Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

  Feverishly he exhorts them to betray. He swears not to shut his mouth as long as his country is infected by the Marxist plague. For him all ambiguity has the ring of cowardice. First he accuses, then he investigates. He sells certainties to the vacillating and lashes out, knee to groin or knife to belly, at anyone who questions the right of private property or opposes war and business as usual.

  (395)

  1953: Seattle

  Robeson

  They bar him from traveling to Canada, or anywhere else. When some Canadians invite him to perform, Paul Robeson sings to them by telephone from Seattle, and by telephone he swears that he will stand firm as long as there is breath in his body.

  Robeson, grandson of slaves, believes that Africa is a source of pride and not a zoo run by Tarzan. A black with red ideas, friend of the yellows who are resisting the white invasion in Korea, he sings in the name of his insulted people and of all insulted peoples who by singing lift their heads; and he sings with a voice full of thundering heaven and quaking earth.

  (381)

  1953: Santiago de Cuba

  Fidel

  At dawn on July 26, a handful of youths attack the Moncada barracks. Armed with dignity and Cuban bravura and a few bird guns, they assault the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and half a century of colonization masquerading as a republic.

  A few die in battle, but more than seventy are finished off by the army after a week of torture. The torturers tear out the eyes of Abel Santamaría, among others.

  The rebel leader, taken prisoner, offers his defense plea. Fidel Castro has the look of a man who gives all of himself without asking anything in return. The judges listen to him in astonishment, missing not a word. His words are not, however, for the ones kissed by the gods; he speaks for the ones pissed on by the devils, and for them, and in their name, he explains what he has done.

  Fidel Castro claims the ancient right of rebellion against despotism: “This island will sink in the ocean before we will consent to be anybody’s slaves …”

  He tosses his head like a tree, accuses Batista and his officers of exchanging their uniforms for butchers’ aprons, and sets forth a program of revolution. In Cuba there could be food and work for all, and more to spare.

  “No, that is not inconceivable.”

  (90, 392, and 422)

  1953: Santiago de Cuba

  The Accused Turns Prosecutor and Announces: “History Will Absolve Me”

  What is inconceivable is that there should be men going to bed hungry while an inch of land remains unsown; what is inconceivable is that there should be children who die without medical care; that thirty percent of our campesinos cannot sign their names and ninety-nine percent don’t know the history of Cuba; that most families in our countryside should be living in worse conditions than the Indians Columbus found when he discovered the most beautiful land human eyes had ever seen …

  From such wretchedness it is only possible to free oneself by death; and in that the state does help them: to die. Ninety percent of rural children are devoured by parasites that enter from the soil through the toenails of their unshod feet.

  More than half of the best cultivated production lands are in foreign hands. In Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the United Fruit Company and the West Indian Company extend from the north coast to the south coast …

  Cuba continues to be a factory producing raw materials. Sugar is exported to import candies; leather exported to import shoes; iron exported to import plows …

  (90)

  1953: Boston

  United Fruit

  Throne of bananas, crown of bananas, a banana held like a scepter: Sam Zemurray, master of the lands and seas of the banana kingdom, did not believe it possible that his Guatemalan vassals could give him a headache. “The Indians are too ignorant for Marxism,” he used to say, and was applauded by his court at his royal palace in Boston, Massachusetts.

  Thanks to the successive decrees of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who governed surrounded by sycophants and spies, seas of slobber, forests of familiars; and of Jorge Ubico, who thought he was Napoleon but wasn’t, Guatemala has remained part of United Fruit’s vast dominion for half a century. In Guatemala United Fruit can seize whatever land it wants—enormous unused tracts—and owns the railroad, the telephone, the telegraph, the ports, and the ships, not to speak of soldiers, politicians, and journalists.

  Sam Zemurray’s troubles began when president Juan José Arévalo forced the company to respect the union and its right to strike. From bad to worse: A new president, Jacobo Arbenz, introduces agrarian reform, seizes United Fruit’s uncultivated lands, begins dividing them among a hundred thousand families, and acts as if Guatemala were ruled by the landless, the letterless, the breadless, the less.

  (50 and 288)

  1953: Guatemala City

  Arbenz

  President Truman howled when workers on Guatemala’s banana plantations started to behave like people. Now President Eisenhower spits lightning over the expropriation of United Fruit.

  The government of the United States considers it an outrage that the government of Guatemala should take United Fruit’s account books seriously. Arbenz proposes to pay as indemnity only the value that the company itself had placed on its lands to defraud the tax laws. John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, demands twenty-five times that.

  Jacobo Arbenz, accused of conspiring with Communists, draws his inspiration not from Lenin but from Abraham Lincoln. His agrarian reform, an attempt to modernize Guatemalan capitalism, is less radical than the North American rural laws of almost a century ago.

  (81 and 416)

  1953: San Salvador

  Dictator Wanted

  Guatemalan General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, distinguished killer of Indians, has lived in exile since the fall of dictator Ubico. Now, Walter Turnbull comes to San Salvador to offer him a deal. Turnbull, representative of both United Fruit and the CIA, proposes that Ydígoras take charge of Guatemala. There is money available for such a project, if he promises to destroy the unions, restore United Fruit’s lands and privileges, and repay this loan to the last cent within a reasonable period. Ydígoras asks time to think it over, while making it clear he considers the conditions abusive.

  In no time word gets around that a position is vacant. Guatemalan exiles, military and civilian, fly to Washington to offer their services; others knock at the doors of U.S. embassies. José Luis Arenas, “friend” of Vice-President Nixon, offers to overthrow President Arbenz for two hundred thousand dollars. General Federico Ponce says he has a ten-thousand-man army ready to attack the National Palace. His price would be quite modest, although he prefers not to talk figures yet. Just a small advance …

  Throat cancer rules out United Fruit’s preference, Juan Córdova Cerna. On his deathbed, however, Doctor Córdova rasps out the name of his own candidate: Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a cheap, obedient burro.

  (416 and 471)

  1954: Washington

  The Deciding Machine, Piece by Piece

  Dwight Eisenhower President of the United States. Overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran because it nationalized oil. Has now given orders to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.

  Sam Zemurray Principal stockholder in United Fruit. All his concerns automatically turn into U.S. government declarations, and ultimately into rifles, mortars, machineguns, and CIA airplanes.

  John Foster Dulles U.S. Secretary of State. Former lawyer for United Fruit.

  Allen Dulles Director of the CIA. Brother of John Foster Dulles. Like him, has done legal work for United Fruit. Together they organize “Operation Guatemala.”

  John Moors Cabot Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Brother of Thomas Cabot, the president of United Fruit.

  Walter Bedell Smith Under Secretary of State. Serves as liaison in Operation Guatemala. Future member of the board of United Fruit.

  Henry Ca
bot Lodge Senator, U.S. representative to the United Nations. United Fruit shareholder. Has on various occasions received money from this company for speeches in the Senate.

  Anne Whitman Personal secretary to President Eisenhower. Married to United Fruit public relations chief.

  Spruille Braden Former U.S. ambassador to several Latin American countries. Has received a salary from United Fruit since 1948. Is widely reported in the press to have exhorted Eisenhower to suppress communism by force in Guatemala.

  Robert Hill U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica. Collaborates on “Operation Guatemala.” Future board member of United Fruit.

  John Peurifoy U.S. ambassador to Guatemala. Known as the butcher of Greece for his past diplomatic service in Athens. Speaks no Spanish. Political background: the U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., where he once worked as an elevator operator.

  (416, 420, and 465)

  1954: Boston

  The Lie Machine, Piece by Piece

  The Motor The executioner becomes the victim; the victim, the executioner. Those who prepare the invasion of Guatemala from Honduras attribute to Guatemala the intention to invade Honduras and all Central America. The tentacles of the Kremlin are plain to see, says John Moors Cabot from the White House. Ambassador Peurifoy warns in Guatemala: We cannot permit a Soviet republic to be established from Texas to the Panama Canal. Behind this scandal lies a cargo of arms shipped from Czechoslovakia. The United States has forbidden the sale of arms to Guatemala.

  Gear I News and articles, declarations, pamphlets, photographs, films, and comic strips about Communist atrocities in Guatemala bombard the public. This educational material, whose origin is undisclosed, comes from the offices of United Fruit in Boston and from government offices in Washington.

  Gear II The Archbishop of Guatemala, Mariano Rossell Arellano, exhorts the populace to rise against communism, enemy of God and the Fatherland. Thirty CIA planes rain down his pastoral message over the whole country. The archbishop has the image of the popular Christ of Esquipulas, which will be named Captain General of the Liberating Brigade, brought to the capital.

  Gear III At the Pan-American Conference, John Foster Dulles pounds the table with his fist and gets the blessing of the Organization of American States for the projected invasion. At the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge blocks Jacobo Arbenz’s demands for help. U.S. diplomacy is mobilized throughout the world. The complicity of England and France is obtained in exchange for a U.S. commitment to silence over the delicate matters of the Suez Canal, Cyprus, and Indochina.

  Gear IV The dictators of Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic not only lend training camps, radio transmitters, and airports to “Operation Guatemala,” they also make a contribution to the propaganda campaign. Somoza I calls together the international press in Managua and displays some pistols with hammers and sickles stamped on them. They are, he says, from a Russian submarine intercepted en route to Guatemala.

  (416, 420, and 447)

  1954: Guatemala City

  The Reconquest of Guatemala

  Guatemala has neither planes nor antiaircraft installations, so U.S. pilots in U.S. planes bomb the country with the greatest of ease.

  A powerful CIA transmitter, installed on the roof of the U.S. embassy, spreads confusion and panic: the Lie Machine informs the world that this is the rebel radio, the Voice of Liberation, transmitting the triumphal march of Colonel Castillo Armas from the jungles of Guatemala. Meanwhile, Castillo Armas, encamped on a United Fruit plantation in Honduras, awaits orders from the Deciding Machine.

  Arbenz’s government, paralyzed, attends the ceremony of its own collapse. The aerial bombings reach the capital and blow up the fuel deposits. The government confines itself to burying the dead. The mercenary army, God, Fatherland, Liberty, crosses the border. It meets no resistance. Is it money or fear that explains how Guatemala’s military chiefs could surrender their troops without firing a shot? An Argentine doctor in his early twenties, Ernesto Guevara, tries in vain to organize popular defense of the capital: he doesn’t know how or with what. Improvised militias wander the streets unarmed. When Arbenz finally orders the arsenals opened, army officers refuse to obey. On one of these dark ignoble days, Guevara has an attack of asthma and indignation; on another, one midnight after two weeks of bombings, President Arbenz slowly descends the steps of the National Palace, crosses the street, and seeks asylum in the Mexican embassy.

  (81, 416, 420, and 447)

  1954: Mazatenango

  Miguel at Forty-Nine

  As soon as the birds started singing, before first light, they sharpened their machetes, and now they reach Mazatenango at a gallop, in search of Miguel. The executioners are making crosses on a long list of those marked to die, while the army of Castillo Armas takes over Guatemala. Miguel is number five on the most-wanted list, condemned for being a red and a foreign troublemaker. Since his arrival on the run from El Salvador, he has not stopped for an instant his work of labor agitation.

  They sic dogs on him. They aim to parade his body hanging from a horse along the roads, his throat slit by a machete. But Miguel, one very experienced and knowing animal, loses himself in the scrub.

  And so occurs the tenth birth of Miguel Mármol, at forty-nine years of age.

  (222)

  1954: Guatemala City

  Newsreel

  The archbishop of Guatemala declares: “I admire the sincere and ardent patriotism of President Castillo Armas.” Amid a formidable display of gibberish, Castillo Armas receives the blessing of the papal nuncio, Monsignor Genaro Verrolino.

  President Eisenhower congratulates the CIA chiefs at the White House: “Thanks to all of you. You’ve averted a Soviet beachhead in our hemisphere.”

  The head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, assigns to a Time journalist the job of framing Guatemala’s new constitution.

  Time publishes a poem by the wife of the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala. The poem says that Mr. and Mrs. Peurifoy are optimistic because Guatemala is no longer communistic.

  At his first meeting with the ambassador after the victory, President Castillo Armas expresses his concern at the insufficiency of local jails and the lack of necessary cells for all the Communists. According to lists sent from Washington by the State Department, Guatemala’s Communists total seventy-two thousand.

  The embassy throws a party. Four hundred Guatemalan guests sing in unison “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  (416 and 420)

  1954: Rio de Janeiro

  Getulio

  He wants to erase the memory of his own dictatorship, those bad old police-state days, and so in his final years governs Brazil as no one ever has before.

  He takes the side of the wage earner. Immediately the profit-makers declare war.

  To stop Brazil from being a colander, he corks up the hemorrhage of wealth. Immediately foreign capital takes to economic sabotage.

  He recovers for Brazil its own oil and energy, which are as national a patrimony as anthem and flag. The offended monopolies immediately respond with a fierce counteroffensive.

  He defends the price of coffee instead of burning half the crop, as was customary. The United States immediately cuts its purchases in half.

  In Brazil, journalists and politicians of all colors and areas join the scandalized chorus.

  Getulio Vargas has governed with dignity. When he is forced to bow down, he chooses the dignity of death. He raises the revolver, aims at his own heart, and fires.

  (427, 429, and 432)

  1955: Medellín

  Nostalgia

  It is almost twenty years since Carlos Gardel burned to death, and the Colombian city of Medellín, where the tragedy occurred, has become a place of pilgrimage and the focus of a cult.

  The devotees of Gardel are known by their tilted hats, striped pants, and swaying walk. They slick down their hair, look out of the corners of their eyes, and have twisted smiles. They bow and sweep, as if in a constant dance, when shaking hands, lighting
a cigarette, or chalking a billiard cue. They spend the night leaning against some suburban lamp-post, whistling or humming tangos which explain that all women are whores except mother, that sainted old lady whom God has taken to his glory.

  Some local devotees, and certain visiting cultists from Buenos Aires, sell relics of the idol. One offers genuine Gardel teeth, acquired on the spot when the plane blew up. He has sold more than thirteen hundred at an average of twelve dollars apiece. It was some years ago that he found his first buyer, a tourist from New York, a member of the Gardel Fan Club. On seeing the souvenir, how could the customer help but burst into tears?

  (184)

  1955: Asunción

  Withdrawal Symptoms

  When he commits the unforgivable sin of promulgating a divorce law, the Church makes the missing sign of the cross over him, and the military begin to conspire, in full daylight, to overthrow him.

  The news is celebrated in drawing rooms and mourned in kitchens; Perón has fallen. Offering no resistance, he leaves Argentina, for Paraguay and exile.

  In Asuncion, his days are sad. He feels beaten, old, alone. He claims that by his act of renunciation a million deaths have been avoided. But he also says that the people didn’t know how to defend what he gave them, that the ingrates deserve whatever misfortunes befall them, that they think with their bellies, not with their heads or hearts.

  One morning Perón is confiding his bitterness to his host, Ricardo Gayol, when suddenly he half-closes his eyes and whispers: “My smile used to drive them crazy. My smile …”

  He raises his arms and smiles as if he were on the palace balcony, greeting a plaza filled with cheering people. “Would you like my smile?”

  His host looks at him, stupefied.