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

Once, taking advantage of her absence, the neighbors opened the old chest which she spent her days sitting on. Inside there was no bag full of gold pieces. In the chest they found only the dried navels of her eleven children.

Come the death throes, the whole town is at the foot of her bed. She opens and closes her fishlike mouth as if trying to say something.

She dies in the door of sanctity. The secret was the only one she had in her life and she goes without telling it.

(147)

The Three

She no longer dresses as a captain, nor fires pistols, nor rides horse-back. Her legs don’t work and her whole body is distorted with fat; but she sits on her invalid’s chair as if it were a throne and peels oranges and guavas with the most beautiful hands in the world.

Surrounded by clay pitchers, Manuela Sáenz reigns in the shaded portico of her house. Beyond, among mountains the color of death, extends the Bay of Paita. Exiled in this Peruvian port, Manuela lives by making sweets and fruit preserves. Ships stop to buy. Her goodies enjoy great fame on these coasts. Whalers sigh for a spoonful.

At nightfall Manuela amuses herself by throwing scraps to stray dogs, which she has baptized with the names of generals who were disloyal to Bolívar. As Santander, Páez, Córdoba, Lamar, and Santa Cruz fight over the bones, her moonface lights up, and, covering her toothless mouth with a fan, she bursts out laughing. She laughs with her whole body and her many flying laces.

Sometimes an old friend comes from the town of Amotape. The wandering Simón Rodríguez sits in a rocking chair, beside Manuela, and the two of them smoke and chat and are silent together. The persons Bolívar most loved, the teacher and the lover, change the subject if the hero’s name filters into the conversation.

When Don Simón leaves, Manuela sends for the silver coffer. She opens it with the key hidden in her bosom and fondles the many letters Bolívar had written to the one and only woman , worn-out paper that still says: I want to see you and see you again and touch you and feel you and taste you … Then she asks for the mirror and very carefully brushes her hair, in case he might come and visit her in dreams.

(295, 298, and 343)

A Witness Describes Simón Rodriguez’s Farewell to the World

As soon as he saw the Amotape priest enter, Don Simón sat up in bed, waved the priest to the only chair in the room and started making something like a speech on materialism. The priest sat there stupefied, and scarcely had the heart to pronounce a few words trying to interrupt him …

(298)

Whitman

For lack of a publisher, the poet pays out of his own pocket for the publication of Leaves of Grass.

Waldo Emerson, theologist of Democracy, gives the book his blessing, but the press attacks it as prosaic and obscene.

In Walt Whitman’s grandiose elegy multitudes and machines roar. The poet embraces God and sinners, he embraces the Indians and the pioneers who wipe them out, he embraces slave and master, victim and executioner. All crime is redeemed in the ecstasy of the New World, America the muscular and the subjugator, with no debt to pay to the past, winds of progess that make man the comrade of man and unchain virility and beauty.

(358)

Melville

The bearded sailor is a writer without readers. Four years ago he published the story of a captain who pursues a white whale through the seas of the universe, bloodthirsty harpoon in pursuit of Evil, and no one paid it much attention.

In these times of euphoria, in these North American lands in full expansion, Herman Melville’s voice sings out of tune. His books are mistrustful of Civilization, which attributes to the savage the role of Demon and forces him to play it — as Captain Ahab does with Moby Dick in the immensity of the ocean. His books reject the only and obligatory Truth that certain men, believing themselves chosen, impose on the others. His books have doubts about Vice and Virtue, shadows of the same nothingness, and teach that the sun is the only lamp worthy of confidence.

(211 and 328)

“You people will suffocate in your own waste,” warns Indian Chief Seattle.

The earth is not the white man’s brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. But all things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth …

The clatter of cities only seems to insult the ears …

The air is precious to the red man. For all things share the same breath — beasts, trees, man. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench …

It matters little where we pass the rest of our days; they are not many. A few more hours, a few more winters … The whites, too, shall pass— perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste …

(229)

The Far West

Is anyone really listening to old Chief Seattle? The Indians are condemned, like the buffalo and the moose. The one that does not die by the bullet dies of hunger or sorrow. From the reservation where he languishes, old Chief Seattle talks in solitude about usurpations and exterminations and says who knows what things about the memory of his people flowing in the sap of the trees.

The Colt barks. Like the sun, the white pioneers march westward. A diamond light from the mountains guides them. The promised land rejuvenates anyone sticking a plow in it to make it fertile. In a flash cities and streets spring up in the solitude so recently inhabited by cacti, Indians, and snakes. The climate, they say, is so very healthy that the only way to inaugurate cemeteries is to shoot someone down.

Adolescent capitalism, stampeding and gluttonous, transfigures what it touches. The forest exists for the ax to chop down and the desert for the train to cross; the river is worth bothering about if it contains gold, and the mountain if it shelters coal or iron. No one walks. All run, in a hurry, it’s urgent, after the nomad shadow of wealth and power. Space exists for time to defeat, and time for progress to sacrifice on its altars.

(218)

Walker

The son of Tennessee shoots from the hip and buries without epitaph. He has eyes of cinders. He neither laughs nor drinks. He eats as a duty. No woman has been seen with him since his deaf and dumb fiancée died; and God is his only friend worthy of trust. He calls himself the Predestined. He dresses in black. He hates anyone touching him.

William Walker, Southern gentleman, proclaims himself President of Nicaragua. Red carpets cover the main square of Granada. Trumpets flash in the sun. The band plays North American military marches as Walker kneels and takes the oath with one hand on the Bible. Twenty one salutes are fired. He makes his speech in English and then raises a glass of water and toasts the president of the United States, his compatriot and esteemed colleague. The North American ambassador, John Wheeler, compares Walker with Christopher Columbus.

Walker arrived in Nicaragua a year ago, at the head of the Phalanx of Immortals. I will order the death of anyone who opposes the imperial march of my forces. Like a knife into meat came the adventurers recruited on the wharves of San Francisco and New Orleans.

The new president of Nicaragua restores slavery, abolished in Central America over thirty years ago, and re-implants the slave trade, serfdom, and forced labor. He decrees that English is Nicaragua’s official language and offers lands and hands to any white North Americans who care to come.