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

Before they start the rush for the gold, for nuggets possibly as big as eggs, lawyer Martin Fernandez de Enciso reads, complete with periods and commas, the ultimatum that the interpreter translates painfully by fits and starts.

Enciso speaks in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Juana, his daughter, tamers of barbarous peoples. He makes it known to the Indians of the Sinú that God came to the world and left St. Peter as his representative, that St. Peter’s successor is the holy father and that the holy father, lord of the universe, has awarded to the king of Castile all the lands of the Indies and of this peninsula.

The soldiers bake in their armor. Enciso slowly and meticulously summons the Indians to leave these lands since they don’t belong to them, and if they want to stay to pay their highnesses tribute in gold in token of obedience. The interpreter does his best.

The two chiefs listen, sitting down and without blinking, to the odd character who announces to them that in case of refusal or delay he will make war on them, turn them into slaves along with their women and children, and sell and dispose of them as such and that the deaths and damages of that just war will not be the Spaniards’ responsibility.

The chiefs reply, without a glance at Enciso, that the holy father has indeed been generous with others’ property but must have been drunk to dispose of what was not his and that the king of Castile is impertinent to come threatening folk he doesn’t know.

Then the blood flows.

Subsequently the long speech will be read at dead of night, without an interpreter and half a league away from villages that will be taken by surprise. The natives, asleep, won’t hear the words that declare them guilty of the crime committed against them.

(78, 81, and 166)

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a new arrival, tries out the fruit of the New World.

The guava seems to him much superior to the apple.

The guanábana is pretty to look at and offers a white, watery pulp of very mild flavor, which, however much you eat of it, causes neither harm nor indigestion.

The mamey has a finger-licking flavor and smells very good. Nothing better exists, he finds.

But he bites into a medlar, and an aroma unequaled even by musk invades his head. The medlar is the best fruit, he corrects himself, and nothing comparable can be found.

Then he peels a pineapple. The golden pine smells as peaches would like to and is able to give an appetite to people who have forgotten the joys of eating. Oviedo knows no words worthy of describing its virtues. It delights his eyes, his nose, his fingers, his tongue. This outdoes them all, as the feathers of the peacock outshine those of any bird.

(166)

The New World adventures bring the taverns of this Flemish port to the boil. One summer night, on the waterfront, Thomas More meets or invents Rafael Hithloday, a sailor from Amerigo Vespucci’s fleet, who says he has discovered the isle of Utopia off some coast of America.

The sailor relates that in Utopia neither money nor private property exists. There, scorn for gold and for superfluous consumption is encouraged, and no one dresses ostentatiously. Everybody gives the fruits of his work to the public stores and freely collects what he needs. The economy is planned. There is no hoarding, which is the son of fear, nor is hunger known. The people choose their prince and the people can depose him; they also elect the priests. The inhabitants of Utopia loathe war and its honors, although they fiercely defend their frontiers. They have a religion that does not offend reason and rejects useless mortifications and forcible conversions. The laws permit divorce but severely punish conjugal betrayals and oblige everyone to work six hours a day. Work and rest are shared; the table is shared. The community takes charge of children while their parents are busy. Sick people get privileged treatment; euthanasia avoids long, painful agonies. Gardens and orchards occupy most of the space, and music is heard wherever one goes.

(146)

A half century has passed since Gutenberg’s death, and printeries multiply all over Europe; they publish the Bible in Gothic letters, and gold and silverprice quotations in Gothic numerals. The monarch devours men, and men shit gold coins in Hieronymus Bosch’s garden of delights; and Michaelangelo, while painting and sculpting his athletic saints and prophets, writes: The blood of Christ is sold by the spoonful. Everything has its price: the pope’s throne and the monarch’s crown, the cardinal’s cape and the bishop’s miter. Indulgences, excommunications, and titles of nobility are bought. The Church deems lending at interest a sin, but the holy father mortgages Vatican lands to the bankers; and on the banks of the Rhine, the crown of the Holy Empire is offered to the highest bidder.

Three candidates dispute the heritage of Charlemagne. The electors swear by the purity of their votes and cleanliness of their hands and pronounce their verdict at noon, the hour of the Angelus: they sell the crown of Europe to the king of Spain, Charles I, son of the seducer and the madwoman and grandson of the Catholic monarchs, for 850,000 florins, which Germany’s bankers Függer and Welser plunk down on the table.

Charles I turns himself into Charles V, emperor of Spain, Germany, Austria, Naples, Sicily, the Low Countries, and the immense New World, defender of the Catholic faith, and God’s warrior vicar on earth.

Meanwhile, the Muslims threaten the frontiers, and Martin Luther nails up his defiant heresies on the door of a Wittemberg church. A prince must have war as his sole objective and thought, Macchiavelli has written. At age nineteen, the new monarch is the most powerful man in history. On his knees, he kisses the sword.

(116, 209, and 218)

Noise of sea and drums. Night has fallen, but there is light from the moon. Around the plaza, fish and dried ears of corn hang from the straw roofs.

Enter Balboa, chained, hands bound behind his back. They untie him. Balboa smokes his last cigar. Without saying a word, he places his neck on the block. The executioner raises the ax.

From his house, Pedro Arias de Avila peers furtively through the cane wall. He is sitting on the coffin that he brought from Spain. He uses the coffin as a chair or a table, and once a year, year after year, covers it with candles, during the requiem that celebrates his resurrection. They call him Pedrarias the Buried ever since he got up out of this coffin, wrapped in a shroud, as nuns sang the office of the dead and relatives sobbed uncontrollably. Previously they had called him Pedrarias the Gallant, because of his invincibility in tournaments, battles, and gallantries; and now, although he is nearing eighty, he deserves the name of Fury of the Lord. When Pedrarias wakes up shaking his white mane because he lost a hundred Indians at dice the night before, his glance is better avoided.

Ever since he landed on these beaches, Pedrarias has distrusted Balboa. Balboa being his son-in-law, he doesn’t kill him without a trial. There are not too many lawyers around here, so the judge is also counsel and prosecutor; the trial, long.

Balboa’s head rolls on the sand.

It was Balboa who had founded this town of Acla, among trees twisted by the winds. On the day Acla was born, a black bird of prey dived from above the clouds, seized the steel helmet from Balboa’s head, and took off, cawing.

Here Balboa was building, piece by piece, the brigantines that would be launched to explore the new sea he had discovered.