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

SISTER JUANA: My poor verses! Dust, shadow, nothing. Vain glory, all the applause … Did I ask for it? What divine revelation forbids women to write? By grace or curse, it was Heaven that made me a poet.

THE CONFESSOR ( looks at the ceiling and raises his hands in supplication): She dirties the purity of the faith, and Heaven is to blame for it.

SISTER FILOTEA ( puts embroidery frame aside and clasps hands over stomach): Sister Juana has much to sing to the human spirit, little to the divine.

SISTER JUANA: Don’t the Gospels teach us that the celestial expresses itself in the terrestrial? A powerful force pushes my hand …

THE CONFESSOR ( waving the wooden cross, as if to strike Juana from afar): Force of God, or force of the king of the proud?

SISTER JUANA: … and I’ll continue writing, I’m afraid, as long as my body makes a shadow. I fled from myself when I took the habit, but I brought myself along, wretch that I am.

SISTER FILOTEA: She bathes in the nude. There are proofs.

SISTER JUANA: Oh, Lord, put out the light of my understanding! Leave only what suffices to keep Thy Law! Isn’t the rest superfluous for a woman?

THE CONFESSOR ( screaming harshly like a crow): Shame on you! Mortify your heart, ingrate!

SISTER JUANA: Put me out. Put me out, my God! ( The play continues, with similar dialog, until 1693).

(58 and 75)

Adario, Chief of the Huron Indians, Speaks to Baron de Lahontan, French Colonizer of Newfoundland

Nay, you are miserable enough already, and indeed I can’t see how you can be more such. What sort of men must Europeans be? What species of creatures do they retain to? The Europeans, who must be forc’d to do good, and have no other prompter for the avoiding of Evil than the fear of punishment …

Who gave you all the countries that you now inhabit? By what right do you possess them? They always belonged to the Algonquins before. In earnest, my dear brother, I’m sorry for thee from the bottom of my soul. Take my advice, and turn Huron; for I see plainly a vast difference between thy condition and mine. I am master of myself and my condition. I am master of my own body, I have the absolute disposal of myself, I do what I please, I am the first and the last of my nation, I fear no man, and I depend only upon the Great Spirit. Whereas, thy body, as well as thy soul, are doomed to a dependence upon thy great Captain, thy Vice-Roy disposes of thee, thou hast not the liberty of doing what thou hast a mind to; thou art afraid of robbers, false witnesses, assassins, etc., and thou dependest upon an infinity of persons whose places have raised them above thee. Is it true or not?

(136)

The Witches of Salem

“Christ knows how many devils there are here!” roars the Reverend Samuel Parris, pastor of the town of Salem, and speaks of Judas, the devil seated at the Lord’s table, who sold himself for thirty coins, £3/15/0 in English pounds, the derisory price of a female slave.

In the war of the lambs against the dragons, cries the pastor, no neutrality is possible nor any sure refuge. The devils have planted themselves in his own house: a daughter and a niece of the Reverend Parris have been the first ones tormented by the army of devils that has taken this Puritan town by storm. The little girls fondled a crystal ball, wanting to know their fate, and saw death. Since that happened, many young girls of Salem feel hell in their bodies, the malignant fever burns them inside and they twist and turn, roll on the ground frothing at the mouth and screaming blasphemies and obscenities that the Devil puts on their lips.

The doctor, William Griggs, diagnoses evil spells. A dog is given a cake of rye flour mixed with the urine of the possessed girls, but the dog gobbles it up, wags his tail, and goes off to sleep in peace. The Devil prefers human habitations.

Between one convulsion and the next, the victims accuse.

Women, and poor ones, are the first sentenced to hang. Two whites, one black: Sarah Osborne, a bent old woman who years ago cried out to her Irish servant, who slept in the stable, and made her a place in her bed; Sarah Good, a disorderly beggar who smokes a pipe and grumbles when given alms; and Tituba, a black West Indian slave, mistress of a hairy devil with a long nose. The daughter of Sarah Good, a young witch aged four, is in Boston prison with fetters on her feet.

But the agonized screams of Salem’s young girls do not cease, and charges and condemnations multiply. The witch-hunt spreads from suburban Salem Village to the center of Salem Town, from the town to the port, from the accursed to the powerful. Not even the governor’s wife escapes the accusing finger. From the gallows hang prosperous farmers and businessmen, shipowners trading with London, privileged members of the Church who enjoy the right to Communion.

A sulphurous rain is reported over Salem Town, Massachusetts’ second port, where the Devil, working harder than ever, goes about promising the Puritans cities of gold and French footwear.

(34)

Nationalization of Colonial Art

In the sanctuary of Guápulo, a village overlooking Quito, Miguel de Santiago begins to show his canvases.

In homage to the local Virgin, who is a great miracle worker, Miguel de Santiago offers these mountains and plains, this cordillera and this sky, landscapes that would have little life if the people who move in them did not light them up: local people moving through local settings in procession or alone. The artist no longer copies works from Madrid or Rome about the life of St. Augustine. Now he paints the luminous city of Quito surrounded by volcanos, the towers of these churches, the Indians of Pujilí and Machángara Canyon, Bellavista Hill and the Valley of Guápulo; and the suns behind the mountains, the rising bonfire-smoke clouds, and the misty rivers that never stop singing all belong here.

Nor is it only Miguel de Santiago. The anonymous hands of indigenous or mestizo artisans sneak contraband llamas into their Christmas paintings instead of camels, and pineapples and palms and corncobs and avocados into church-façade greenery carvings; and even head-banded suns up close to the altars. On all sides there are pregnant Virgins, and Christs that grieve like men, like men of these parts, for the sadness of this world.

(215)

Juana at Forty-Two

Lifelong tears, springing from time and pain, soak her face. She sees the world as profoundly and sadly clouded. Defeated, she bids it farewell.

For days she has been confessing the sins of her whole existence to the implacable Father Antonio Núñez de Miranda, and the rest is all penitence. With her own blood as ink she writes a letter to the Divine Tribunal, asking forgiveness.

Her light sails and heavy keels will no longer sail the seas of poetry. Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz abandons her human studies and renounces literature. She asks God for the gift of forgetfulness and chooses silence, or accepts it, and so America loses its best poet.

Her body will not survive long this suicide of the soul. Let life be ashamed of lasting so long for me …

(16, 49, and 58)

Thirteen Years of Independence

Thirteen years have passed since the bells of Santa Fe went mad celebrating the death of the God of the Christians and of Mary, his mother.

Thirteen years the Spaniards have taken to reconquer these wild lands of the North. While that truce of independence lasted, the Indians recovered their liberty and their names, their religion and their customs, but they also introduced into their communities the plow and the wheel and other instruments that the Spaniards brought.