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

In a solemn speech Emperor Pedro reveals that the public treasury is exhausted, in a miserable state, and that total ruin threatens the country. However, he announces salvation: the emperor has decided to take measures which will destroy the cause of the existing calamity at one blow. And he explains what those radical measures are: they consist of new loans that Brazil expects to receive from the houses of Rothschild and Wilson in London, with stiff but honorable interest.

Meanwhile, the newspapers report that a thousand fiestas are being prepared to celebrate the emperor’s wedding to Princess Amelia. The advertisements in the papers offer black slaves for sale or hire, cheeses and pianos newly arrived from Europe, English jackets of fine woolens, and Bordeaux wines. The Hotel do Globo on Quitanda Street seeks a white, foreign chef who is not a drunkard or a puffer of cigars, and at 76 Duvidor Street they need a lady who speaks French to look after a blind person.

(186 and 275)

The Boat Goes Down to the Sea

Green land, black land. In the far distance mist shrouds the mountains. The Magdalena is carrying Simón Bolívar downstream.

“No.”

In the streets of Lima, the same people who gave him a diamond-studded sword are burning his Constitution. Those who called him “Father of the Country” are burning his effigy in the streets of Bogotá. In Caracas, they officially dub him “enemy of Venezuela.” Over in Paris, the defamatory articles about him get stronger; and the friends who know how to praise him do not know how to defend him.

“I cannot.”

Was this the history of mankind? This labyrinth, this futile game of shadows? The Venezuelan people curse the wars that have taken half their sons to remote areas and given them nothing for it. Venezuela tears itself loose from Grand Colombia and Ecuador follows suit, while Bolívar lies beneath a dirty canvas in the boat that sails down the Magdalena to the sea.

“I can no more.”

Blacks are still slaves in Venezuela, despite the laws. In Colombia and Peru, the laws passed to civilize Indians are applied to despoil them. The tribute, the colonial tax that Indians pay for being Indians, has been reimposed in Bolivia.

Was this, was this history? All grandeur ends up dwarfed. On the neck of every promise crawls betrayal. Great men become voracious landlords. The sons of America destroy each other. Sucre, the chosen inheritor, who had saved himself from poison and dagger, falls in the forests on the way to Quito, toppled by a bullet.

“I can no more. Let us go.”

Crocodiles and timber interweave in the river. Bolívar, yellow-skinned, no light in his eyes, shivering, delirious, moves down the Magdalena toward the sea, toward death.

(53 and 202)

The Governor Proclaims:

… Bolívar, genius of evil, torch of anarchy, oppressor of his country, has ceased to exist.

(202)

Divide et Impera

The North American consul in La Guaira, J. G. Williamson, prophet and protagonist of the disintegration of Grand Colombia, sent the State Department a well-informed report. A month ahead of the event, he announced the separation of Venezuela and the end of the customs duties that do not suit the United States.

Simón Bolívar dies on December Seventeenth. On another December Seventeenth, eleven years ago, he had founded Grand Colombia, a fusion of Colombia and Venezuela which later also embraced Ecuador and Panama. Grand Colombia has died with him.

The North American consul in Lima, William Tudor, has helped to weave the conspiracy against the American project of Bolívar, the dangerous madman of Colombia. Tudor was upset not only by Bolívar’s fight against slavery, a bad example for the southern United States, but also and above all by the excessive aggrandizement of the America liberated from Spain. With all logic at his command, the consul has said that England and the United States have common and potent reasons of State against the development of a new power. The British Admiral Fleming, meanwhile, comes and goes between Valencia and Cartagena encouraging the division.

(207 and 280)

Abecedarium: The Oath of the Constitution

The English government, Lord John Ponsonby had said, will never consent that only two states, Brazil and Argentina, should be exclusive masters of the east coasts of South America.

Through London’s influence, and under its protection, Uruguay becomes an independent state. The most rebellious province of the River Plata, which has expelled the Brazilians from its soil, breaks off from the old trunk and takes on a life of its own. The port of Buenos Aires is free at last from the nightmare of this unfriendly prairie where Artigas rose in rebellion.

In the Mother church of Montevideo, Father Larrañaga offers a thanksgiving chant to God. Fervor illuminates the face of the priest, as in that other Te Deum he celebrated some years back, from the same pulpit, in homage to the invaders from Brazil.

The Constitution is sworn beneath the City Hall balconies. The ladies, who do not exist in the laws, accompany the juridical consecration of the new country as if it involved them. With one hand they clutch their gigantic hairdos, dangerous on windy days, and with the other hold open against their breasts fens painted with patriotic themes. High starched collars keep the gentlemen from turning their heads. The Magna Carta resounds through the plaza, clause after clause, over a sea of top hats. According to the Constitution of the new republic, there will be no citizenship for the men who offered their bodies against the bullets of Spain, Buenos Aires, and Brazil. Uruguay is not being made for poor gauchos, or Indians, or blacks, who still don’t know that a law has freed them. Not permitted to vote or hold public office, says the Constitution, are servants, peons, rank and file soldiers, vagrants, drunkards, and illiterates.

At nightfall the Coliseum is packed. It is opening night for The Happy Deceit; or, The Triumph of Innocence, by Rossini, the first complete opera sung in this city.

(278)

Fatherland or Grave

The first bard of the Uruguayan Parnassus, Francisco Acuña de Figueroa, began his career with an ode, in eight-line stanzas, to the military glory of Spain. When Artigas’s gauchos took Montevideo, he fled to Rio de Janeiro. There, he dedicated his adulatory rhymes to the Portuguese prince and all of his court. Still shouldering his lyre, Don Francisco followed the Brazilian invaders back to Montevideo, and rhapsodized over the occupying troops. Years later, on the day following the ouster of the Brazilians, the muses breathed patriotic decasyllables into Don Francisco’s ear, words of laurel to crown the brows of the heroes of independence; and now the reptilian poet writes the national anthem of the newborn country. We Uruguayans will be forever condemned to listen to his verses standing up.

(3)

National Industry

In Chile, too, gentlemen dance and dress in French styles, imitate Byron in knotting their ties, and, at table, obey the dictates of French chefs; à la English they take tea, and à la French they down their wine.

When Vicente Pérez Rosales set up his brandy factory, he bought the best stills in Paris and a great quantity of labels with gilded arabesques and fine lettering that said in English: Old Champagne Cognac. On the door of his office he had a big sign painted: