Faces and Masks Read online

  “No.”

  In the streets of Lima, the same people who gave him a diamond-studded sword are burning his Constitution. Those who called him “Father of the Country” are burning his effigy in the streets of Bogotá. In Caracas, they officially dub him “enemy of Venezuela.” Over in Paris, the defamatory articles about him get stronger; and the friends who know how to praise him do not know how to defend him.

  “I cannot.”

  Was this the history of mankind? This labyrinth, this futile game of shadows? The Venezuelan people curse the wars that have taken half their sons to remote areas and given them nothing for it. Venezuela tears itself loose from Grand Colombia and Ecuador follows suit, while Bolívar lies beneath a dirty canvas in the boat that sails down the Magdalena to the sea.

  “I can no more.”

  Blacks are still slaves in Venezuela, despite the laws. In Colombia and Peru, the laws passed to civilize Indians are applied to despoil them. The tribute, the colonial tax that Indians pay for being Indians, has been reimposed in Bolivia.

  Was this, was this history? All grandeur ends up dwarfed. On the neck of every promise crawls betrayal. Great men become voracious landlords. The sons of America destroy each other. Sucre, the chosen inheritor, who had saved himself from poison and dagger, falls in the forests on the way to Quito, toppled by a bullet.

  “I can no more. Let us go.”

  Crocodiles and timber interweave in the river. Bolívar, yellow-skinned, no light in his eyes, shivering, delirious, moves down the Magdalena toward the sea, toward death.

  (53 and 202)

  1830: Maracaibo

  The Governor Proclaims:

  … Bolívar, genius of evil, torch of anarchy, oppressor of his country, has ceased to exist.

  (202)

  1830: La Guaira

  Divide et Impera

  The North American consul in La Guaira, J. G. Williamson, prophet and protagonist of the disintegration of Grand Colombia, sent the State Department a well-informed report. A month ahead of the event, he announced the separation of Venezuela and the end of the customs duties that do not suit the United States.

  Simón Bolívar dies on December Seventeenth. On another December Seventeenth, eleven years ago, he had founded Grand Colombia, a fusion of Colombia and Venezuela which later also embraced Ecuador and Panama. Grand Colombia has died with him.

  The North American consul in Lima, William Tudor, has helped to weave the conspiracy against the American project of Bolívar, the dangerous madman of Colombia. Tudor was upset not only by Bolívar’s fight against slavery, a bad example for the southern United States, but also and above all by the excessive aggrandizement of the America liberated from Spain. With all logic at his command, the consul has said that England and the United States have common and potent reasons of State against the development of a new power. The British Admiral Fleming, meanwhile, comes and goes between Valencia and Cartagena encouraging the division.

  (207 and 280)

  1830: Montevideo

  Abecedarium: The Oath of the Constitution

  The English government, Lord John Ponsonby had said, will never consent that only two states, Brazil and Argentina, should be exclusive masters of the east coasts of South America.

  Through London’s influence, and under its protection, Uruguay becomes an independent state. The most rebellious province of the River Plata, which has expelled the Brazilians from its soil, breaks off from the old trunk and takes on a life of its own. The port of Buenos Aires is free at last from the nightmare of this unfriendly prairie where Artigas rose in rebellion.

  In the Mother church of Montevideo, Father Larrañaga offers a thanksgiving chant to God. Fervor illuminates the face of the priest, as in that other Te Deum he celebrated some years back, from the same pulpit, in homage to the invaders from Brazil.

  The Constitution is sworn beneath the City Hall balconies. The ladies, who do not exist in the laws, accompany the juridical consecration of the new country as if it involved them. With one hand they clutch their gigantic hairdos, dangerous on windy days, and with the other hold open against their breasts fens painted with patriotic themes. High starched collars keep the gentlemen from turning their heads. The Magna Carta resounds through the plaza, clause after clause, over a sea of top hats. According to the Constitution of the new republic, there will be no citizenship for the men who offered their bodies against the bullets of Spain, Buenos Aires, and Brazil. Uruguay is not being made for poor gauchos, or Indians, or blacks, who still don’t know that a law has freed them. Not permitted to vote or hold public office, says the Constitution, are servants, peons, rank and file soldiers, vagrants, drunkards, and illiterates.

  At nightfall the Coliseum is packed. It is opening night for The Happy Deceit; or, The Triumph of Innocence, by Rossini, the first complete opera sung in this city.

  (278)

  1830: Montevideo

  Fatherland or Grave

  The first bard of the Uruguayan Parnassus, Francisco Acuña de Figueroa, began his career with an ode, in eight-line stanzas, to the military glory of Spain. When Artigas’s gauchos took Montevideo, he fled to Rio de Janeiro. There, he dedicated his adulatory rhymes to the Portuguese prince and all of his court. Still shouldering his lyre, Don Francisco followed the Brazilian invaders back to Montevideo, and rhapsodized over the occupying troops. Years later, on the day following the ouster of the Brazilians, the muses breathed patriotic decasyllables into Don Francisco’s ear, words of laurel to crown the brows of the heroes of independence; and now the reptilian poet writes the national anthem of the newborn country. We Uruguayans will be forever condemned to listen to his verses standing up.

  (3)

  1832: Santiago de Chile

  National Industry

  In Chile, too, gentlemen dance and dress in French styles, imitate Byron in knotting their ties, and, at table, obey the dictates of French chefs; à la English they take tea, and à la French they down their wine.

  When Vicente Pérez Rosales set up his brandy factory, he bought the best stills in Paris and a great quantity of labels with gilded arabesques and fine lettering that said in English: Old Champagne Cognac. On the door of his office he had a big sign painted:

  DIRECT IMPORTATION

  The taste would not be too-too, but it was nearly-nearly, and no one got stomach ulcers. The business went like a house on fire. The factory could not keep up with the demand, but Don Vicente came down with an attack of patriotism and decided he could not go on living in a state of treason.

  “This good reputation belongs only to Chile.”

  He threw the European labels in the fire and had another sign put on his door, this time even larger:

  NATIONAL INDUSTRY

  The bottles now wear a new dress: labels printed here, which say in Spanish: Chilean Cognac.

  Not even one can be sold.

  (256)

  Street Cries in the Santiago de Chile Market

  “Carnations and basil for stocky little girls!”

  “WA-A-FER COOKIES!”

  “Pretty buttons, one penny the string!”

  “Sulphur matche-e-es!”

  “Belts, cinches, soft like a glove!”

  “Charity, for the love of God!”

  “Good beef!”

  “A penny for a poor blind man?”

  “BROO-OO-OMS! LAST CHANCE FOR BROOMS!”

  “Baccy, chewing baccy?”

  “Miraclemedals, single or by the box!”

  “Look at these brandy cakes!”

  “Knives f’yer personal security!”

  “SHA-A-ARP BLADES!”

  “Who’ll buy this rope?”

  “Get this lovely bread!”

  “Little bells, only one left!”

  “WATERMELONS, DEARIE!”

  “Get this lovely bread, fresh from a woman’s hands!”

  “WA-A-ATERMELONS!”

  “Get this lovely bread! It’s piping hot!”

  (288)

/>   1833: Arequipa

  Llamas

  “Happy creatures,” says Flora Tristán.

  Flora is travelling through Peru, her father’s country, and in the mountains discovers the only animal man has not been able to debase.

  The gentle llamas are more agile than mules and climb higher. They resist cold, exhaustion, and heavy loads. With no reward they give the mountain Indians transport, milk, meat, and the clean and brilliant wool that covers their bodies. But they never let themselves be tied up or mistreated, nor do they take orders. When they let up their queenly stride, the Indian implores them to get going again. If anyone hits them, insults them, or threatens them, llamas throw themselves on the ground, and, raising their long necks, they turn their eyes heavenward, the most beautiful eyes in Creation, and softly die.

  “Happy creatures,” says Flora Tristán.

  (337)

  1833: San Vicente

  Aquino

  The head of Aquino lies in the executioner’s basket.

  May he rest in war. The chief of the Indians of El Salvador had raised three thousand spears against the robbers of lands. He got the better of the muskets, which the enemy fired with glowing cigars, and stripped Saint Joseph naked on the high altar of a church. Clad in the cloak of the father of Christ, he proclaimed that Indians would never again be slaves, nor soldiers, nor famished, nor drunk. But more troops arrived, and he had to seek refuge in the mountains.

  His lieutenant, named Cascabel, turned him in.

  “Now I am a jaguar without claws or fangs,” said Aquino, when they loaded him with shackles and chains; and he confessed to Fray Navarro that in all his life he had only been frightened by the anger or tears of his wife.

  “I am ready to play blindman’s buff,” he said, when they put on the blindfold.

  (87)

  1834: Paris

  Tacuabé

  On the headlands of the Quequay, General Rivera’s cavalry have completed the civilizing operation with good marksmanship. Now, not an Indian remains alive in Uruguay.

  The government donates the four last Charrúa Indians to the Natural Sciences Academy in Paris. They are sent over in the hold of a ship, as baggage, among other packages and valises.

  The French public pay admission to see the savages, rare specimens of a vanished race. The scientists note their gestures, clothing, and anthropometric measurements. From the shape of their skulls, they deduce their small intelligence and violent character.

  Before two months have passed, the Indians let themselves die. Academicians fight over the cadavers. Only the warrior Tacuabé survives, and escapes with his newly born daughter, reaching the city of Lyons—who knows how—disappearing there.

  Tacuabé was the one who made music. He made it in the museum after the public left. He would rub a bow with a little saliva-moistened stick and draw sweet vibrations from its horsehair strings. Frenchmen who spied on him from behind the curtains said he produced very soft, muffled, almost inaudible sounds, as if he were talking in secret.

  (19)

  1834: Mexico City

  Loving Is Giving

  A calabash filled with vinegar mounts guard behind each door. On every altar a thousand candles pray. Doctors prescribe bloodlettings and chloride fumigations. Colored flags mark houses invaded by the plague. Lugubrious chants and cries indicate the passage of carts full of the dead through streets with nobody on them.

  The governor issues a proclamation banning certain foods. According to him, stuffed chilis and fruits have brought cholera to Mexico.

  On Holy Ghost Street, a coachman is cutting an enormous chirimoya. He stretches out from his perch to enjoy eating it bit by bit. Someone passing by leaves him with his mouth open.

  “Barbarian! Don’t you see you’re committing suicide? Don’t you know that that fruit takes you to the grave?”

  The coachman hesitates. He contemplates the milky flesh, undecided whether to bite. Finally he gets up, walks a few steps and offers the chirimoya to his wife, who is sitting at the corner.

  “You eat it, my love.”

  (266)

  1835: Galapagos Islands

  Darwin

  Black hills rise from the sea and mist. On the rocks, as if taking siestas, move turtles as big as cows; and between the crannies slide iguanas, dragons without wings.

  “The capital of hell,” comments the captain of the Beagle.

  “Even the trees feel bad,” Charles Darwin confirms, as the anchor falls.

  In these islands, the Galapagos, Darwin approaches the revelation of the mystery of mysteries. Here, he senses the keys to the never-ending transformation of life on earth. He discovers here how chaffinches have perfected their beaks; how the beak that breaks big hard seeds has taken on the form of a nutcracker, and the one that seeks nectar from cactuses that of a pincers. The same has occurred, Darwin discovers, with the shells and necks of turtles, according to whether they eat on ground level or prefer lofty fruits.

  In the Galapagos is the origin of all my opinions, Darwin will write. I go from surprise to surprise, he writes now, in his travel journal.

  When the Beagle sailed four years ago from an English port, Darwin still believed every word of the Sacred Writings. He thought God had made the world the way it is now, in six days, and had ended his work, as Archbishop Usher insists, at 9 A.M. on Saturday October 12 of the year 4004 before Christ.

  (4 and 88)

  1835: Columbia

  Texas

  Fifteen years ago, a wagon train creaked across the desert prairie of Texas, and the mournful voices of owls and coyotes bid them illcome. Mexico ceded lands to these three hundred families that came from Louisiana with their slaves and plows. Five years ago, there were already twenty thousand North American colonists in Texas, and they had many slaves purchased in Cuba or in the corrals where the gentry of Virginia and Kentucky fatten up little blacks. Now, the colonists hoist their own flag, the image of a bear, and decline to pay taxes to the government of Mexico or to obey Mexican law which has abolished slavery in all the national territory.

  The vice president of the United States, John Calhoun, believes that God created blacks to cut wood, pick cotton, and carry water for the chosen people. Textile factories demand more cotton and cotton demands more land and more blacks. There are powerful reasons, said Calhoun last year, for Texas to form part of the United States. At that time President Jackson, who breathes frontiers with an athlete’s lungs, had already sent his friend Sam Houston to Texas.

  The rugged Houston forces his way in with his fists, makes himself an army general, and proclaims the independence of Texas. The new state, soon to be another star on the United States flag, has more land than France.

  And war breaks out against Mexico.

  (128 and 207)

  1836: San Jacinto

  The Free World Grows

  Sam Houston offers land at four cents an acre. Battalions of North American volunteers pour in by every road and weapons arrive by the shipload from New York and New Orleans.

  The comet that announced calamity in the skies over Mexico was no news to anybody. Mexico has lived in a perpetual state of calamity since the murderers of Hidalgo and Morelos declared independence in order to grab the country for themselves.

  The war does not last long. Mexican General Santa Anna arrives calling for a bloodbath, and makes one at the Alamo, but at San Jacinto loses four hundred men in a quarter of an hour. Santa Anna gives up Texas in exchange for his own life and returns to Mexico City with his beaten army, his personal chef, his seven-thousand-dollar sword, his countless decorations and his wagonload of fighting cocks.

  General Houston celebrates his victory by naming himself president of Texas.

  Texas’s constitution assures the master perpetual rights over his slaves, as legitimately acquired property. Extend the area of liberty had been the slogan of the victorious troops.

  (128)

  1836: The Alamo

  Portraits of the Frontier
Hero

  At the outbreak of the Texas war, when fortune still smiles on the Mexican troops, Colonel Davy Crockett falls pierced by bayonets. He falls in the Alamo fort, together with his band of heroic outlaws, and the buzzards finish his story.

  The United States, which fattens on the lands of Indians and Mexicans, has lost one of its frontier heroes. Davy Crockett had a rifle named Betsy which could kill five bears with a single bullet.

  Crockett could well have been the son of Daniel Boone, the legendary pioneer of the previous century, a very macho and lonely killer, who hated civilization but earned a living by placing colonists on lands robbed from his Indian friends. And he could well have been the father of Natty Bumppo, a fictional character so famous that he now seems flesh and blood.

  Since Fenimore Cooper published The Last of the Mohicans, Natty Bumppo, the crude and noble hunter, has incorporated himself into the daily life of the United States. Nature has taught him all he knows of morality and his energy comes from the mountains and the woods. He is ugly, only one tooth in his enormous mouth; but without expecting anything in return he protects beautiful white virgins, who, thanks to him, pass invincible through thicket and desire. Natty Bumppo praises silence with many words and tells no lie when he says that he doesn’t fear death, or when he admires the Indians while ruefully killing them.

  (149 and 218)

  1836: Hartford

  The Colt

  Samuel Colt, engineer, registers in Hartford, Connecticut, the patent of the “revolving pistol” he has invented. It is a pistol with a revolving cylinder of five shots, which kills five times in twenty seconds.

  From Texas comes the first order.

  (305)

  1837: Guatemala City