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

For the slaves, it is no cause for wonder. They knew he would remain in Haiti, the color of all shadows, the prowler of the night.

(63 and 115)

Canek

The Maya Indians proclaim the independence of Yucatán and announce the forthcoming independence of America.

“Spanish power has brought us nothing but troubles. Nothing but troubles.”

Jacinto Uc, who makes trumpets sound by caressing the leaves of trees, crowns himself king. Canek, black snake, is his chosen name. The king of Yucatán ties around his neck the mantle of Our Lady of the Conception and harangues the other Indians. They have rolled grains of corn on the ground and sung the war chant. The prophets, the men with warm breasts enlightened by the gods, have said that he who dies fighting will reawaken. Canek says he is not king for love of power, that power craves more and more power, and that when the jug is full the water spills out. He says he is king against the power of the powerful, and announces the end of serfdom and whipping posts and of Indians lining up to kiss the master’s hand.

“They won’t be able to tie us up: they’ll run out of rope.”

In Cisteil and other villages the echoes multiply, words become screams; and monks and captains roll in blood.

(67 and 144)

Fragments

After much killing, they have taken him prisoner. Saint Joseph has been the patron saint of this colonial victory. They accuse Canek of scourging Christ and of stuffing Christ’s mouth with grass. He is convicted. He is to be broken alive with iron bars in the main square of Merida.

Canek enters the square on muleback, his face almost hidden by an enormous paper crown. On the crown his infamy is spelled out: Risen against God and against the King.

They chop him up bit by bit, without permitting him the relief of death, worse than an animal’s fate in a slaughterhouse; then they throw the fragments of him into the bonfire. A prolonged ovation punctuates the ceremony. Beneath the ovation, it is whispered that the serfs will put ground glass in the masters’ bread.

(67 and 144)

Sacred Corn

The executioners throw Canek’s ashes into the air, so that he won’t revive on the day of the Last Judgement. Eight of his chiefs die by garroting and two hundred Indians have an ear cut off. Hurting what is most sacred, soldiers burn the rebel communities’ seedcorn plantings.

The corn is alive. It suffers if it is burned; its dignity is hurt if it is trodden on. Perhaps the corn dreams about the Indians, as the Indians dream about the corn. It organizes space and time and history for the people made of corn flesh.

When Canek was born, they cut his navel cord over a corncob. In the name of the newly born, grains of corn stained with his blood were planted. From this cornfield he fed, and drank clear water containing the light of an evening star, and so grew up.

(1, 67, 144, and 228)

The Subversives Set a Bad Example

The guides, who can see as well on a moonless night as by day, elude the traps. Thanks to them, the soldiers are able to cross the labyrinth of treacherous sharpened stakes, and swoop down at dawn on the free blacks’ village.

Smoke of gunpowder, smoke of flames: the air is thick and sour down by the beach at Itapoā. By midday nothing remains of the Buraco de Tatú, the fugitive slaves’ refuge which for twenty years has been such an offense to the nearby city of Sāo Salvador de Bahia.

The viceroy has sworn to cleanse Brazil of runaway slaves, but they sprout up on all sides. In vain Captain Bartolomeu Bueno lops off four thousand pairs of ears in Minas Gerais.

Rifle butts force into line those who did not fall in defense of the Buraco de Tatú. All are branded on the chest with the letter F for fugitive, and returned to their owners. Captain Joaquim da Costa Cardoso, who is short of cash, is selling children at bargain prices.

(264 and 284)

Communion

History, the pink-veiled lady offering her lips to those who win, will have much to hide. She will feign absent-mindedness or sicken with fake amnesia; she will lie that the black slaves of Brazil were meek and resigned, even happy.

But plantation owners oblige the cook to sample each dish before their eyes. Among the delights of the table lurk poisons that promise long agonies. Slaves kill; and they also kill themselves or flee, which are their ways of robbing the master of his chief wealth. Or they rise up, believing and dancing and singing, which is their way of redemption and resurrection.

The smell of cut sugarcane inebriates the plantation air, and fires burn in the earth and in human breasts: the fire tempers the whips, drums rumble. The drums invoke the ancient gods, who fly to this land of exile in response to the voices of their lost children, enter them, make love to them, and, pulling music and howls from their mouths, give them back their broken life intact.

In Nigeria or Dahomey, the drums ask fecundity for the women and the fields. Not here. Here the women bear slaves and the fields crush them. The drums do not ask for fecundity, but vengeance; and Ogum, the god of iron, sharpens daggers instead of plows.

(27)

Bahia Portrait

Those in command in Bahia say that the black man does not go to Heaven, pray as he might, because he has rough hair that pricks Our Lord. They say he does not sleep: he snores. That he does not eat: he swallows. That he does not talk: he mumbles. That he does not die: he comes to an end. They say that God made the white man and painted the mulatto. The black man, the Devil shat.

Any black fiesta is suspect of homage to Satan, that atrocious black with tail, claws, and trident, but those in command know that if the slaves amuse themselves from time to time, they do more work, live more years and have more children. Just as the capoeira —ritual and mortal hand-to-hand combat — purports to be a colorful game, the candomblé pretends to be nothing but dance and noise. Furthermore, Virgins or saints to lend a disguise are never lacking. No one stops Ogum from turning into Saint George, the blond cavalier, and the mischievous black gods even conceal themselves in the wounds of Christ.

In the slaves’ Holy Week, it is a black that administers justice to the traitor, blowing up the white Judas, a puppet painted with lime; and when the slaves parade the Virgin in procession, the black Saint Benedict is at the center of all homage. The Church does not recognize this saint. According to the slaves, Saint Benedict was a slave like themselves, a cook in a monastery, and angels would stir the pot while he said his prayers.

Anthony is the saint preferred by the masters. Saint Anthony sports military stripes, draws a salary, and specializes in policing blacks. When a slave escapes, the master throws the saint into the corner with the trash. Saint Anthony remains in penitence, face down, until the dogs catch the runaway.

(27 and 65)

Your Other Head, Your Other Memory

From the sundial of the San Francisco monastery, a lugubrious inscription reminds passersby how time flies: Every hour that passes wounds thee and the last will kill thee.

The words are written in Latin. The black slaves of Bahia do not know Latin or how to read. From Africa they brought happy and scrappy gods: the blacks are with them, to them they go. Whoever dies, enters. The drums beat so that the deceased will not get lost and will arrive safely in Oxalá. There, in the house of the creator of creators, awaits his other head, the immortal head. We all have two heads and two memories. A head of clay, which will turn to dust; and another, forever invulnerable to the gnawings of time and of passion. One memory that death kills, a compass that expires with the journey; and another memory, the collective memory, which will live as long as the human adventure in the world lives.