Faces and Masks Read online

  1885: Mexico City “All belongs to all,”

  1885: Colon Prestán

  1886: Chivilcoy The Circus

  1886: Atlanta Coca-Cola

  1887: Chicago Every May First They Will Live Again

  1889: London North

  1889: Montevideo Football

  1890: River Plata Comrades

  1890: Buenos Aires Tenements

  Man Alone

  Tangoing

  1890: Hartford Mark Twain

  1890: Wounded Knee Wind of Snow

  Prophetic Song of the Sioux

  1891: Santiago de Chile Balmaceda

  1891: Washington The Other America

  1891: New York The Thinking Begins to Be Ours, Believes José Martí

  1891: Guanajuato 34 Cantarranas Street. Instant Photography

  1891: Purísima del Rincón Lives

  1892: Paris The Canal Scandal

  1892: San José, Costa Rica Prophesy of a Young Nicaraguan Poet Named Rubén Darío

  1893: Canudos Antonio Conselheiro

  1895: Key West Freedom Travels in a Cigar

  1895: Playitas The Landing

  1895: Arroyo Hondo In the Sierra

  1895: Dos Rios Campo Martí’s Testament

  1895: Niquinohomo His Name Will Be Sandino

  1896: Port-au-Prince Disguises

  1896: Boca de Dos Rios Requiem

  1896: Papeete Flora Tristán

  1896: Bogotá José Asunción Silva

  1896: Manaos The Tree That Weeps Milk

  1896: Manaos The Golden Age of Rubber

  1897: Canudos Euclides da Cunha

  1897: Canudos The Dead Contain More Bullets Than Bones

  1897: Rio de Janeiro Machado de Assís

  1898: Coasts of Cuba This Fruit Is Ready to Fall

  1898: Washington Ten Thousand Lynchings

  1898: San Juan Hill Teddy Roosevelt

  1898: Coasts of Puerto Rico This Fruit Is Falling

  1898: Washington President McKinley Explains That the United States Should Keep the Philippines by Direct Order of God

  1899. New York Mark Twain Proposes Changing the Flag

  1899: Rome Calamity Jane

  1899: Rome The Nascent Empire Flexes Its Muscles

  1899: Saint Louis Far Away

  1899: Rio de Janeiro How to Cure by Killing

  1900: Huanuni Patiño

  1900: Mexico City Posada

  1900: Mexico City Porfirio Díaz

  1900: Mexico City The Flores Magón Brothers

  1900: Merida, Yucatán Henequén

  From the Mexican Corrido of the Twenty-Eighth Battalion

  1900: Tabi The Iron Serpent

  The Prophet

  The Sources

  Index

  Preview: Century of the Wind

  Acknowledgments

  Translator’s Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Preface

  This book

  is the second volume of the trilogy Memory of Fire. It is not an anthology, but a work of literary creation. The author proposes to narrate the history of America, and above all the history of Latin America, reveal its multiple dimensions and penetrate its secrets. In the third volume this vast mosaic will reach to our own times. Faces and Masks embraces the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  At the head of each text is indicated the year and place of occurrence of the episode. The numbers in parentheses below show the principal works consulted by the author in his search for information and points of reference. Documentary sources are listed at the end of the book.

  Literal transcriptions are italicized.

  “I believe in memory not as a place of arrival, but as point of departure—a catapult throwing you into present times, allowing you to imagine the future instead of accepting it. It would be absolutely impossible for me to have any connection with history if history were just a collection of dead people, dead names, dead facts. That’s why I wrote Memory of Fire in the present tense, trying to keep alive everything that happened and allow it to happen again, as soon as the reader reads it.”

  EDUARDO GALEANO

  I don’t know who I am,

  nor just where I was bedded.

  Don’t know where I’m from

  nor where the hell I’m headed.

  I’m a piece of fallen tree,

  where it fell I do not know.

  Where can my roots be?

  On what sort of tree did I grow?

  (Popular verses

  of Boyacá, Colombia)

  Promise of America

  The blue tiger will smash the world.

  Another land, without evil, without death, will be born from the destruction of this one. This land wants it. It asks to die, asks to be born, this old and offended land. It is weary and blind from so much weeping behind closed eyelids. On the point of death it strides the days, garbage heap of time, and at night it inspires pity from the stars. Soon the First Father will hear the world’s supplications, land wanting to be another, and then the blue tiger who sleeps beneath his hammock will jump.

  Awaiting that moment, the Guaraní Indians journey through the condemned land.

  “Anything to tell us, hummingbird?”

  They dance without letup, ever lighter and airier, intoning the sacred chants that celebrate the coming birth of the other land.

  “Shine your rays, shine your rays, hummingbird!”

  From the sea coasts to the center of America, they have sought paradise. They have skirted jungles and mountains and rivers in pursuit of the new land, the one that will be founded without old age or sickness or anything to interrupt the endless fiesta of living. The chants announce that corn will grow on its own and arrows shoot into the thickets all by themselves; and neither punishment nor pardon will be necessary, because there won’t be prohibition or blame.

  (72 and 232)*

  * These numbers refer to the documentary sources consulted by the author as listed on pages 261–76.

  1701: Salinas Valley

  The Skin of God

  The Chirigua Indians of the Guaraní people sailed down the Pilcomayo River years or centuries ago, and reached the frontier of the empire of the Incas. Here they remained, beneath the first of these Andean heights, awaiting the land without evil and without death.

  The Chiriguans discover paper, the written word, the printed word, when after a long journey the Franciscan monks of Chuquisaca appear carrying sacred books in their saddlebags.

  As they didn’t know paper or that they needed it, the Indians had no word for it. Today they give it the name skin of God, because paper is for sending messages to friends far away.

  (233 and 252)

  1701: Sāo Salvador de Bahia

  Voice of America

  Father Antonio Vieira died at the turn of the century, but not so his voice, which continues to shelter the defenseless. The words of this missionary to the poor and persecuted still echo with the same lively ring throughout the lands of Brazil.

  One night Father Vieira spoke about the ancient prophets. They were not wrong, he said, in reading destinies in the entrails of the animals they sacrificed. In the entrails, he said. In the entrails, not the heads, because a prophet who can love is better than one who can reason.

  (351)

  1701: Paris

  Temptation of America

  In his study in Paris, a learned geographer scratches his head. Guillaume Deslile draws exact maps of the earth and the heavens. Should he include El Dorado on the map of America? Should he paint in the mysterious lake, as has become the custom, somewhere in the upper Orinoco? Deslile asks himself whether the golden waters, described by Walter Raleigh as the size of the Caspian Sea, really exist. And those princes who plunge in and swim by the light of torches, undulating golden fish: are they or were they ever flesh and bone?

  The lake, sometimes named El Dorado, sometimes Parima, figures on all maps drawn up to now. But what Des
lile has heard and read makes him doubt. Seeking El Dorado, many soldiers of fortune have penetrated the remote new world, over there where the four winds meet and all colors and pains mingle, and have found nothing. Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans have spanned abysses that the American gods dug with nails and teeth; have violated forests warmed by tobacco smoke puffed by the gods; have navigated rivers born of giant trees the gods tore out by the roots; have tortured and killed Indians the gods created out of saliva, breath, or dream. But that fugitive gold has vanished and always vanishes into the air, the lake disappearing before anyone can reach it. El Dorado seems to be the name of a grave without coffin or shroud.

  In the two centuries that have passed since the world grew and became round, pursuers of hallucinations have continued heading for the lands of America from every wharf. Protected by a god of navigation and conquest, squeezed into their ships, they cross the immense ocean. Along with shepherds and farmhands whom Europe has not killed by war, plague, or hunger, go captains and merchants and rogues and mystics and adventurers. All seek the miracle. Beyond the ocean, magical ocean that cleanses blood and transfigures destinies, the great promise of all the ages lies open. There, beggars will be avenged. There, nobodies will turn into marquises, scoundrels into saints, gibbet-fodder into founders, and vendors of love will become dowried débutantes.

  (326)

  Sentinel of America

  Long, long ago in the Andean cordillera, the Indians lived in perpetual night. The condor, oldest of all flying creatures, was the one who brought them the sun. He dropped it, a little ball of gold, among the mountains. The Indians picked it up and, blowing as hard as they could, blew it up toward the sky where it remains suspended forever. With the golden rays the sun sweated, the Indians modeled the animals and plants that inhabit the earth.

  One night the moon rose, ringed by three halos, to shine upon the peaks: the halo of blood announced war; the halo of flame, fire; and the black halo was the halo of disaster. Then the Indians fled into the cold, high wilderness and, carrying the sacred gold, plunged into the depths of lakes and into volcanos.

  The condor, bringer of the sun to the Andeans, is the caretaker of that treasure. With great gliding wings he soars over the snowy peaks and the waters and the smoking craters. The gold warns him when greed approaches. The gold cries out, and whistles, and shouts. The condor swoops down. His beak picks out the eyes of the thieves, and his claws tear their flesh.

  Only the sun can see the back of the condor, his bald head, his wrinkled neck. Only the sun knows his loneliness. Seen from the earth, the condor is invulnerable.

  (246)

  1701: Ouro Prêto

  Conjuring Tricks

  The silver mountain of Potosí is not an illusion, nor do the deep tunnels of Mexico contain only delirium and darkness; nor do the rivers of central Brazil sleep on beds of fool’s gold.

  The gold of Brazil is apportioned by lottery or by fists, by luck or by death. Those who don’t lose their lives make immense fortunes, one-fifth of which is owed to the Portuguese king. Yet, when all’s said and done, that royal fifth is but a fable. Heaps and heaps of gold escape as contraband, and even as many guards as the region’s dense forests have trees could not stanch its flow.

  The friars of the Brazilian mines devote more time to trafficking in gold than to saving souls. Hollow wooden saints serve as containers. For the monk Roberto way off by the coast, forging dies is as simple as telling his rosary, and so illicit gold bars come to sport the royal seal. Roberto, a Benedictine monk of the Sorocaba monastery, has also manufactured an all-powerful key that vanquishes any lock.

  (11)

  1703: Lisbon

  Gold, Passenger in Transit

  A few years ago a governor-general of Brazil made some prophesies that were as accurate as they were useless. From Bahia, João de Lencastre warned the king of Portugal that hordes of adventurers would turn the mining region into a sanctuary for criminals and vagabonds; and even graver, with gold the same might happen to Portugal as to Spain, which as soon as it receives its silver from America kisses it a tearful goodbye. Brazilian gold might enter by the Bay of Lisbon and, without ever stopping on Portuguese soil, continue its voyage up the River Tagus en route to England, France, Holland, Germany …

  As if to echo the governor’s voice, the Treaty of Methuen is signed. Portugal will pay with Brazilian gold for English cloth. With gold from Brazil, another country’s colony, England will give its industrial development a tremendous push forward.

  (11, 48, and 226)

  1709: The Juan Fernández Islands

  Robinson Crusoe

  The lookout reports distant gunfire. To investigate it, the freebooters of the Duke change course and head for the coast of Chile.

  The ship approaches the Juan Fernández Islands. From a string of bonfires, a canoe, a splash of foam comes toward it. Onto the deck climbs a tangle of hair and filth, trembling with fever, emitting noises from its mouth.

  Days later, Captain Rogers has the story. The shipwrecked man is one Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish colleague well versed in sails, winds, and plunder. He arrived off the Valparaíso coast with the expedition of the pirate William Dampier. Thanks to Bible, knife, and gun, Selkirk has survived more than four years on one of those uninhabited islands. He has learned the art of fishing with goats’ intestines, cooked with salt crystallized on the rocks, and lighted his world with seal oil. He built a hut on high ground and beside it a corral for goats. He marked the passage of time on a tree trunk. A storm brought him the remains of some wreck and also an almost-drowned Indian. He called the Indian Friday because that was the day of his arrival. From him he learned the secrets of the plants. When the big ship came, Friday chose to stay. Selkirk swore to him that he would return, and Friday believed him.

  Within ten years, Daniel Defoe will publish in London his novel about the adventures of a shipwrecked sailor. Selkirk will be Robinson Crusoe, native of York. The expedition of the British pirate Dampier, who had ravaged the coasts of Peru and Chile, will become a respectable commercial enterprise. The desert island without a history will jump from the Pacific Ocean to the mouth of the Orinoco, and the shipwrecked sailor will live there twenty-eight years. Robinson will save the life of a savage cannibal. “Master” will be the first word he teaches him in English.

  Selkirk marked with a knife-point the ears of each goat he caught. Robinson will undertake the subdivision of the island, his kingdom, into lots for sale; he will put a price on every object he gets from the wrecked ship, keep accounts of all he produces on the island and a balance of every situation, the “debit” of bad fortune and the “credit” of good. Robinson will endure, like Selkirk, the tough tests of solitude, fear, and madness; but at the hour of rescue Alexander Selkirk is a shivering wretch who cannot talk and is scared of everything. Robinson Crusoe, on the other hand, invincible tamer of nature, will return to England with his faithful Friday, totting up accounts and planning adventures.

  (92, 149, and 259)

  1711: Paramaribo

  The Silent Women

  The Dutch cut the Achilles tendon of a slave escaping for the first time, and one who makes a second try gets the right leg amputated; yet there is no way to stop the spreading plague of freedom in Surinam.

  Captain Molinay sails downriver to Paramaribo. His expedition is returning with two heads. He had to behead the captured women, one named Flora, the other Sery, because after the torture they were in no condition to walk through the jungle. Their eyes are still fixed heavenward. They never opened their mouths in spite of the lashes, the fire, and the red-hot pincers, stubbornly mute as if they had not spoken a word since that remote day when they were fattened up and smeared with oil, and stars or half-moons were engraved on their shaven heads to fit them for sale in the Paramaribo market. Always mute, this Flora and Sery, as the soldiers kept asking where the fugitive slaves hid out: they stared upwards without blinking, following clouds stout as mo
untains that drifted high in the sky.

  (173)

  They Carry Life in Their Hair

  For all the blacks that get crucified or hung from iron hooks stuck through their ribs, escapes from Surinam’s four hundred coastal plantations never stop. Deep in the jungle a black lion adorns the yellow flag of the runaways. For lack of bullets, their guns fire little stones or bone buttons; but the impenetrable thickets are their best ally against the Dutch colonists.

  Before escaping, the female slaves steal grains of rice, corn, and wheat, seeds of bean and squash. Their enormous hairdos serve as granaries. When they reach the refuges in the jungle, the women shake their heads and thus fertilize the free land.

  (173)

  The Maroon

  The crocodile, disguised as a log, basks in the sun. The snail revolves its eyes on the point of little horns. The male bird courts the female with circus acrobatics. The male spider climbs up the female’s perilous web—bedsheet and shroud—where he will embrace and be devoured. A band of monkeys leaps to seize wild fruits in the branches. The monkeys’ screams daze the thickets, drowning out the litanies of cicadas, the questionings of birds. But strange footsteps sound on the carpet of leaves and the jungle falls quickly silent. Paralyzed, it draws into itself and waits. When the first gunshot rings out, the whole jungle stampedes in flight.

  The shot announces a hunt for runaway slaves: cimarrones, in the Antillean phrase meaning “arrow that seeks freedom.” Used by Spaniards for the bull that takes off for the woods, it passes into other languages as chimarrão, maroon, marron to designate the slave who in every part of America seeks the protection of forests and swamps and deep canyons; who, far from the master, builds a free domain and defends it by marking false trails and setting deadly traps.

  The maroon is the gangrene of colonial society.

  (264)