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

(280)

Behind a Huge Cross of Sticks

charge the Cristeros , rebelling in Jalisco and other states of Mexico in search of martyrdom and glory. They shout Vivas! for a Christ the King crowned with jewels instead of thorns, and Vivas! for the Pope, who has not resigned himself to the loss of the few clerical privileges still remaining in Mexico.

These poor campesinos have just been dying for a revolution that promised them land. Now, condemned to a living death, they start dying for a Church that promises them heaven.

(297)

A Child Looks On

The mother covers his eyes so he cannot see his grandfather hanging by the feet. And then the mother’s hands prevent his seeing his father’s body riddled by the bandits’ bullets, or his uncle’s twisting in the wind over there on the telegraph posts.

Now the mother too has died, or perhaps has just tired of defending her child’s eyes. Sitting on the stone fence that snakes over the slopes, Juan Rulfo contemplates his harsh land with a naked eye. He sees horsemen — federal police or Cristeros , it makes no difference — emerging from smoke, and behind them, in the distance, a fire. He sees bodies hanging in a row, nothing now but ragged clothing emptied by the vultures. He sees a procession of women dressed in black.

Juan Rulfo, a child of nine, is surrounded by ghosts who look like him.

Here there is nothing alive — the only voices those of howling coyotes, the only air the black wind that rises in gusts from the plains of Jalisco, where the survivors are only dead people pretending.

(48 and 400)

The War of Jaguars and Birds

Fifteen years ago the Marines landed in Nicaragua for a while, to protect the lives and properties of United States citizens , and forgot to leave. Against them now loom these northern mountains. Villages are scarce here; but anyone who hasn’t actually become one of Sandino’s soldiers is his spy or messenger. Since the dynamiting of the San Albino mine and the first battle, at Muy Muy, the liberating force keeps growing.

The whole Honduran army is mobilized on the border to prevent arms from reaching Sandino from across the river, but the guerrillas, unconcerned, acquire rifles from fallen enemies and carve bullets out of the trees in which they imbed themselves; nor is there any shortage of machetes for chopping off heads, or sardine-can grenades filled with glass, nails, screws, and dynamite for scattering the enemy.

U.S. airplanes bomb haphazardly, destroying villages. And Marines roam the forests, between abysses and high peaks, roasted by the sun, drowned by the rain, asphyxiated by dust, burning and killing all they find. Even the little monkeys throw things at them.

They offer Sandino a pardon and ten dollars for every day he has been in rebellion. Captain Hatfield hints at a surrender.

From his stronghold in El Chipote, a mysterious peak wreathed in mist, comes the reply: I don’t sell out or surrender . It closes: Your obedient servant, who desires to put you in a handsome coffin with beautiful bouquets of flowers . And then Sandino’s signature.

His soldiers bite like jaguars and flit like birds. When least expected, they lash out in a single jaguar leap, and before the enemy can even react are already striking from the rear or the flanks, only to disappear with a flap of wings.

(118 and 361)

Crazy Little Army

Four Corsairs bombard El Chipote, already encircled and harassed by salvos from Marine artillery. For days and nights now the whole region thunders and trembles, until the invaders fix bayonets and charge the stone trenches bristling with rifles. This heroic action ends with neither dead nor wounded, because the attackers find only soldiers of straw and guns of sticks.

U.S. papers promptly report the victory without mentioning that the Marines have demolished a legion of dolls with wide-brimmed hats and black-and-red kerchiefs. They do verify, however, that Sandino himself is among the victims.

In the remote village of San Rafael del Norte, Sandino listens to his men singing by the light of campfires. There he receives word of his death.

“God and our mountains are with us. And after all is said and done, death is no more than a little moment of pain.”

Over the past months thirty-six warships and six thousand more Marines have arrived as reinforcements in Nicaragua. Yet, of seventy-five big and small battles, almost all have been lost, and the quarry has slipped through their fingers, no one knows how.

Crazy little army , the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral calls Sandino’s battered warriors, these masters of daring and devilment.

(118, 361, and 419)

“It Was All Very Brotherly”

JUAN PABLO RAMRÍEZ: We made dolls of straw and stuck them there. As decoys we fixed up sticks topped by sombreros. And it was fun … They spent a week firing at them, bombing them, and I pissed in my pants laughing!

ALFONSO ALEXANDER: The invaders were like the elephant and we the snake. They were immobility, we were mobility .

PEDRO ANTONIO ARAÚZ: The Yanquis died sad deaths, the ingrates. They just didn’t know how things work in our country’s mountains .

SINFOROSO GONZÁLEZ ZELEDÓN: The campesinos helped us, they worked with us, they felt for us .

COSME CASTRO ANDINO: We weren’t drawing any pay. When we got to a village and the campesinos gave us food, we shared it. It was all very brotherly .

(236)

Newsreel

In an emotional ceremony in Washington, ten Marine officers receive the Cross of Merit for distinguished service and extraordinary heroism in the war against Sandino.

The Washington Herald and other papers devote pages to the crimes of the outlaw band who slit Marines’ throats. They also publish documents newly arrived from Mexico, with impressive numbers of spelling mistakes, proving that Mexican president Calles is sending bolshevik weapons and propaganda to Sandino through Soviet diplomats. Official State Department sources explain that Calles began revealing his communist sympathies when he raised taxes on U.S. oil companies operating in Mexico, and fully confirmed them when his government established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government warns that it will not permit Russian and Mexican soldiers to implant the Soviet in Nicaragua . According to official State Department spokesmen, Mexico is exporting bolshevism . After Nicaragua the next target of Soviet expansion in Central America will be the Panama Canal.

Senator Shortridge declares that the citizens of the United States deserve as much protection as those of ancient Rome , and Senator Bingham says: We are obliged to accept our function as international policemen . Senator Bingham, the famous archaeologist who sixteen years ago discovered the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, has never concealed his admiration for the works of dead Indians.

For the opposition, Senator Borah denies his country’s right to act as the censor of Central America, and Senator Wheeler suggests that the government send Marines to Chicago, not Nicaragua, if it really wants to take on bandits. The Nation magazine, for its part, takes the view that for the U.S. president to call Sandino a bandit is like George III of England labeling George Washington a thief.

(39 and 419)