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

The Attorney General of the Council of the Indies advises against overdoing the sale of whiteness certificates,

to the end that persons of color should not seek to generalize these favors believing that these make them equal to whites with no difference but the accident of color, and believing themselves able to obtain all destinies and employments and to form links with any legitimate and mixture-free family … consequences which it is fitting to avoid in a monarchy, where the classification of classes contributes to better order, security, and good government …

Colored or brown persons stemming from infected mixtures constitute a very inferior species which, due to its vitiated nature, its arrogance, and inclination for freedom, has been and is little attached to our government and nation …

(174)

Ambrosio’s Sin

Bound to a post in the main plaza of Catamarca, Ambrosio Millicay receives twenty-five strokes of the lash.

The mulatto Ambrosio, who belongs to the commander Nieva y Castillo, was denounced to the authorities for having committed the crime of learning to read and write. They flayed his back with lashes as a lesson to those pen-pushing Indians and mulattos who wish to ape Spaniards.

Prone on the paving stones, Ambrosio groans and raves and dreams of vengeance. “Pardon me,” he pleads in his dream, and plunges in the knife.

(272)

Napoleon

The solemn chords of the organ invoke the sixty kings who have ruled France, and perhaps too the angels, while the pope offers the crown to Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon wreathes his own brow with the laurel of the Caesars. Then he descends, slowly, majestic in ermine and purple, and places on Josephine the diadem that consecrates her as the first empress in France’s history. In a gold and crystal coach they have reached the throne of this nation, the small foreigner, great warrior, sprouted from the harsh mountains of Corsica, and his wife Josephine, born in Martinique, an Antillean whose embrace they say will burn you to a crisp. Napoleon, the artillery lieutenant who hated Frenchmen, becomes Napoleon I.

The founder of the dynasty that is inaugurated today has rehearsed this coronation ceremony a thousand times. Each personage in the retinue, each actor, has dressed as he prescribed, has placed himself where he wanted, has moved the way he ordered.

“Oh, José! If our father could see us …”

The voracious relatives, princes and princesses of France’s new nobility, have done their duty. True, the mother, Laeticia, has refused to come, and is in the palace murmuring grudges, but Napoleon will order David, the official artist, to give Laeticia a prominent place in the painting which will tell posterity of these ceremonials.

The guests overflow the cathedral of Notre Dame. Among them, a young Venezuelan cranes his neck to miss no detail. At twenty, a hallucinated Simón Bolívar attends the birth of the Napoleonic monarchy: I am no more than a diamond on the handle of Bonaparte’s sword …

During these days, in a gilded salon in Paris, Bolívar has met Alexander von Humboldt. The adventurer-sage, newly arrived from America, has said to him, “ I think your country is ripe for independence, but I don’t see the man who can …”

(20 and 116)

Fray Servando

For wanting the independence of Mexico, and for believing that the pagan god Quetzalcoatl was the apostle Saint Thomas in person, Fray Servando has been sentenced to exile in Spain.

From prison to prison, from escape to escape, the Mexican heretic has been a guest of the most varied Spanish dungeons. But this artist of the file, the tunnel, and the high jump has managed to travel far on the old continent.

Globetrotter, globe breaker: a bird with agile wings and beak of steel, Fray Servando defends himself against Europe’s fascination by cursing all he sees. 7 am a Mexican, he repeats at every step, and thinks Frenchwomen have faces like snub-nosed, big-mouthed frogs; that in France men are like women and women like children; that the Italian language is made for lying; and that Italy is the homeland of the superlative and the bogus, although it has one worthwhile city, Florence, because it is something like a Mexican city. Against Spain, the impertinent friar recites a whole rosary of insults: he says the Spaniards imitate the French like monkeys; that the Court is a brothel and the Escorial no more than a pile of stones; that the Basques drive nails with their foreheads, and the Aragonese likewise, except with the point upward; that the Catalans don’t move a step without a lantern and won’t admit any relative to their homes who doesn’t bring food; and that the Madrileños are dwarfed stringers of rosaries and inheritors of prisons, condemned to a climate of eight months’ winter and four months’ hell.

Now, in the Seville jail, Fray Servando is pulling lice from his chest by the fistful while an army of bedbugs makes waves in his blanket and the fleas mock his slaps and the rats his lunges with a stick. They all want to lunch off Fray Servando and he pleads for a truce. He needs a moment of peace to round out the details of his next escape, which he already has nearly complete.

(318 and 346)

Adventures, Misadventures

After many years of futile waiting, Francisco de Miranda leaves London. The English have paid him a fairly good salary, given him a few promises and some benevolent smiles, but not a bullet for his liberating expedition. Miranda escapes from the chessboard of British diplomacy and tries his luck in the United States.

In New York he gets a ship. Two hundred volunteers accompany him. He lands on the Venezuelan coasts of the Gulf of Coro, after thirty-six years of exile. He has promised his recruits a glorious welcome, flowers and music, honors and treasure, but he meets silence. No one responds to the proclamations that announce freedom. Miranda occupies a couple of towns, covers them with flags and words, and quits Venezuela before the five thousand soldiers from Caracas can wipe him out.

On the island of Trinidad he receives outrageous news. The English have seized the port of Buenos Aires and plan the conquest of Montevideo, Valparaíso, and Veracruz. From London, the War Minister has given clear instructions: The novelty will consist, simply and solely, of substituting the dominion of His Britannic Majesty for the dominion of the Spanish king.

Miranda will return to London, to his house in Grafton Street, and loudly voice his protest. There they raise his annual pension from three hundred to seven hundred pounds sterling.

(150)

Judas-Burning Is Banned

By will of the Portuguese prince, recently arrived in Brazil, the traditional burning of Judases during the Holy Week is to be banned in the colony. To avenge Christ and avenge themselves the people would throw on the fire, one night in the year, the marshal and the archbishop, the rich merchant, the big landlord and the chief of police; the naked ones have enjoyed seeing how the rag dolls, sumptuously adorned and filled with firecrackers, twist in pain and explode amid the flames.

From now on, those in power will not suffer even in Holy Week. The royal family, who have just come from Lisbon, demand silence and respect. An English ship has rescued the Portuguese prince with all his court and jewelry, and brought them to these remote lands.

This efficacious maneuver removes the Portuguese dynasty from the dangerous onslaught of Napoleon Bonaparte, who has invaded Spain and Portugal, and it affords England a useful center of operations in America. The English have taken a tremendous beating on the River Plata. Expelled from Buenos Aires and Montevideo, they now launch their next penetration through Rio de Janeiro, through the most helplessly unconditional of their allies.