Children of the Days Read online

  Was Cook the first spectator of the sport we now call surfing?

  Maybe it was more than that. Maybe there was more to the rite of the waves. After all, those primitives believed that water, mother of all life, was sacred, but they did not kneel or bow before their divinity. They walked on the sea in communion with her energy.

  Three weeks later, Cook was stabbed to death by the walkers on water. The magnanimous explorer, who had already given Australia to the British Crown, never could make a gift of Hawaii.

  January 22

  A KINGDOM MOVES

  On this January day in 1808, the exhausted ships that had left Lisbon two months before arrived on the coast of Brazil without bread or water.

  Napoleon was trampling the map of Europe and at the Portuguese border he unleashed the stampede: the Portuguese court, obliged to change address, marched off to the tropics.

  Queen Maria led the way. Right behind her came the prince and the dukes, counts, viscounts, marquises and barons, all wearing the wigs and sumptuous attire inherited later on by the carnival of Rio de Janeiro. On their heels, butting up against each other in desperation, came priests and military officers, courtesans, dressmakers, doctors, judges, notaries, barbers, scribes, cobblers, gardeners . . .

  Queen Maria was not quite in her right mind, which is a nice way to say she was off her rocker, but she pronounced the only reasonable phrase to be heard amid that bunch of lunatics: “Not so fast, it’s going to look like we’re running away!”

  January 23

  CIVILIZING MOTHER

  In 1901, the day after Queen Victoria breathed her last, a solemn funeral ceremony began in London.

  Organizing it was no easy task. A grand farewell was due the queen who gave her name to an epoch and set the standard for female abnegation by wearing black for forty years in memory of her dead husband.

  Victoria, symbol of the British Empire, lady and mistress of the nineteenth century, imposed opium on China and virtue on her own country.

  In the seat of her empire, works that taught good manners were required reading. Lady Gough’s Book of Etiquette, published in 1863, established some of the social commandments of the times: one must avoid, for example, the intolerable proximity of male and female authors on library shelves.

  Books could only stand together if the authors were married, such as in the case of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  January 24

  CIVILIZING FATHER

  On this day in 1965 Winston Churchill passed away.

  In 1919, when presiding over the British Air Council, he had offered one of his frequent lessons in the art of war:

  “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas . . . I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be so good . . . and would spread a lively terror.”

  And in 1937, speaking before the Palestine Royal Commission, he offered one of his frequent lessons on the history of humanity:

  “I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia . . . by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race . . . has come in and taken their place.”

  January 25

  THE RIGHT TO ROGUERY

  The people of Nicaragua celebrate the Güegüense and laugh right along with him.

  During these days, the days of his fiesta, the streets become stages where this rogue spins yarns, sings ditties and reels off dance-steps, and by labor and grace of his mummery everyone becomes a storyteller, a singer, a dancer.

  The Güegüense is the daddy of Latin American street theater.

  Since the beginning of colonial times, he has been teaching the arts of the master trickster: “When you can’t beat ’em, tie ’em. When you can’t tie ’em, tie ’em up.”

  Century after century, the Güegüense has never stopped playing the fool. He’s the font of fatuous gibberish, the master of devilries envied by the Devil himself, the de-humbler of the humble, a fucking fucked fucker.

  January 26

  THE SECOND FOUNDING OF BOLIVIA

  On this day in the year 2009, a plebiscite said yes to a new constitution proposed by President Evo Morales.

  Up to this day, Indians were not the sons and daughters of Bolivia: they were only its hired hands.

  In 1825 the first constitution bestowed citizenship on three or four percent of the population. The rest, indigenous people, women, the poor, the illiterate, were not invited to the party.

  For many foreign journalists, Bolivia is an ungovernable country, incompetent, incomprehensible, intractable, insane. They’ve got the wrong “in”: they should just admit that for them Bolivia is invisible. And that should come as no surprise, for until today Bolivia was blind to itself.

  January 27

  OPEN YOUR EARS

  On this day in 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born.

  Centuries later, even babies love the music he left us.

  It has been proven time and again that newborns cry less and sleep better when they listen to Mozart.

  His welcome to the world is the best way of telling them, “This is your new home. And this is how it sounds.”

  January 28

  OPEN YOUR MIND

  Long before the printing press, Emperor Charlemagne set up in Aachen large teams of copyists who built the finest library in Europe.

  Charlemagne, who did so much for reading, did not know how to read. He died an illiterate, at the beginning of the year 814.

  January 29

  HUMBLY I SPEAK

  Today in 1860 Anton Chekhov was born.

  He wrote as if he were saying nothing.

  And he said everything.

  January 30

  THE CATAPULT

  In 1933 Adolf Hitler was named Germany’s chancellor. Soon after, he presided over an immense rally, as befitted the new lord and master of the nation.

  Modestly he screamed: “I am founding the new era of truth! Awaken, Germany! Awaken!” Rockets, fireworks, church bells, chants and cheers echoed his words.

  Five years earlier, the Nazi Party had won less than three percent of the vote.

  Hitler’s Olympic leap to the summit was as spectacular as the simultaneous fall into the abyss of Germany’s wages, employment, the mark and you name it.

  Germany, crazed by the collapse of everything, unleashed a witch-hunt against the guilty parties: Jews, Reds, homosexuals, Gypsies, the mentally retarded and those afflicted by the habit of thinking too much.

  January 31

  WE ARE MADE OF WIND

  Today in 1908, Atahualpa Yupanqui was born.

  In life they were three: guitar, horse and he. Or four, counting the wind.

  FEBRUARY

  February 1

  AN ADMIRAL TORN TO PIECES

  Blas de Lezo was born in Guipúzcoa in 1689.

  This admiral of the Spanish Armada defeated English pirates off the Peruvian coast, subjugated the powerful city of Genoa, trounced the city of Oran in Algeria and in Cartagena de Indias, fighting with few ships and a lot of guile, humiliated the British Navy.

  In the course of his twenty-two battles, a cannonball took off one of his legs, a piece of shrapnel cost him an eye and a musket ball left him with only one arm.

  “Halfman,” they called him.

  February 2

  THE GODDESS IS CELEBRATING

  Today on the coasts of the Americas people pay homage to Iemanyá.

  On this night the mother goddess of all fish, who came from Africa centuries ago on the slave ships, rises up from the foam of the sea and opens her arms wide. The current brings her combs, brushes, bottles of perfume, cakes, candies and other offerings from sailors dying from love and fear, of her.

  Iemanyá’s friends and relatives from the African Olympus usually come along to the party:

  Xangô, her son, who unleashes the rains from the heavens;

  Oxumaré, the rainbow, guardian of fire; />
  Ogún, blacksmith and warrior, ruffian and womanizer;

  Oshún, the lover who sleeps in the rivers and never erases what she writes;

  and Exú, who is Satan of hell and also Jesus of Nazareth.

  February 3

  CARNIVAL TAKES WING

  In 1899 the streets of Rio de Janeiro went wild dancing to the song that launched the history of carioca carnival parades.

  That luscious pleasure was called “O abre alas”; the dance was a maxixe, Brazil’s uproarious answer to those stiff ballroom set pieces.

  The songwriter was Chiquinha Gonzaga, a composer since childhood.

  At the age of sixteen, her parents married her off, and the Marquis of Caxias was godfather at the wedding.

  At twenty, her husband insisted she choose between music and family. “I don’t understand life without music,” she said, and off she went.

  Her father announced that the family’s honor had been besmirched and he accused Chiquinha of having inherited her flair for sin from some black grandmother. He declared her dead and forbade anyone in his house from mentioning the name of that loose woman.

  February 4

  THE THREAT

  Her name was Juana Aguilar, but she was called Juana the Long, for the scandalous size of her clitoris.

  The Holy Inquisition received several denunciations of that “criminal excess,” and in the year 1803 the Royal Audience of Guatemala sent a surgeon, Narciso Esparragosa, to examine the accused.

  This expert in anatomy warned that such a clitoris could be dangerous, as was well known in Egypt and other kingdoms of the Orient, and he found Juana guilty of “flouting the natural order.”

  February 5

  IN TWO VOICES

  They grew up together, the guitar and Violeta Parra.

  When one called, the other came.

  The guitar and she laughed together, cried together, mused together, believed together.

  The guitar had a hole in its breast.

  So would she.

  On this day in 1967, the guitar called and Violeta did not come.

  Then or ever again.

  February 6

  THE WAIL

  Bob Marley was born poor and slept on the studio floor when he recorded his first songs.

  In a few short years he became rich and famous, sleeping on a feather bed, cuddling Miss World, adored far and wide.

  But he never forgot that he was more than himself.

  Through his voice sang the resonance of times long past, the fiesta and fury of warrior slaves who for two centuries drove their owners crazy in the mountains of Jamaica.

  February 7

  THE EIGHTH BOLT

  Roy Sullivan, a Virginia forest warden, was born on this seventh day in 1912, and during his seventy years he survived seven lightning bolts:

  In 1942 lightning tore off a toenail.

  In 1969 another bolt singed off his eyebrows and eyelashes.

  In 1970 a third charred his left shoulder.

  In 1972 a bolt left him bald.

  In 1973 another burned his legs.

  In 1976 a bolt gashed one ankle.

  In 1977 a seventh bolt seared his chest and belly.

  But the bolt of lightning that split his skull in 1983 did not come from the heavens.

  They say it issued from a woman. A word she said, or didn’t.

  They say.

  February 8

  GENERAL SMOOCH

  In 1980 an extraordinary demonstration hit the streets of the Brazilian city of Sorocaba.

  Under the military dictatorship, a court had outlawed kisses that undermined public morals. The ruling by Judge Manuel Moralles, which punished such kisses with jail terms, described them this way:

  Some kisses are libidinous and therefore obscene, like a kiss on the neck, on the private parts, etc., and like the cinematographic kiss in which the labial mucosa come together in an unsophismable expansion of sensuality.

  The city responded by becoming one huge kissodrome. Never had people kissed so much. Prohibition sparked desire and many were those who out of simple curiosity wanted a taste of the unsophismable kiss.

  February 9

  MARBLE THAT BREATHES

  Aphrodite was the first female nude in the history of Greek sculpture.

  Praxiteles carved her wearing nothing except a tunic fallen about her feet, and the city of Cos insisted that he clothe her. But another city, Cnidus, offered her a temple. There the most womanly of goddesses, the most goddessly of women, took up residence.

  Although she was enclosed and well guarded, people were wild about her and flocked to see her.

  On a day like today, fed up with the harassment, Aphrodite fled.

  February 10

  A VICTORY FOR CIVILIZATION

  It happened north of the Uruguay River. The king of Spain bestowed upon his father-in-law, the king of Portugal, seven missions of Jesuit priests. The gift included the thirty thousand Guaraní Indians who lived there.

  The Guaranís refused to submit and the Jesuits, accused of conspiring with them, were sent back to Europe.

  On this day in 1756, in the hills of Caiboaté, the resistance was defeated.

  Victory went to the combined armies of Spain and Portugal, more than four thousand soldiers accompanied by horses, cannon and a large number of land grabbers and slave hunters.

  Final score, according to the official statistics:

  Indians killed, 1,723.

  Spaniards killed, 3.

  Portuguese killed, 1.

  February 11

  NO

  While the year 1962 was being born, an unknown musical group, two guitars, bass, and drums, auditioned for a record company in London.

  The boys returned to Liverpool and sat down to wait.

  They counted the hours, they counted the days.

  When they had no nails left to bite, on a day like today, they received a response. Decca Recording Company told them frankly, “We don’t like your sound.”

  They went further. “Guitar groups are on the way out.”

  The Beatles did not commit suicide.

  February 12

  WORLD BREASTFEEDING DAY

  Under the sagging roof of the Chengdu station in Sichuan, hundreds of young Chinese women smile for the camera.

  All wear new aprons.

  All are freshly washed, combed, groomed.

  All have just given birth.

  They are waiting for the train that will take them to Beijing.

  In Beijing they will breastfeed the babies of others.

  These milk cows will be well paid and well fed.

  Meanwhile, very far from Beijing, in the villages of Sichuan, their own babies will be fed powdered milk.

  They all say they do it for their babies, to pay for their education.

  February 13

  THE DANGER OF PLAYING

  In the year 2008, Miguel López Rocha, who was fooling around on the outskirts of the Mexican city of Guadalajara, slipped and fell into the Santiago River.

  Miguel was eight years old.

  He did not drown.

  He was poisoned.

  The river contained arsenic, sulfuric acid, mercury, chromium, lead and furans, dumped into its waters by Aventis, Bayer, Nestlé, IBM, DuPont, Xerox, United Plastics, Celanese, and other companies from countries that prohibit such largesse.

  February 14

  STOLEN CHILDREN

  The sons and daughters of the enemy were war booty during the Argentine military dictatorship, which not so long ago stole more than five hundred children.

  But many more, over a much longer period, were stolen by Australia’s democracy, with consent from the law and applause from the public.

  In the year 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to the aboriginal communities that had been stripped of their sons and daughters for more than a century.

  State agencies and Christian churches had kidnapped the children and placed them with whit
e families to save them from poverty and crime, and to civilize them and distance them from savage customs.

  “To whiten the race,” people used to say.

  February 15

  MORE STOLEN CHILDREN

  “Marxism is the worst form of mental illness,” ruled Colonel Antonio Vallejo Nájera, psychiatrist supreme in Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Spain.

  He had studied Republican mothers in prison and proven that they harbored “criminal tendencies.”

  To defend the purity of the Iberian race, threatened by Marxist degeneration and maternal delinquency, thousands of newborns and infants, children of Republican parents, were kidnapped and plopped into the arms of families devoted to the cross and sword.

  Who were those children? Who are they, so many years later?

  No one knows.

  Franco’s dictatorship falsified the records to cover its tracks and ordered everyone to forget: it stole the children and it stole their memory.

  February 16

  THE CONDOR PLAN

  Macarena Gelman was one of the many victims of Operation Condor, the common market of terror that linked South America’s dictatorships.

  Macarena’s mother was pregnant with her when the Argentine generals sent her to Uruguay. The Uruguayan dictatorship oversaw the birth, killed the mother and handed the newborn daughter to a police chief.