Eduardo Galeano - Children of the Days - A Calendar of Human History

When I fall ill, I am black .

When I die, I will be black .

And meanwhile you:

When you were born, you were pink .

When you grew up, you were white .

When you’re in the sun, you turn red .

When you feel cold, you turn blue .

When you feel fear, you turn green .

When you fall ill, you turn yellow .

When you die, you will be gray .

So, which of us is the colored man?

— By Léopold Senghor, poet of Senegal

Disappeared: graveless dead, nameless graves.

And also:

old-growth forests,

stars in city nights,

the fragrance of flowers,

the taste of fruit,

letters written by hand,

old cafés where there was time to waste,

soccer in the street,

the right to walk,

the right to breathe,

secure jobs,

secure retirement,

doors without locks,

a sense of community

and common sense.

In 1943 during World War II, General George Patton harangued his soldiers:

“You are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight!

“Americans love a winner! Americans will not tolerate a loser! Americans despise cowards! Americans play to win all of the time! That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war!

“Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they are He Men!”

He must have been reincarnated. Before entering the US Army, he had been a warrior in Carthage and Athens, a gentleman at the court of England and a field marshal for Napoleon Bonaparte.

General Patton died at the end of 1945, run over by a truck.

A monument unveiled in Germany in the year 2009 honors soldiers who deserted.

Human history has left many memorials in its wake, but recognition such as this is certainly unusual.

An homage to traitors? Deserters are indeed traitors. What they betray is war.

In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland because Poland was going to invade Germany.

While a million and a half German soldiers flooded the map of Poland and bombs poured down from German planes, Hitler explained his doctrine of preemptive war: prevention is better than treatment; I have to kill them before they kill me.

Hitler founded a school of military thought. From then on, preemptive is the claim made by all digestive wars, when countries devour countries.

A year after the invasion of Poland, Hitler had gobbled up half of Europe and was still on his headlong rampage. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France had already fallen or were about to fall, and the nightly bombings of London and other British cities were under way.

In its edition for today in 1940, the Spanish daily ABC reported that “one hundred and sixteen enemy planes” had been shot down, making no attempt to hide its satisfaction at “the great success of the Reich’s attacks.”

On the front page Generalissimo Francisco Franco smiled triumphantly. Gratitude was one of his virtues.

In the year 1970, Salvador Allende won the election and was sworn in as president of Chile.

He said, “I will nationalize our copper mines.”

And he said, “I won’t get out of here alive.”

He kept his word on both counts.

King Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, was born today in 1638.

The Sun King dedicated his life to glorious wars against his neighbors and the meticulous care of his curled wig, his splendid capes and his high-heeled shoes.

Under his reign, two successive famines killed more than two million Frenchmen.

The figure is known thanks to the mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal half a century before. Known too is the cause, thanks to Voltaire, who some time later wrote: “Good policy relies on this secret: knowing how to let die of hunger the people who allow the rest of us to live.”

The cook convened the calf, the suckling pig, the ostrich, the goat, the deer, the chicken, the duck, the hare, the rabbit, the partridge, the turkey, the dove, the pheasant, the hake, the sardine, the cod, the tuna, the octopus, the shrimp, the squid and even the crab and the turtle, who were the last to arrive.

When all were present and accounted for, the cook explained, “I have brought you here to ask what sauce you would like to be eaten with.”

One of the invitees responded, “I don’t want to be eaten at all.”

The cook then adjourned the meeting.

About this time in the year 2000, one hundred and eighty-nine countries drew up the Millennium Declaration, by which they committed themselves to solving the world’s most pressing problems.

Only one goal has been reached and it did not figure on their list: they managed to multiply the number of experts required to take on such a challenging agenda.

According to what I heard in Santo Domingo, one of those experts stopped by a chicken farm on the outskirts of the city belonging to Doña María de las Mercedes Holmes, and asked her, “If I tell you exactly how many chickens you have, will you give me one?”

He turned on his touch-screen tablet computer, initiated the GPS, connected with the satellite camera through his 3G cell phone and booted up the pixel-counting function.

“You have one hundred and thirty-two chickens.”

And he caught one.

Doña María de las Mercedes did not leave it at that. “If I tell you what your work is, will you give me back my chicken? Okay, you’re an international expert. I know because you came without anyone calling you, you entered my chicken farm without asking permission, you told me something I already knew and then you charged me for it.”

The state of Sergipe, in Brazil’s Northeast: Paulo Freire begins a new workday with a group of very poor peasant farmers he is teaching to read and write.

“How are you, João?”

João does not reply. He tugs on the brim of his hat. A long silence. Finally, he says, “I couldn’t sleep. All night long I couldn’t close my eyes.”

No more words come, until he murmurs, “Yesterday, for the first time ever, I wrote my name.”

José Artigas lived his life fighting astride a native pony and sleeping under the stars. When he governed the lands he freed, his throne was a cow’s skull and his only uniform a poncho.

He went into exile with nothing but the clothes on his back, and he died in poverty.

Now, in Uruguay’s most important square, an enormous bronze founding father mounted on a charging steed contemplates us from on high.

This triumphant champion decked out for glory is identical to every other statue of a venerable military hero the world over.

He claims to be José Artigas.

It happened in 1815 when Uruguay was not yet a country, not yet called Uruguay.