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

The Horses.They take the lovers to the north across open country, avoiding cities. Ladislao’s had a golden hide and long legs. Camila’s is grayish, fat, and bobtailed. They sleep, like their riders, outdoors. They do not tire.

Baggage.His: a woolen poncho, some clothes, a couple of penknives and a pair of pistols, a pouch, a silk tie, and a glass inkpot. Hers: a silk shawl, several dresses, four linen petticoats, a fan, a pair of gloves, a comb, and a gold wedding ring, broken.

(166 and 219)

The Lovers (II)

They are two by an error that the night corrects.

The Lovers (III)

In the summer they elope. They spend the autumn at the port of Goya, on the shores of the Paraná. There they go by other names. In the winter they are discovered, betrayed, and caught.

They are taken south in separate carts. The wheels leave scars on the road.

They are shut up in separate dungeons in the Holy Places prison.

If they beg pardon, they will be pardoned. Camila, pregnant, does not repent. Nor does Ladislao. Irons are fixed on their feet. A priest sprinkles the shackles with holy water.

They are shot in the patio, with their eyes blindfolded.

(219)

Cecilio Chi

The ears of corn have spoken, warning of hunger. Huge sugar plantations are devouring the Maya communities’ cornfields in the Yucatán region of Mexico. Men are purchased, as in Africa, and paid for with rum. The Indians hear with their backs, says the lash.

And war breaks out. Sick of contributing dead to other people’s wars, the Mayas answer the call of the hollow trunk drum. They erupt from the brush, from the night, from nothing, machete in one hand, torch in the other: haciendas burn along with their owners and the sons of their owners, and the documents that make debt-slaves of Indians and sons of Indians burn too.

The Maya tornado whirls and destroys. Cecilio Chi fights with fifteen thousand Indians against guns that kill en masse, and so falls the proud city of Valladolid de Yucatán which thinks itself so noble, so Castilian; and Bacalar, and many other towns and garrisons, one after the other.

Cecilio Chi exterminates enemies invoking the old-time rebel Jacinto Canek and the even earlier prophet Chilam Balam. He proclaims that blood will flood the Mérida plaza up to the people’s ankles. He offers firewater and fireworks to the patron saints of each town he occupies: If the saints refuse to change sides, and continue at the masters’ service, Cecilio Chi cuts their throats with his machete and throws them on the fire.

(144 and 263)

A Horseman Called Smallpox

Of every four Pawnee Indians, one has died this year of smallpox or cholera. The Kiowas, their eternal enemies, have saved themselves thanks to Old Uncle Saynday.

The old ruffian wandered these plains from heartache to heartache. My world is finished, he muttered over and over while vainly seeking deer and buffalo, and the Washita River offered him red mud instead of clear water. Soon my Kiowa people will be surrounded like cows.

Old Uncle Saynday was walking along buried in these sad thoughts when he saw over in the east, instead of the sun, a blackness, a great dark stain spreading across the prairie. As it drew closer, he saw that the stain was a horseman dressed in black, with a high black hat and a black horse. The horseman had ferocious scars on his face.

“My name is Smallpox,” he introduced himself.

“I never heard …” said Saynday.

“I come from far away, the other side of the sea,” the stranger explained. “I bring death.”

He asked for the Kiowas. Old Uncle Saynday knew how to turn him around. He explained to him that the Kiowas weren’t worth his trouble, a small and starveling people, and instead recommended the Pawnees, who are many, handsome and powerful, and showed him the rivers where they live.

(198)

The Gold of California

From Valparaiso, Chileans stream in. They bring a pair of boots and a knife, a lamp and a shovel.

The entry to San Francisco Bay is now known as “the golden gate.” Until yesterday, San Francisco was the Mexican town of Yerbas Buenas. In these lands, usurped from Mexico in the war of conquest, there are three-kilo nuggets of pure gold.

The bay has no room for so many ships. An anchor touches bottom, and adventurers scatter across the mountains. No one wastes time on hellos. The cardsharp buries his patent leather boots in the mud:

“Long live my loaded dice! Long live my jack!”

Simply landing on this soil turns the bum into a king and the beauty who had scorned him dies of remorse. Vicente Pérez Rosales, newly arrived, listens to the thoughts of his compatriots: “Now I have talent! Because in Chile, who’s an ass once he has cash?” Here losing time is losing money. Endless thunder of hammers, a world on the boil, birth-pang screams. Out of nothing rise the awnings under which are offered tools and liquor and dried meat in exchange for leather bags filled with gold dust. Crows and men squawk, flocks of men from all lands, and night and day eddies the whirlwind of frock coats and seamen’s caps, Oregon furs and Maule bonnets, French daggers, Chinese hats, Russian boots, and shiny bullets at the waists of cowboys.

Under her lace sunshade, a good-looking Chilean woman smiles as best she can, squeezed by her corset and by the multitude that sweeps her over the sea of mud paved with broken bottles. In this port she is Rosarito Améstica. She was born Rosarito Izquierdo more years ago than she’ll tell, became Rosarito Villaseca in Talcahuano, Rosarito Toro in Talca, and Rosarito Montalva in Valparaíso.

From the stern of a ship, the auctioneer offers ladies to the crowd. He exhibits them and sings their praises, one by one, look gentlemen what a waist what youth what beauty what …

“Who’ll give more?” says the auctioneer. “Who’ll give more for this incomparable flower?”

(256)

They Were Here

Man calls and gold falls from the sands and rocks. Sparks of gold jump on the winds; gold comes docilely to the hand of man, from the bottom of California’s rivers and ravines.

El Molino is one of many camps that have sprung up on these golden shores. One day the miners of El Molino notice columns of smoke rising from the distant cypress forests. At night they see a line of fires mocking the wind. Someone recognizes the signals: the telegraph of the Indians is calling for war against the intruders.

In a flash, the miners form a detail of a hundred and seventy rifles and attack by surprise. They bring in a hundred prisoners and shoot fifteen to teach them a lesson.

(256)

Ashes

Since he had the dream of the White Rabbit, the old man talked of nothing else, though he had trouble talking at all, and for a long time had been unable to stand. The years made his eyes watery and bent him irremediably. He lived in a basket, his face hidden behind his pointy knees, poised for the return to the belly of the earth. Stuck in the basket, he traveled on the back of some son or grandson and told his dream to everybody: White Rabbit gonna devour us, he babbled. Gonna devour our seed, our grass, our living. He said the White Rabbit would come mounted on an animal bigger than a deer, an animal with round feet and hair on its neck.

The old man did not live to see the gold fever in these Californian lands. Before the miners arrived on horseback, he announced: “Can’t feed my children no more. Like old root, just ready for growing now. Speak no more .”