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

Three long years ago Sebastián de Benálcazar, gray eyes, white beard either from age or from road dust, sallied forth in search of the treasures that the city of Quito, emptied and burned, had denied him. Of the multitude that followed him, one hundred and sixty exhausted Europeans and not one Indian remain. Leveler of cities, founder of cities, Benalcázar has left behind him a trail of ashes and blood and new worlds born from the point of his sword: surrounding the gallows, the plaza; around the plaza, church, houses, ramparts.

The conquistador’s helmet gleams on the crest of the cordillera. Benalcázar takes possession of the green valleys of the Chibcha nation and proclaims that he will never again obey the orders of his governor.

From the north has come Quesada. From the east, Federmann. From the south, Benalcázar. Cross and arquebus, sky and soil: After so many crazy wanderings, the three rebel captains descend the cordillera slopes and meet on the plain of Bogota.

Benalcázar knows that the chiefs of this place travel on golden litters. Federmann hears the sweet melodies that breezes play on the sheets of gold hanging from temples and palaces. Quesada kneels at the shore of the lake where native priests covered with gold dust immerse themselves.

Who will end up with El Dorado? Quesada, the Granadan, who says he got here first? Federmann, the German from Ulm, who conquers in the name of the banker Welser? Benalcázar, the Cordoban?

The three armies, ulcerated skin and bones in rags, size up each other and wait.

Then the German bursts out laughing, doubles up with mirth, and the Andalusians catch the contagion until the three captains collapse, floored by laughter and hunger and what brought them all there, that which is without being and arrived without coming: the realization that El Dorado won’t be anybody’s.

(13)

From the mouth of the volcano Masaya came in other times a naked old woman, wise in many secrets, who gave good advice about corn and war. Since the Christians arrived, say the Indians, the old woman refuses to leave the burning mountain.

Many Christians think the Masaya is a mouth of hell and that its flare-ups and everlasting fiery smoke announce eternal chastisements. Others assert that this incandescent smoke cloud, visible for fifty leagues, is produced by gold and silver being melted and purified, seething in the belly of the mountain. The more the fire blazes, the purer they become.

The expedition has been in preparation for a year. Father Blas del Castillo rises very early and hears the confessions of Pedro Ruiz, Benito Dávila, and Juan Sanchez. The four implore forgiveness with tears in their eyes and begin the march at daybreak.

The priest is the first to go down. He climbs into a basket, helmet on head, stole on chest, and cross in hand, and reaches the huge esplanade that surrounds the mouth of fire.

“It isn’t hell but paradise!” he proclaims, black with ashes, as he sticks the cross among the stones. Immediately his companions follow him down. From above, the Indians also send down pulley, chains, cauldrons, beams, bolts …

They submerge the iron cauldron. From the depths come neither gold nor silver, nothing but sulphur slag. When they dip the cauldron in deeper, the volcano eats it up.

(203)

Some months ago Pedro de Valdivia discovered this hill and this valley. The Araucanians, who had discovered the hill thousands of years earlier, called it Huelén, which means pain. Valdivia baptized it Santa Lucía.

From the crest of the hill Valdivia saw the green earth between arms of the river and decided that the world contained no better place to dedicate a city to the apostle Santiago, who accompanies the conquistadors and fights for them. He cut the air with his sword to the four cardinal points of the compass and so was born Santiago of the New Frontier. Now it is enjoying its first summer: a few houses of mud and sticks, roofed with straw, a plaza at the center, stockade all around.

A mere fifty men have remained in Santiago. Valdivia stays with them on the banks of the Cachapoal River. At break of day, the sentry sounds the alarm from the top of the stockade. Squadrons of natives are approaching from all four sides. The Spaniards hear the war cries, and immediately a downpour of arrows falls on them.

By noon some houses are nothing but ashes, and the stockade has fallen. They are fighting body to body in the plaza. Then Inés runs to the hut that serves as prison. There, the guard is standing watch over seven Araucanian chiefs whom the Spaniards captured some time ago. She suggests, implores, orders him to cut their heads off.

“What?”

“Their heads!”

“What?”

“Like this!”

Inés seizes his sword, and seven heads fly through the air. Those heads turn the besieged into pursuers. Taking the offensive, the Spaniards invoke not the apostle Santiago but Our Lady of Good Help.

Inés Suárez, the woman from Malaga, had been the first to sign up when Valdivia started recruiting at his house in Cuzco. She came to these southern lands at the head of the invading forces, riding alongside Valdivia, sword of stout steel, coat of fine mail, and ever since she marches, fights, and sleeps with Valdivia. Today she has taken his place.

She is the only woman among the men. They say: “She’s macho ” and compare her with Roldán or El Cid, while she rubs oil on the fingers of Captain Francisco de Aguirre. They have stuck to his sword hilt and cannot be prised off although, for today, the war is over.

(67, 85, and 130)

They had seized even his mule. Those who now eat off his silver service and tread his carpets had thrown him out of Mexico with fettered feet.

Ten years later they, the officials, summon the warrior back. Alvarado leaves off governing Guatemala and comes to chastise Indians in these ungrateful lands that he conquered along with Cortes. He wants to push on north to the seven golden cities of Cíbola, but this morning, at the height of the battle, a horse falls on him and throws him down a cliff.

To Mexico Pedro de Alvarado has returned, and in Mexico he lies. His helmet hangs from a branch, and his sword has fallen among the brambles. Don’t sheath me without honor can still be read on the steel blade.

(81)

Pedro de Alvarado had married Francisca, but Francisca was struck down by the orange-blossom tea that she drank on the road to Veracruz. Then he married Francisca’s sister, Beatriz.

Beatriz was waiting for him in Guatemala when she learned she had been two months widowed. She decked her house in black inside and out and nailed up doors and windows so that she could cry her heart out in private.

She weeps looking in the mirror at her nude body, which has dried up from so much waiting and now has nothing left to wait for, a body that no longer sings, and she weeps through her mouth, which can only sob: “Are you there, my darling?”

She weeps for this house that she hates and this land that is not hers and for the years spent between this house and the church, from Mass to Mess and from baptism to burial, surrounded by drunken soldiers and Indian servants who make her sick. She weeps for the food that upsets her and for him who never came, because there was always some war to fight or land to be conquered. She weeps for all the tears she has shed alone in her bed, when a dog’s bark or a rooster’s crow made her jump and she learned, all alone, to read the darkness and listen to the silence and make drawings in the air. She weeps and weeps, broken up inside.