Eduardo Galeano - The Memory of Fire Trilogy - Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

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Páez

At fifteen he was born killing. He killed to defend himself; had to flee to the mountains, and became a nomad horseman on the immense prairies of Venezuela. Horseman leader of horsemen: José Antonio Páez, Páez of the plains, flies at the head of the cowpoke artists of spear and lasso, who ride bareback and charge like an avalanche. He rides a white horse, because white horses ride better. When he is not on a campaign, he learns to read and to play the cello.

The half-naked plainsmen, who in the times of Boves had served Spain, defeat Spain at the battle of Carabobo. With machetes they fight their way through the impossible brushland of the west, its marshes and thickets, take the enemy by surprise, chew him up.

Bolívar names Páez commander in chief of the Venezuelan armed forces. The plainsman enters Caracas by his side wearing, like him, a garland of flowers.

In Venezuela, the die is cast.

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San Martín

Appointment in Guayaquil. Between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, an avenue of triumphal arches. General Bolívar appears from the north. From the south comes José de San Martín, the general who crossed the Andes cordillera in search of freedom for Chile and Peru.

Bolívar talks and talks, offers and offers.

San Martin laconically cuts him short. “ I am weary.” Bolívar does not believe him; or perhaps is mistrustful because he still does not know that glory also tires one out.

San Martín has spent thirty years in battle, from Oran to Maipú. As a soldier he fought for Spain, as a hardened general for America. For America, and never against her: when the Buenos Aires government sent him to smash the federal hosts of Artigas, San Martín disobeyed and took his army into the mountains to continue his campaign for the independence of Chile. Buenos Aires, which does not forgive, now denies him bread and salt. In Lima they don’t like him either. They call him King José.

Disappointment in Guayaquil. San Martín, great chess player, evades the game.

“ I am weary of commanding ,” he says, but Bolívar hears other words: You and I. Together, we don’t fit.

Later there is a banquet and ball. Bolívar dances in the center of the room, the ladies competing for him. The noise makes San Martin dizzy. After midnight, without saying goodbye, he leaves for the docks. The baggage is already aboard the brigantine.

He gives the order to sail. He walks the deck, with slow steps, accompanied by his dog and pursued by mosquitos. The ship heads away from the coast and San Martín turns to contemplate the land of America which fades and fades.

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Songbird

At the edge of the village of Morín, a common grave swallows the bones of a poet who until yesterday had a guitar and a name.

It’s better to travel light,

like an eagle and without sorrows …

Bartolomé Hidalgo, troubadour of Artigas’s camps, lived only for a moment, always in a whirlwind of songs and battles, and has died in exile. The dogs of hunger chewed up his lungs. Through the streets and squares of Buenos Aires wandered Hidalgo, hawking his couplets which sing to free men and strip enemies bare. They afforded him little food but much life. His unshrouded body ends up in the earth; the couplets, also naked, also plebeian, abide in the winds.

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Traffic Gone Mad

The Diario do Rio de Janeiro announces novelties just arrived from London: machines to repair streets or heal lungs or squeeze manioc; lathes and stills and steam cookers; eyeglasses, telescopes, razors, combs. Also padded saddles, silver stirrups, shiny harnesses and carriage lanterns.

Still seen in the streets are lone horsemen and a few old gilded palanquins from another age; but fashion dictates late-model English carriages that draw sparks from the cobblestones. The streets of Rio de Janeiro are dangerous. Speeding accidents multiply, and the power of the coachman grows.

White gloves, top hats: from high on their perches the coachmen let fall bullying glances on other black slaves, and enjoy sowing panic among pedestrians. They are famous drunkards and pimps and good guitar players; and they are indispensable in modern life. A carriage is worth a fortune when it is sold with a fast horse and a skillful black.

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Twelve Nymphs Stand Guard in the Main Plaza

and each one holds up a crown. Bands and fireworks explode and the tapping of horses’ hooves on the long stone street sounds like the onset of rain. At the head of his army Bolívar enters Quito: a skinny gladiator, all nerve, his golden sword longer than his body. From the balconies rain down flowers and little embroidered kerchiefs. The balconies are altars upon which the ladies of Quito permit the erect-ness of their almost bare breasts to be worshipped amid lace and mantillas. Manuela Sáenz stands out like a dazzling ship’s figurehead. She drops a hand, and from the hand falls a crown of laurel. Bolívar raises his head and fastens his glance on her, a spear in slow motion.

That night, they dance. They waltz until they are giddy, and the world spins round and round to the rustle of that peerless woman’s thousand petticoats and the sweep of her long black hair.

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Swollen Hands from So Much Applauding

He rides from El Callao, between two files of soldiers, on a road of flowers. Lima receives General Bolívar with a hundred-gun salute, a hundred flags, a hundred speeches and hundred-cover banquets.

The Congress grants him full powers to throw out the Spaniards, who have retaken half of Peru. The Marquess of Torre Tagle presents him with a biography of Napoleon, a set of Toledo blades and bouquets of florid phrases: Victory awaits you on the icy peaks of the Andes to crown you with her laurels and the nymphs of the Rimac are already chanting hymns to celebrate your triumphs! The War Minister gives orders to the goddess Fortune: Take thy majestic flight from the foothills of Chimborazo to the peaks of our Andes and there await immortal Bolívar to crown his brow with the laurels of Peru!

The Rimac, the river that talks, is the only one that keeps quiet.

(53 and 202)

In Spite of Everything

He rides from El Callao, between two files of soldiers, on a road of flowers. Lima receives the chief of the Spaniards, General Monet, hoisting and cheering the king’s flag. The flag flutters and speeches flutter. The Marquess of Torre Tagle melts with gratitude and implores Spain to save Peru from the menace of the accursed Bolívar, the Colombian monster.

Lima prefers to continue sleeping, amid rippling heraldry, the slumber of a colonial arcadia. Viceroys, saints and cavaliers, crooks and coquettes exchange sighings and bowings amid the sandy wastes of America, beneath a sky that denies rain and sun but sends angels to defend the city walls. Inside them, one breathes the aroma of jasmine; outside, solitude and danger lie in wait. Inside, hand kissings and processions and courtings: every officer imitates the king and every monk the pope. In the palaces, stucco imitates marble; in the seventy churches of gold and silver, ritual imitates faith.

Far from Lima, Bolívar lies sick in the coast town of Pativilca. On all sides, he writes between fevers, I hear the sound of disaster … Everything is born into life and dies before my eyes, as if split by a bolt of lightning … Dust, ashes, nothing. All Peru, save for a few valleys, has fallen back into the hands of Spain. The independent governments of Buenos Aires and Chile have abandoned the cause of the freedom of this land; and not even the Peruvians themselves seem very interested.