no one here believes that vaccines are Russian witches’ brews meant to turn Christians into Communists; and no one, or almost no one, believes that a newborn can die from the fixed stare of a drunken man or a menstruating woman.

  This region, this war zone, suffers continuous harassment by the invaders.

  “Here, we are in the alligator’s mouth.”

  Many mothers go off to fight. The ones who stay share their breasts.

  1984: Havana

  Miguel at Seventy-Nine

  Since the dawn of the century, this man has gone through hell and died several times over. Now, from exile, he still energetically accompanies his people in their war.

  The dawn light always finds him up, shaved and conspiring. He could just as easily keep turning in the revolving door of memory; but he doesn’t know how to be deaf when the voices of these new times and the roads he still hasn’t traveled call out to him.

  And so at seventy-nine every day is a new birth for Miguel Mármol, old master of the art of constant rebirth.

  1984: Paris

  The Echoes Go Searching for the Voice

  While writing words that loved people, Julio Cortázar was making his own journey, a journey backward through the tunnel of time. He was traveling from the end to the beginning, from discouragement to enthusiasm, from indifference to passion, from solitariness to solidarity. At almost seventy, he was a child of all ages at once.

  A bird that flew toward the egg, Cortázar went forward by going back, year after year, day after day, toward the embrace of lovers who make the love that makes them. And now he dies, now he enters the earth, like a man who, entering a woman, returns to the place he comes from.

  1984: Punta Santa Elena

  The Eternal Embrace

  They were found only recently in the wasteland that once was Zumpa beach in Ecuador. And here they are, in full sunlight, for anyone who wants to see: a man and a woman lying in embrace, sleeping lovers, out of eternity.

  Excavating an Indian cemetery, an archaeologist came upon this pair of skeletons bound together by love. It was eight thousand years ago that the lovers of Zumpa committed the irreverence of dying without separating themselves, and anyone who approaches can see that death does not cause them the slightest concern.

  Their splendid beauty is surprising, considering that they are such ugly bones in such an ugly desert, pure dryness and grayness; and more surprising is their modesty. These lovers, sleeping in the wind, seem not to have grasped that they have more mystery and grandeur than the pyramids of Teotihuacán or the sanctuary of Machu Picchu or the waterfalls of Iguazú.

  1984: Violeta Parra Community

  The Stolen Name

  The dictatorship of General Pinochet changes the names of twenty bone-poor communities, tin and cardboard houses, on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. In the rebaptism, the Violeta Parra community gets the name of some military hero. But its inhabitants refuse to bear this unchosen name. They are Violeta Parra or nothing.

  A while back they had decided in unanimous assembly to name themselves after the campesina singer with the raspy voice who in her songs of struggle knew how to celebrate Chile’s mysteries.

  Violeta was sinful and saucy, given to guitar-strumming and long talks and falling in love, and with all her dancing and clowning around she kept burning the empanadas. Thanks to life, which has given me so much, she sang in her last song; and a turbulent love affair sent her off to her death.

  (334 and 440)

  1984: Tepic

  The Found Name

  In the mountains of Nayarit in Mexico, there was a community that had no name. For centuries this community of Huichol Indians had been looking for a name. Carlos González found one by sheer accident.

  This Huichol had come to the city of Tepic to buy seeds and visit relatives. Crossing a garbage dump, he picked up a book thrown into the rubbish. It was years ago that Carlos had learned to read the Castilian language, and he could still just about manage it. Sitting in the shade of a projecting roof, he began to decipher the pages. The book spoke of a country with a strange name, which Carlos couldn’t place but which had to be far from Mexico, and told a story of recent occurrence.

  On the way home, walking up the mountain, Carlos continued reading. He couldn’t tear himself away from this story of horror and bravery. The central character of the book was a man who had kept his word. Arriving at the village, Carlos announced euphorically: “At last we have a name!”

  And he read the book aloud to everyone. This halting recital took him almost a week. Afterward, the hundred and fifty families voted. All in favor. Dancing and singing they performed the baptism.

  So finally they have a name for themselves. This community bears the name of a worthy man who did not doubt at the moment of choice between treachery and death.

  “I’m going to Salvador Allende,” the wayfarers say now.

  (466)

  1984: Bluefields

  Flying

  Deep root, lofty trunk, dense foliage: from the center
of the world rises a thornless tree, one of those trees that know how to give themselves to the birds. Around the tree whirl dancing couples, navel to navel, undulating to a music that wakens stones and sets fire to ice. As they dance, they dress and undress the tree with streaming ribbons of every color. On this tormented, continuously invaded, continuously bombarded coast of Nicaragua, the Maypole fiesta is celebrated as usual.

  The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the warm music spinning around it will never stop. However much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breathes them and the land plows and loves them.

  1986: Montevideo

  A Letter

  Cedric Belfrage

  Apartado Postal 630

  Cuernavaca, Morelos

  Mexico

  My Dear Cedric:

  Here goes the last volume of Memory of Fire. As you’ll see, it ends in 1984. Why not before, or after, I don’t know. Perhaps because that was the last year of my exile, the end of a cycle, the end of a century; or perhaps because the book and I know that the last page is also the first.

  Forgive me if it came out too long. Writing it was a joy for my hand; and now I feel more than ever proud of having been born in America, in this shit, in this marvel, during the century of the wind.

  No more now, because 1 don’t want to bury the sacred in palaver.

  Abrazos,

  Eduardo

  (End of the third volume of

  Memory of Fire.)