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

(224 and 292)

You Too Can Succeed in Life

The happiness road no longer leads only to the prairies of the West. Now, it is also the day of the big cities. The whistle of the train, magic flute, awakens youth from its rustic drowsiness and invites it to join the new paradises of cement and steel. Any ragged orphan, promise the siren voices, can become a prosperous businessman if he works hard and lives virtuously in the offices and factories of the giant buildings.

A writer, Horatio Alger, sells these illusions by the millions of copies. Alger is more famous than Shakespeare and his novels have a bigger circulation than the Bible. His readers and his characters, tame wage earners, have not stopped running since they got off the trains or transatlantic ships. In reality, the track is reserved for a handful of business athletes, but North American society massively consumes the fantasy of free competition, and even cripples dream of winning races.

(282)

The Creation According to John D. Rockefeller

In the beginning I made light with a kerosene lamp. And the shadows, which mocked tallow or sperm candles, retreated. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And on the second day God put me to the test and allowed the Devil to tempt me, offering me friends and lovers and other extravagances.

And I said: “Let petroleum come to me.” And I founded Standard Oil. And I saw that it was good and the evening and the morning were the third day.

And on the fourth I followed God’s example. Like Him, I threatened and cursed anyone refusing me obedience; and like Him I applied extortion and punishment. As God has crushed his competitors, so I pitilessly pulverized my rivals in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. And to the repentant I promised forgiveness and eternal peace.

And I put an end to the disorder of the Universe. And where there was chaos, I made organization. And on a scale never before known I calculated costs, imposed prices, and conquered markets. And I distributed the force of millions of hands so that time would never again be wasted, nor energy, nor materials. And I banished chance and fate from the history of men. And in the space created by me I reserved no place for the weak or the inefficient. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And to give my work a name I coined the word “trust.” And I saw that it was good. And I confirmed that the world turned around my watchful eyes, while the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

And on the seventh day I did charity. I added up the money God had given me for having continued His perfect work and gave twenty-five cents to the poor. And then I rested.

(231 and 282)

The Last Buffalos of the North

The buffalo has become a curiosity in Montana and the Blackfeet Indians gnaw old bones and tree bark.

Sitting Bull heads the last hunt of the Sioux on the northern prairies. After traveling far they meet a few animals. For each one they kill, the Sioux ask forgiveness of the Great Invisible Buffalo, as tradition requires, and promise him they will not waste one hair of the body.

Soon afterwards, the Northern Pacific Railroad celebrates the completion of its coast-to-coast line. This is the fourth line to cross North American territory. Coal locomotives, with pneumatic brakes and Pullman coaches, advance behind the pioneers toward the prairies that belonged to the Indians. On all sides new cities spring up. The giant national market grows and coheres.

The Northern Pacific authorities invite Chief Sitting Bull to make a speech at the great inauguration party. Sitting Bull arrives from the reservation where the Sioux survive on charity. He mounts the rostrum covered with flowers and flags, and addresses himself to the president of the United States, the officials and personalities present, and to the general public: “I hate all the white people,” he says. “You are thieves and liars …”

The interpreter, a young officer, translates: “My red and gentle heart bids you welcome …”

Sitting Bull interrupts the clamorous applause of the audience: “You have taken away our land and made us outcasts …”

The audience gives the feather-headdressed warrior a standing ovation; and the interpreter sweats ice.

(224)

The Wizard of Finance Eats Soldier Meat

“Our rights are born of victory, the supreme law of nations,” says the victorious governor.

The War of the Pacific, the nitrates war, has ended. By sea and by land Chile has crushed its enemies. The immense deserts of Atacama and Tarapacá become part of the map of Chile. Peru loses its nitrates and the exhausted guano islands. Bolivia loses its outlet to the sea and is bottled up in the heart of South America.

In Santiago de Chile they celebrate the victory. In London they collect on it. Without firing a shot or spending a penny, John Thomas North has become the nitrates king. With money borrowed from Chilean banks, North has bought for a song the bonds that the Peruvian State had given to the deposits’ old proprietors. North bought them when the war was just beginning; and before it was over, the Chilean State had the kindness to recognize the bonds as legitimate property titles.

(268 and 269)

The Fatherland Pays

Against the Chilean invaders of Peru, Marshal Andrés Avelino Cáceres and his Indian guerrillas have fought over two hundred mountain leagues without letup for three years.

The Indians of the communities call their marshal, a man with fierce whiskers, “Grandpa”; and many have lost their lives following him, shouting “vivas” for a fatherland that despises them. In Lima, too, Indians were cannon fodder, and the social chronicler Ricardo Palma blames the defeat on that abject and degraded race.

In contrast, Marshal Cáceres was saying until recently that Peru was defeated by its own merchants and bureaucrats. Until recently he also rejected the peace treaty that amputated a good piece of Peru. Now Cáceres has changed his mind. He wants to be president. He has to earn merits. He must demobilize the armed Indians, who have fought against the Chileans, but have also invaded haciendas and are threatening the sacred order of great estates.

The marshal summons Tomás Laimes, chief of the Colca guerrilla fighters. Laimes comes to Huancayo with fifteen hundred Indians. He comes to say, “At your orders, my Grandpa.”

But no sooner does Laimes arrive than his troop is disarmed. When he has barely crossed the barracks threshold, he is felled by a rifle butt. Later they shoot him, blindfolded and sitting down.

(194)

“The trouble comes from the top,” says Manuel González Prada.

Peru groans under the domination of a few privileged beings. Those men would roll us flat between the crushers of a sugar mill, they would distill us in an alembic, they would burn us to a crisp in a smelting oven, if they could extract from our residuum just one milligram of gold … Like land with a curse on it, they receive the seed and drink the water without ever producing fruit …

In the war against Chile they proved their cowardice, not even having the guts to defend the guano and nitrate deposits … We were insulted, trodden on, and bloodied as no nation ever was; but the war with Chile has taught us nothing, nor corrected us of any vice.

(145)

“All belongs to all,”