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

In the wedding celebrations for the princess, a work by William Shakespeare is also staged, The Tempest, inspired by the wreck of a Virginia Company ship in the Bermudas. The great creator of souls and marvels locates his drama this time on an island in the Mediterranean that more resembles the Caribbean. There Duke Prospero meets Caliban, son of the witch Sycorax, worshiper of the god of the Patagonian Indians. Caliban is a savage, an Indian of the type Shakespeare has seen in some exhibition in London: a thing of darkness, more beast than man, who only learns to curse and has no capacity for judgment nor sense of responsibility. Only as a slave, or tied up like a monkey, could he find a place in human society; that is, European society, which he has absolutely no interest in joining.

(207)

In this council it has been stated that, for lack of examination of the comedies presented in this city, there have been said many things injurious to parties and against the authorities and the honesty that is owing to this republic. In order that said improprieties may cease in the future, it behooves us to provide a remedy. And the question having been posed and discussed, it was agreed and so ordered that present and future authors of comedies be notified not to present or have presented in any form any comedy without its first being seen and examined and approved by the person duly named by this council, under pain of two hundred pesos …

(122)

Wings of condor, head of parrot, skins of jaguar: the Peruvian Indians dance their ancestral Raymi on Corpus Christi day. In the Quechuan language they perform their invocations to the sun at the time of sowing, or pay the sun homage when there is a birth or at the harvest season.

To the end that with Our Lord’s help occasions for falling into idolatry may be suppressed, and the devil may not continue exercising his deceits, the archibishop of Lima decides that neither in the local dialect nor in the general tongue may dances, songs, or taquies be performed. The archbishop announces terrible punishments and orders all native musical instruments to be burned, including the dulcet reed flute, the messenger of love:

By the shore you shall sleep ,

At midnight I will come …

(21)

At seventy, he leans over the table, wets the pen in the horn inkpot, and writes and draws defiantly. He is a man of hasty and broken prose. He curses the invader in the invader’s tongue and makes it explode. The language of Castile keeps tripping over Quechua and Aymara words, but after all, Castile is Castile for the Indians, and without the Indians Your Majesty isn’t worth a thing.

Today Guamán Poma de Ayala finishes his letter to the king of Spain. At the start it was addressed to Philip II, who died while Guamán was writing it. Now he wants it delivered into Philip III’s own hand. The pilgrim has trekked from village to village, the author walking over mountains with much snow, eating if he could and always carrying on his back his growing manuscript of sketches and words. The author has returned from the world … He went through the world weeping the whole way and has finally reached Lima. From here he proposes to travel to Spain. How he will manage that, he doesn’t know. What does it matter? No one knows Guamán, no one listens to him, and the monarch is very remote and very high up; but Guamán, pen in hand, treats him as an equal, addresses him familiarly, and explains to him what he should do.

Exiled from his province, naked, treated as a nothing, Guamán does not hesitate to proclaim himself inheritor of the royal dynasties of the Yarovilcas and Incas and calls himself king’s counselor, first Indian chronicler, prince of the realm, and second-in-command. He has written this long letter out of pride: His lineage stems from the ancient lords of Huánuco, and he has incorporated in the name he gives himself the falcon and puma of his ancestors’ coat of arms, they who ruled the lands of northern Peru before Incas and Spaniards.

To write this letter is to weep. Words, images, tears of rage. The Indians are the natural owners of this realm and the Spaniards, natives of Spain, are strangers here in this realm. The apostle Santiago, in military uniform, tramples on a fallen native. At banquets, the plates are heaped with miniature women. The muleteer carries a basket filled with the mestizo children of the priest. Also it is God’s punishment that many Indians die in mercury and silver mines. In all Peru, where there were a hundred not ten remain. “Do you eat this gold?” asks the Inca, and the conquistador replies: “This gold we eat.”

Today, Guamán finishes his letter. He has lived for it. It has taken him half a century to write and draw. It runs to nearly twelve hundred pages. Today, Guamán finishes his letter and dies.

Neither Philip III nor any other king will ever see it. For three centuries it will roam the earth, lost.

(124, 125, and 179)

“What news do you bring of our father?”

“He lies, sir, amid tears and prayers. All swelled up he is, and the color of ashes. He’s already put his soul to rest with the notary and with the priest. The mourners are waiting.”

“If only I had the balsam of Fierabrás … Two swallows of that and he’d get well right away!”

“And him going on seventy, and dying? With six teeth in his mouth and only one hand that works? With the scars from all them battles, and insults, and jailings? That balls stuff wouldn’t do nothing for him, sir.”

“I don’t say two swallows. Two drops.”

“ltd be too late.”

“He’s dead, you say?”

“Dying, sir.”

“Take off your hat, Sancho. And you, Rocinante, lower your head. Ah, prince of arms! King of letters!”

“What’ll we do without him, sir?”

“Nothing that doesn’t do him homage.”

“Where’ll we be putting ourselves, so all alone?”

“We’ll go where he wanted to go but couldn’t.”

“Where’s that, sir?”

“To set right whatever is crooked on the shores of Cartagena, in the ravines of La Paz and the woods of Soconusco.”

“Nice places to get your bones ground up.”

“You must know, Sancho, my brother of so many roads and rides, that in the Indies glory awaits the knight-errant thirsting for justice and fame …”

“Well, it’s been a while since we got beaten up …”

“… and their squires are rewarded with huge, never-explored kingdoms.”

“Wouldn’t there be some a bit closer?”

“And you, Rocinante, in the Indies horses are shod with silver and champ on gold bits. They’re regarded as gods!”

“A thousand beatings ain’t enough for him. He wants a thousand and one!”

“Shut up, Sancho.”

“Didn’t our father say that America is a refuge for scoundrels and a sanctuary for whores?”

“Shut up, I tell you!”

“Whoever embarks for the Indies, he said, leaves his conscience on the pier.”

“So we’ll go there to clean off the honor of him who fathered us as free men in prison!”

“Can’t we just mourn him here?”

“Do you call such treachery homage? Ah, villain! We’ll take to the road again. If he made us to sojourn in the world, we’ll take him through the world. Reach me my helmet! Shield on arm, Sancho! My lance!”

(46)