Eduardo Galeano - Upside Down - A Primer for the Looking-Glass World

Five centuries ago, the people and the land of the Americas were incorporated into the world market as things. A few of the conquistadors, those who were themselves conquered, managed to see America’s splendor and to revel in it. But the powers behind the Conquest, a blind and blinding enterprise like every other imperial invasion, could see Indians and nature only as objects of exploitation or as obstacles. In the name of the one and only God, the one and only language, and the one and only truth, cultural diversity was written off as ignorance and criminalized as heresy, while nature, that ferocious beast, was tamed and obliged to turn itself into money. The communion of indigenous peoples with the earth was the essential truth of American cultures, a sin of idolatry that merited punishment by lash, gallows, and the pyre.

Warning

The duly appointed authorities hereby warn the population that a number of lazy and bored young ne’er-do-wells are on the loose, wandering con men who carry the malevolent virus that spreads the plague of disobedience.

Fortunately for public health, these subjects are easy to spot, since they have the scandalous habit of thinking out loud, dreaming in color, and violating the norms of collective resignation that constitute the essence of democratic culture. They refuse to carry the mandatory old-age cards, even though, as everyone knows, these are dispensed free of charge on every street corner and in every village in the countryside thanks to the “Elderly Mind, Healthy Body” campaign, which has been such a great success for many years.

Ratifying the principle of authority and overlooking the provocations of this minority of upstarts, the Higher Government reiterates its irrevocable decision to keep a watchful eye on the development of our youth, who are our country’s principal export product and who constitute the foundation of our balance of trade and of payments.

We no longer speak of “taming” nature; now its executioners like to say it must be “protected.” Either way, nature was and still is viewed as outside us: civilization, which confuses clocks with time, also confuses postcards with nature. But the vitality of the world, which wriggles out of all classifications and is beyond explanation, never sits still. Nature realizes itself in movement and we, too, children of nature, exist in motion. We are who we are and at the same time are what we do to change who we are. As Paulo Freire, the educator who died learning, liked to say, “We become by walking.”

Kin

We are family of everything that buds, grows, matures, tires, dies, and sprouts again.

Every child has many parents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, grandparents. The grandparents are the dead and the hills. Children of the earth and of the sun, watered by she-rains and he-rains, we are all related to the seeds, to the corn plants, to the rivers, and to the foxes that announce how the year will unfold. The stones are related to the snakes and to the lizards. Corn and beans, brothers to each other, grow up together without squabbling. Potatoes are the daughters and mothers of those who plant them, because he who creates is created.

Everything is sacred, and we are too. Sometimes we are gods and the gods, sometimes, are just little people.

That’s what is said, what is known, among the Indians of the Andes.

The Music

He was a magician with the harp. On the prairies of Colombia, no fiesta could take place without him. Mesé Figueredo had to be there with his dancing fingers that delighted the breeze and made legs go wild.

One night, on his way to a wedding, he was mugged on a lonely path. Mesé was on one mule, the harp on another, when the robbers jumped him and beat him to a pulp.

The next day someone found him lying in the road, a bloody bunch of rags more dead than alive. In what remained of his voice, that scrap of flesh said, “They took the mules.”

He said, “They took the harp.”

“But,” he breathed and laughed, “they didn’t take the music.”

Truth lies in the voyage, not the port. There is no greater truth than the search for truth. Are we condemned to crime? We all know that we human creatures are busy devouring our neighbors and devastating the planet, but we also know that we would not be here if our distant Paleolithic grandparents hadn’t learned to adapt to the natural world to which they belonged and hadn’t been capable of sharing what they hunted and gathered. Living wherever, living however, living whenever, each person contains many possible persons. Every day, the ruling system places our worst characteristics at center stage, condemning our best to languish behind the backdrop. The system of power is not in the least eternal. We may be badly made, but we’re not finished, and it’s the adventure of changing reality and changing ourselves that makes our blip in the history of the universe worthwhile, this fleeting warmth between two glaciers that is us.

The new millennium is upon us, though the matter shouldn’t be taken too seriously. After all, the year 2001 for Christians is 1379 for Moslems, 5114 for Mayans, and 5762 for Jews. The new millennium starts on January 1 only because one fine day the senate of imperial Rome decided to end the tradition of celebrating the new year at the beginning of spring. The number of years in the Christian Era is a matter of whim as well: another fine day the pope in Rome decided to assign a date to the birth of Jesus, even though nobody knows when he was born.

Time pays no attention to the borders we erect to fool ourselves into believing we control it. Even so, the millennium is a frontier the whole world both celebrates and fears.

AN INVITATION TO FLIGHT

The millennium is a good opportunity for orators of inflated eloquence to spout off on the destiny of humanity and for the agents of God’s ire to announce the end of the world and other assorted calamities, while time itself continues its long, tight-lipped march through eternity and mystery.

The truth is, who can resist? On such a date, arbitrary though it is, everyone is tempted to wonder about the time to come. And just how is anyone to know? Only one thing is certain: in the twenty-first century, we’ll all be people from the last century and, what’s worse, we’ll be from the last millennium.

If we can’t guess what’s coming, at least we have the right to imagine the future we want. In 1948 and again in 1976, the United Nations proclaimed long lists of human rights, but the immense majority of humanity enjoys only the rights to see, hear, and remain silent. Suppose we start by exercising the never-proclaimed right to dream? Suppose we rave a bit? Let’s set our sights beyond the abominations of today to divine another possible world:

• the air shall be cleansed of all poisons except those born of human fears and human passions;

• in the streets, cars shall be run over by dogs;