Genesis

Memoria del fuego #1

by Eduardo Galeano, Cedric Belfrage (Translator)

"From pre-Columbian creation myths and the first European voyages of discovery and conquest to the Age of Reagan, here is 'nothing less than a unified history of the Western Hemisphere... recounted in vivid prose.'"--The New Yorker

A unique and epic history, Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy is an outstanding Latin American eye view of the making of the New World. From its first English language publication in 1985 it has been recognized as a classic of political engagement, original research, and literary form.

“Memory of Fire is devastating, triumphant... sure to scorch the sensibility of English-language readers.” (New York Times)

“An epic work of literary creation... there could be no greater vindication of the wonders of the lands and people of Latin America than Memory of Fire.” (Washington Post)

“[Memory of Fire] will reveal to you the meaning of the New World as it was, and of the world as we have it now.” (Boston Globe)

“A book as fascinating as the history it relates.... Galeano is a satirist, realist, and historian, and... deserves mention alongside John Dos Passos, Bernard DeVoto, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” (Los Angeles Times)

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Latin American, Literature, Spanish Literature, Politics, Latin American Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Eduardo Galeano was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history.

The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, "I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia."

He has received the International Human Rights Award by Global Exchange (2006) and the Stig Dagerman Prize (2010).

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 1982 book was stunning to me, the compelling way Galeano distills some turning points in Latin American history into visions and vignettes that march through pre-Columbian creation myths and the decades from the end of the 15th century to 1700. Two other volumes apply the same treatment from then up to modern times. Wikipedia tells me that Galeano, who died in 2015, was a leftist Uruguayan journalist and essayist who is respected for his 1971 historical critique of colonialism, “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,” and that he wrote the Memory of Fire trilogy while he was in exile from the dictatorship of his country and that in Argentina. It’s not a casual read, but you can take it slow, piece by piece, and then see if, like me, you get captivated by its haunting, beguiling, and ever charming succession of 2-3 page pieces. In one way it is a compressed history, footnotes and all, but the way it is written makes it like a cornucopia, collage, or mosaic that includes: myths, tableaus like dioramas or time-machine windows; dramatic slices of lives of the invaders and colonizers, the natives they subjugated and the African slaves they imported to work in plantations and mines. It mostly sticks with the Spanish, but embraces comparable looks at stages in the Portuguese subjugation of Brazil and the British in North America.

Amid all the stereotypes of greed and violence among the conquerors and the abuses of slavery and economic repression of the peasants for agriculture and mining by the colonizers, other stories wend their way into the book with a much more hopeful outlook on the humaneness of humanity and hope for the future. Stories of conquistadors who meet a just fate or “go native.” Saints, priests, nuns, and missionaries who address the injustice in various ways, many of whom courageously face a bad fate with the Inquisition. Other stories delve into the lives of escaped slaves and rebels who find significant periods of freedom in the jungles or mountains. Still other stories tell of the power of love to cross boundaries of race and culture and inspire collaboration against tyranny. Despite the vivid, short declarative sentences Galeano wields, his narration brims with lyricism and elegance, showing that paradox of richness in spareness that a few other great writers have mastered.

We get the stories of the first encounters of conquerors like Cortes with the Aztecs and Pizarro with the Incas and follow up on the fateful outcomes. Cortes’ defeat of thousands by tricking his emperor host Monteczuma into believing he was a god and awing his opponents with armored horsemen and few cannons marks a seminal turning point for Central America. But what is the outcome in historical imagination of Malinche, the Aztec girl stolen by a Mayan chief in her childhood and given as a bribe to Cortes? Cortes made her his translator for his subterfuge with the Aztecs and then his woman, always loyal at his side for four years of conquests:
One glance from her black eyes is enough for a prince to hang on the gallows. Long after her death, her shadow will hover over the great Tenochtitlan [Mexico City] that she did so much to defeat and humiliate, and her ghost with the long loose hair and billowing robe will continue striking fear for ever and ever, from the woods and caves of Chapultepec.

Cortes and Malinche at the point of bamboozling Monteczuma.

As another example of special side stories in the arc of Latin American history, Galeano provides us the 17th century tale of Juana Inés through several segments on her at different ages. We get a window on a bastard mestizo girl of Mexico who gets a rare education through a kind grandfather and becomes a poet. She earns a placement in the court of the Spanish Viceroy, only to get in trouble by becoming the lover of his wife and offend the Catholic church with her feminist intellectual audacity. She escapes by becoming a nun, but still the local bishop brings the Inquisition down on her for seeing her own poetry and ideas as gifts from God. Despite the attempts to cut off her book supply and suppress her writing, she secretly defies them. Netflix sponsored a wonderful Mexican mini-series on her life in 2015 . In one of Galeano’s vignettes her Mother Superior mocks her attempt to study nature through cooking in her decade of assignment to the kitchen as the keeper of "The Royal and Pontifical University of Pancakes! The frying-pan campus!" She rises to the occasion:

"If Aristotle had cooked, he would have written much more. That makes you laugh, does it? Well, laugh if it pleases you. Men feel themselves to be very wise, just by being men. Christ too was crowned with thorns as King of Jests."
"Really, my daughter, you scandalize God with your vociferous pride."
"My pride? (smiles sadly) I used that up long ago."

You can see from this example how challenging Galeano’s work is to classify. The author himself informs us in his preface:
I don’t know if it is a novel or essay or epic poem or testament or chronicle or …Deciding robs me of no sleep.
There is nothing neutral about this historical narration. Unable to distance myself, I take sides. …What is told here has happened, although I tell it in my style and manner.

Here he shares on his worthy purpose:
I was a wretched history student. History classes were like visits to the waxworks or the Region of the Dead. The past was lifeless, hollow, dumb. …
Perhaps “Memory of Fire” can help give her back breath, liberty, and the word.
I am a writer who would like to contribute to the rescue of kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land: I would like to talk to her, share her secrets, ask her of what difficult clays she was born, from what acts of love and violation she comes.

For me Galeano’s coverage of a swath of significant events in Latin American history told in iconic compression was a valuable way to address my shameful ignorance. It is so daunting how many countries there are. I picked up some of a framework from Mann’s wonderful 1493 and some details from a nonfiction look at Paraguay and bits and pieces from historical fiction set in several countries. But the combined details are so sparse that my mind resorts to common themes in colonial history to represent the “truth” for all. One basic tale of European exploitation and decimation of peoples, the blending of races in time, the rise of local autonomy and revolt, the breakthrough to revolution and independence, all leading to home-grown dictators bred from the business oligarchy and the military (starting with Haiti in this volume). This book captures these themes while revealing significant variations, alternative paths of different peoples and tribes, sometimes horrific and sometimes inspiring. Through this book, individuals step on the stage with their unique stories, standing out before they blend into the background chorus. I agree with Goodreads member Adam who found that this book was like a cross between Howard Zinn and Borges, an artful kind of telling stories that stick in memory and clothe my skeletal knowledge.

So many tribes of natives were wiped from the earth, often as much by diseases such as smallpox as from the invaders weapons. In Peru many of the Indians were worked to death in the vast silver mines of Potosi, a story that is well covered in “1493”. Here Galeano brings the situation to life in a few sentences:
On Monday mornings they are herded into the mountain and, chewing coca and beaten with iron bars, they pursue the veins of silver, greenish-white serpents that appear and take flight through the entrails of this immense paunch, no light, no air. There the Indians work all week, prisoners, breathing dust that kills the lungs, and chewing coca that deceives hunger and masks exhaustion, never knowing when night falls or day breaks, until Saturday ends and the bell rings for prayer and release.

A priest witnessing this scene complains:
“I don’t want to see this portion of hell.”
“So shut your eyes,” someone suggests.
“I can’t,” he says. “With my eyes shut I see more.”

Another man, Guaman Poma, spends decades on a 1,200 page letter to the king of Spain to stop the unjust exploitation, which never gets sent:
To write this letter is to weep….The Indians are the natural owners of this realm and the Spaniards, natives of Spain, are strangers in this realm. …Also, it is God’s punishment that many Indians die in mercury and silver mines. In all Peru, where there were a hundred not ten remain.

The voices of diverse native tribes are tapped in myth and song by Galeano, as here in this Incan war song:
We will drink from the skull of the traitor
And from his teeth a necklace make.
Of his bones we will make flutes,
Of his skin a drum.
Then we will dance.

Some flavor of the alternate mentality of certain tribes comes through when Galeano shares on their language:
The Guranos, who live in the suburbs of Earthly Paradise, call the rainbow snake of necklaces and the firmament overhead sea. Lightning is glow of the rain. One’s friend, my other heart. The soul, sun of the breast. The owl, lord of the dark night. A walking cane is a permanent grandson; and for “I forgive,” they say I forget.

Sometimes Galeano casts an historical scene into odd light by foreshadowing. In a chapter “The Chief’s Questions”, Chief Nicaragua in Central America tries in 1523 to comprehend the new masters from Spain:
Was the king elected by the elders of his community?
The chief also asks the conquistador to tell him for what purpose so few men want to much gold. Will their bodies be big enough for so much adornment?
Later he asks if it is true, as a prophet said, that the sun, stars, and moon will lose their light and the sky will fall?
Chief Nicaragua does not ask why no children will be born in these parts. No prophet has told him that within a few years the women will refuse to give birth to slaves.

Sometimes we get the pleasure of the conquerors meeting their just deserts. The story of one Pedro de Valdivia makes a great case. After a couple of years defeating the peoples of Chile and founding its capital with his lover Ines Suarez at his side (nicely portrayed in Allende’s novel “Inés of My Soul”), he realizes as a new governor he must end his relationship with her and send for his wife in Spain. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned:
At dawn an undulating streak opens in the black mist and separates the earth from sky.
Ines, who has not slept, detaches herself from Valdivia’s embrace and leans on her elbow. …She feels for the dagger. She raises it. …The dagger hesitates in midair over the nude body.
Centuries pass.
Finally, Ines softly plunges the dagger into the pillow beside his face and moves away on tiptoe over the earth floor, leaving the bed woman-free.

Later we experience Valdivia trying to put down an armed rebellion by native Araucanians, during which his own trusted native page lays him low. He meets this fate as a captive:
The Araucanians open Vadivia’s mouth and fill it with dirt. They make him swallow dirt, handful after handful. They swell up his body with Chilean soil as they tell him: “You want gold? Eat gold. Stuff yourself with gold.”

Another lens Galeano sometimes plays with is that of history becoming legend. In the chapter, “The Poet Will Tell Children the Story of This Battle”, our window is of the conquistador Alvarado’s defeat of the tribal leader Tecum Uman in Guatemala as told to children of the future.
He will relate that when the native troops had been destroyed, and when Guatemala was a slaughterhouse, Captain Tecum Uman rose into the air and flew with wings, and feathers sprouted from his body.
…The poet will point to the moving clouds and the sway of the treetops.
“See the lances?” he will ask. “See the horse’ hooves? The rain of arrows? The smoke? Listen,” he will say, and put his ear against the ground, filled with explosions.
And he will teach them to smell history in the wind, to touch it in stones, polished by the river, and to recognize its taste by chewing certain herbs, without hurry, as one chews on sadness.

Not all immigrants to Latin America are after exploitation of labor and riches. In the 16th century the bishop of Michoacán, Mexico, Vasco de Quiroga, established his version of the semi-communistic society propounded in Thomas More’s “Utopia”, one that blended European and native traditions to fulfill the ideal where “no one is master of anyone or anything and neither hunger nor money is known.” As a consequence,
..in times to come the Indians here will remember Vasco de Quiroga as their own—the dreamer who riveted his eyes on a hallucination to see beyond the time of infamy.

As a final example of the wonderful content to be found here, I share Galeano’s vision of a Catholic Inquisitor burning centuries of Mayan books in 1562. The tragedy of the loss is so eloquently rendered, and we come to understand how “The Memory of Fire” tries to fight the erasure of peoples and history:
Around the incinerator, heretics howl with their heads down. Hung by their feet, flayed with whips, Indians are doused with boiling wax as the fire flares up and the books snap, as if complaining.
With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren’s grandchildren should not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so that they should know the movements of stars, the frequency of eclipses and the prophesies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.
Meanwhile, the authors, artist-priests dead years or centuries ago, drink chocolate in the fresh shade of the first tree of the world. They are at peace, because they died knowing that memory cannot be burned. Will not what they painted be sung and danced through the times of the times?
When its little paper houses are burned, memory finds refuge in mouths that sing the glories of men and gods, songs that stay on from people to people and in bodies that dance to the sound of hollow trunks, tortoise shells, and reed flutes.

I sincerely thank Glenn Russell for guiding me to the genius of Galeano through his wonderful reviews.


Eduardo Galeano

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why do white people own so many pets? We're not allowed to own people anymore.

I got that off of the Internet.

Three years ago Governor William Berkeley could proudly remark: I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have either for a hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them.

-Yorktown, Virginia, 1674

I got that from this book, a prime target for trigger-happy literature banners the world over, complete with index and 227 cited works and two sequels. Save yourselves a fuckton in tuition for those socioeconomically indoctrinated and white-washed history classes, and pick this up instead. Vollmann's got his merits, but privilege has its limits.

The poets talk and doubt:

Can it be that men are real
Will our song
Still be real tomorrow?

The voices follow one another. When night falls, the king of Huexotzingo thanks them and says good-bye:

We know something that is real
The hearts of our friends.

-Huexotzingo, 1493

When you refuse to talk about the violence, you refuse to talk about the peace. When you refuse to glance over to another side of the globe for fear of stories that are not so cultured, not so ordered, not so supportive of our aspirations towards civilization today, it is a void, and nonentity is worse than pain. Rape and murder, extortion and enslavement, the narrative of conqueror and conquered existed long before Europe drew up the maps proclaiming itself on top and to the right and used them to set sail for the left; the issue here is not of crime and punishment, but everlasting annihilation.

While his soldiers, maddened by hunger, ate each other, the captain read Virgil and Erasmus and made pronouncements for immortality.

-Bueonos Aires, 1580

But here utopia has returned to America, where it originated. Thomas More’s chimera has been incarnated in the small communal world of Michoacán; and in times to come the Indians here will remember Vasco de Quiroga as their own—the dreamer who riveted his eyes on a hallucination to see beyond the time of infamy.

-Michoacán, 1560

How many of your beloved founders owned slaves? How many of your adored thinkers viewed women as cattle? How many of those vaulted names survived due to blood money inheritance and physical type prowess? How much of you is the indelible right of lucky rapists and fattened vampires, and what are you willing to do about it.

In the twelve books of the General History of New Spain, Sahagún and his young assistants have saved and assembled ancient voices, the fiestas of the Indians, their rites, their gods, their way of counting the passage of years and stars, their myths, their poems, their medicines, their tales of remote ages and the recent European invasion…History sings in this first great work of American anthropology.
Six years ago King Philip II had those manuscripts and all the native codices copied and translated by Sahagún seized so that no original or translation of them should remain.

-Tlatelolco, 1583

Facts, thoughts, argument, acquired through books like these in the form of Three Guineas, The Wretched of the Earth, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, and many more to come in forms long invalidated by accredited texts, traditional values, and common sense. The latter come to me with blood on their hands and money in their pockets, asking only that I submit.

Palmeres no longer breathes. This broad space of liberty opened up in colonial America has lasted for a century and resisted more than forty invasions. The wind has blown away the ashes of the black bastions of Macacos and Subupira, Dambrabanga and Obenga, Tabocas and Arotirene. For the conquerors, the Palmares century whittles down to the instant when the dagger polished off Zumbí. Yet what does the wakeful know compared with what the dreamer knows?

-Serra Dois Irmãos, 1695

I prefer to dream.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through the centuries, Latin America has been despoiled of gold and silver, nitrates and rubber, copper and oil: its memory has also been usurped. From the outset it has been condemned to amnesia by those who have prevented it from being.
yes, from simply being




Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015)


Galeano explains, in his Preface, what he wishes to do.

I am not a historian. I am a writer who would like to contribute to the rescue of the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land: I would like to talk to her, share her secrets, ask her of what difficult clays she was born, from what acts of love and violation she comes.

I don't know to what literary form this voice of voices belongs. Memory of Fire is not an anthology, clearly not; but I don't know if it is a novel or essay or epic poem or testament or chronicle or … Deciding robs me of no sleep…

I did not want to write an objective work – neither wanted to nor could. There is nothing neutral about this historical narration. Unable to distance myself, I take sides. I confess it and am not sorry. However, each fragment of this huge mosaic is based on a solid documentary foundation. What is told here has happened, although I tell it in my style and manner.

That's really all the review this magnificent and moving book requires.

However, to attempt satiation for those who need more…



basics

Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy is comprised of short (typically some part of a couple pages) narratives, usually written in the present tense. That tense has been chosen to bring these memories of the past more vividly into our consciousness. He wishes to make that past present to us, to keep it alive, "to allow it to happen again, as soon as the reader reads it."

This first book, Genesis, has two parts. The first, shorter part is called First Voices. These short pieces present the creation myths, the languages, the beliefs, of the first inhabitants of the Americas.The Hummingbird
At dawn he greets the sun. Night falls and he's still at work. He goes buzzing from branch to branch, from flower to flower, quick and necessary like life itself. At times he's doubtful and pauses suspended in the air; at times he flies backward as no one else can. At times he's a little drunk from all the honey he has sucked. As he flies, he emits flashes of color.

He brings messages from the gods, becomes a bolt of lightning to carry out their vengeance, blows prophecies in the ears of the soothsayers. When a Guarani child dies, he rescues its soul, which lies in the calyx of a flower, and takes it in his long needle beak to the Land Without Evil. He has known the way there since the beginning of time.

He led the long pilgrimage of the Toltecs to the sacred city of Tula before bringing the warmth of the sun to the Aztecs.

As captain of the Chontals, he glides over the camps of the enemy, assesses their strength, dive-bombs them, and kills their chief in his sleep. As the sun of the Kekchis, he flies to the moon, takes her by surprise in her chamber, and makes love to her.

His body is the size of an almond. He is born from an egg no bigger than a bean, in a nest that fits inside a nut. He sleeps with a little leaf as covering.

Each narrative indicates the source(s) at the bottom with a number, referring to the 227 Sources listed at the back. The Hummingbird (spoiler above) has three sources.
40. Cadogan, Leon. La literatura de los guaranies. Mexico City: Joaquin Mortiz, 1965.
206. ---. Pensamiento y religion en el Mexico antiguo. Mexico City: FCE, 1957.
210. Tibon, Gutierre. Historia del nombre y de la fundacion de Mexico. Mexico City: FCE, 1975.
Of course many were not published in Mexico City – but almost all are titled in Spanish.


The longer part of the book (over 80%) is titled Old New World.

These pieces are introduced with a year and place, then a title, then the narrative.

The first:

1492: The Ocean Sea
The Sun Route to the Indies

The last:

1700: Madrid
Penumbra of Autumn


the narratives

What are they about? There are four historical eras treated in the narratives. From 1492-1518, the era of discovery and exploration (24 narratives, 17 pages); from 1519-1531, the era of the conquest of Mexico (the Aztec empire; 32/26); from 1532-1572, the long, arduous, destructive, and immensely profitable enterprise of conquering the native peoples of the high Andes in Peru and Bolivia (the Inca empire; 85/62); finally, the century and a quarter following, in which the Spanish and other European countries fortified their domination over the original cultures of the New World (~165/136).

Essentially, what Galeano would probably refer to (from the book's title) as the Genesis of colonialism.

There are many types of topics treated.

People first of all, some famous, some once well-known but now forgotten, a few utterly obscure - conquisadores, missionaries, rulers, administrators, warriors, resistors, converts, rebels - many of them (on the European hand) brutal or grasping, or both brutal and grasping - but some outraged at the cruelty and the taking. On the first Americans hand, some also cruel, others learned, some naïve and trusting, some sly and knowing. European, native, and mixed decent all represented.

We read of Columbus, Balboa, Charles V, Cortes, Moctezuma, Ponce de León, Pizarro, Philip II, Drake, Raleigh, Pocahontas, Charles II, Morgan – even Durer, Leonardo, Cervantes, Shakespeare. We also read of Opechancanough, an uncle of Pocahontas; of Guáman Poma de Ayala, a nobleman of the indigenous people of South America; of Martín de Porres, a lay brother of the Dominican Order, beatified in 1837, canonized in 1962, the patron saint of mixed-race people; of Carlos de Siguenza y Góngora, a polymath, one of the first great intellectuals born in New Spain, a criollo patriot who exalted New Spain over Old;
and of Juana Inéz de la Cruz, self-taught scholar and student of scientific thought - philosopher, composer, poet of the Baroque school, and Hieronymite nun of New Spain, known in her lifetime as "The Tenth Muse", "The Phoenix of America", or the "Mexican Phoenix".

Places also – Jamestown, Plymouth, Barbados; Jamaica, Albuquerque (where the natives drove out the Spaniards and ruled their own lands again for a decade, until the Spanish settled things); Trinidad, Santa Fe, Puerto Rico, Cuzco, Guatemala, Machu Picchu; Florida, Mexico City rising on the ruins of Tenochtitlan; Nicaragua, Quito, Veracruz. Places like Palmares, in northeastern Brazil, the impregnable area where run-away slaves created a dozen quilombos in the hinterland, which resisted conquest by expeditions of mercenaries seeking slaves for decades.

And places like Potosi, flying 13,000 feet up into the mighty Andes, lying at the foot of the Cerro de Potosí — the Cerro Rico — the mountain made of silver, which supplied the silver treasure which enriched Old Spain for a hundred years. The silver mined by slave labor, mostly Indian but later even slaves imported from Africa when the native populations had become so decimated that the mining slaves could not be replaced fast enough, many dying of mercury poisoning. The silver taken by llama and mule train to the Pacific coast, shipped north to Panama City, carried by mules again across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios or Portobelo, whence sailed to Spain on the Spanish treasure galleons. The silver rape.

The colonialists. First among these are the Spaniards. The index contains entries for other colonialist countries: the Dutch; the English; the French; the Portuguese. There is no entry for the Spaniards. It would look silly. There is however an entry for the Inquisition, which operated in New Spain as well as Old. The Catholic Church, which exerted enormous power in these centuries in Old Spain, also reigned in New Spain. Many the of people told of are church men. Most (by my recollection) ruled over the native and mixed-race peoples with an iron hand, though some, exploring morality from a personal perspective, argued and wrote in opposition to the prevailing view of these peoples as under the sway of barbarity, idolatry, the Devil.



Here are some of Galeano's tales, edited simply to highlight what specially struck me. (Galeano really needs no editing.) Any three of four pages will yield at least one nugget. Easier than finding the gold sought by the Old World.


Consider the English.

1672: London
The White Man's Burden

The duke of York, brother of the king of England, founded the Company of Royal Adventurers nine years ago. English planters in the Antilles bought their slaves from Dutch slavers; but the Crown could not permit the purchase of such valuable articles from foreigners. The new enterprise, set up for trade with Africa, had prestigious shareholders. King Charles II, three dukes, eight earls, seven lords, a countess, and twenty-seven knights. In homage to the duke of York the captains burned the letters DY with hot irons onto the breasts of the three thousand slaves they carried yearly to Barbados and Jamaica.

Now the enterprise is to be called the Royal Africa Company …

Behind the ships, sharks make the trip to the islands, awaiting the bodies that go overboard. Many die because there is not enough water and the strongest drink what little there is, or because of dysentery or small pox …

They lie in rows, crushed against each other, their noses touching the deck above. Their wrists are handcuffed, the fetters wear their ankles raw. When portholes have to be closed in rough seas or rain, the small amount of air rises to fever heat, but with porthole open the hold stinks of hatred, fermented hatred, fouler than the foulest stench of slaughterhouse, and the floor is always slippery with blood, vomit, and shit.

The sailors, who sleep on deck, listen at night to the endless moans from below and at dawn to the yells of those who dreamed they were in their own country.

The profits and advantages of slavery enjoyed by all.

1682: Accra
All Europe is Selling Human Flesh

Not far from the English and Danish forts, a pistol shot away, rises the Prussian trading post. A new flag flies on these coasts, over the tree-trunk roofs of the slave depots and on the masts of ships that sail with full cargoes.

With their Africa Company the Germans have joined in the juiciest business of the period. The Portuguese hunt and sell blacks through their Company of Guinea. The Royal Africa Company operates for the English Crown. The French flag waves from ships of the Company of Senegal. Holland's Company of the West Indies is doing nicely. Denmark's enterprise specializing in the slave traffic is also called the Company if the West Indies; and the Company of the South Seas lines the pockets of the Swedes.

Spain has no slave business. But a century ago, in Seville, the Chamber of Commerce sent the king a documented report explaining that slaves were the most lucrative of all merchandise going to America; and so they continue to be. For the right to sell slaves in the Spanish colonies, foreign concerns pay fortunes into the royal coffers. With these funds have been built, among other things, the Alcázars of Madrid and Toledo. The Negro Committee meets in the main hall of the Council of the Indies.

An oracle, showing the way to the future.

1499: Granada
Who Are Spaniards?

The mosques remain open in Granada, seven years after the surrender of this last redoubt of the Moors in Spain. The advance of the cross behind the victory of the sword is slow. Archbishop Cisneros decides that Christ cannot wait.

… Thousands and thousands of Spaniards of Jewish culture have been condemned to exile. The Moors will likewise get the choice between baptism and exile; and for false converts burn the fires of the Inquisition. The unity of Spain, this Spain that has discovered America, will not result from the sum of its parts.

By Archbishop Cisneros's order the Muslim sages of Granada troop off to prison. Lofty flames devour Islamic books – religion and poetry, philosophy and science – the only copies guarding the words of a culture that has irrigated these lands and flourished in them.

From on high, the carved palaces of the Alhambra are mute witnesses of the enslavement, while its fountains continue giving water to the gardens.

Triumph and tragedy, barely distinguished.Heavily edited.

1522: Seville
The Longest Voyage Ever Made

No one thought they were still alive, but last night they arrived. They dropped anchor and fired all their guns… Shaking and in rags, they entered Seville carrying lighted torches. The crowd opened up, amazed, for this procession of scarecrows headed by Juan Sebastián de Elcano. They stumbled ahead, leaning on each other for support… They chanted as they went.

They had left three years ago … They have seen seas and lands without map or name: six times they have crossed the zone where the world boils, without ever getting burned. To the south they have encountered blue snow and in the sky, four stars forming a cross… On one very remote island, they report, live little people half a meter tall, with ears that reach down to their feet…

The survivors say that in the South of the South, where the land opens up and the oceans embrace, the Indians light huge bonfires night and day to keep from dying of cold… When they got to the Moluccas, one sailor traded the Indians a playing card, the king of diamonds, for six fowls, but couldn't even take a bite of them, so swollen were his gums.

They have seen Magellan weep – tears in the eyes of the tough Portuguese navigator when the ships entered the ocean never before crossed by a European… Magellan is now carrion, a trophy in the hands of Filipino natives who shot a poisoned arrow into his leg.

Of the 237 sailors and soldiers who left Seville three years ago, 18 have returned. They arrived in one creaky ship with a worm-eaten keel that leaks on all four sides.

The survivors. These men dead of hunger who have just sailed around the world for the first time.

two for the road

The race to Quito

1533: Riobamba

Half a year before, the ships anchored in Puerto Viejo. Inspired by promises of a virgin kingdom, Pedro de Alvarado had sailed from Guatemala. With him went five hundred Spaniards and two thousand Indian and Negro slaves…

In the coastal villages they found gold, silver, and emeralds. Loaded with quick fortunes, they set off for the mountains. They faced jungles, swamps, fevers that kill in a day or leave one mad, terrifying rains of volcanic ash. In the Andean foothills, snowstorms and winds that cut like knives broke the bodies of the slaves, who had never known cold, and many Spaniards left their bones in the mountains. Soldiers dismounting to tighten their horses' girths remained permanently frozen. The booty was thrown to the bottom pf ravines …

More dead than alive, with muscles iced and blood frozen, the toughest ones managed to reach the plateau. Finally today they have hit the royal highway of the Incas, the one that leads to Quito, to paradise. No sooner do they arrive than they find in the mud fresh hoofprints. Captain Benalcázar has beaten them to it.

Another Pizarro.

1542: Quito
El Dorado

For a long time Gonzalo Pizarro's men have been trekking deep into the jungle, in search of the gold-skinned prince and the groves of cinnamon. They have found snakes and bats, armies of mosquitos, swamps and rains that never stop. Night after night lightning flashed the way for this caravan of naked men huddled together in panic.

Skin and bones and sores, they are arriving this afternoon at the outskirts of Quito. Each one recites his name in order to be recognized. Of the expedition's four thousand Indian slaves, none has returned.

Captain Gonzalo Pizarro kneels and kisses the ground. Last night he dreamed of a dragon that jumped on him, tore him apart, and ate his heart. This keeps him from blinking, now, when they tell him the news:

"Your brother Francisco has been assassinated in Lima."

The colonialists find the New World a remote and difficult outpost for the "civilization" of the Old. All exists in the extreme: distance extreme, time extreme, rewards of wealth and power extreme (but only for a few), the price paid for adventure and quest extreme; the iron rule of the Church and officials (over those not wanting it) extreme; the slavery, the misery, the jungles, the mountains, the climate, the food – all extreme, each in its own way. They have participated in "The Conquest of Paradise", and some have lived to tell of it for a few years. Now they, like the original Americans, the former dwellers, have faded into the mists of time. Galleano brings them all to the present, so we may remember them.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Ghost Road
Next review: Women & Power: A Manifesto
Older review: The Hobbit

Previous library review: The Really Big One public service review
Next library review: che on my mind Margaret Randall

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four hundred forty-four (444) ratings, 48 reviews, GR average rating: 4.40. I was almost sure this is artificial. Maybe Eduardo Hughes Galeano has many friends, Latin American friends. How can a book possibly get an average rating of 4.40 from almost 450 readers? Could this not be the champion of all GR-rated books?

No. Memory of Fire is a trilogy. The second book, Memory of Fire: Faces and Masks is even more eye-popping: 274 ratings, 12 reviews, 4.51 GR average rating.

You might say nothing can get higher than that with more than 250 individual ratings. But hey, take a look at the last book of the trilogy, Memory of Fire: Century of the Wind. From 330 individual ratings, 23 reviews, it has an average GR rating of 4.59!

I don't have a copy of the 2nd and 3rd books yet but I've never desired a book this much until now.

In the preface to this volume the author wrote that he does not know if this is a novel, or an essay, or an epic poem, a testament, chronicle or what. Well, I know what it is. It's a newspaper! When you wake up in the morning you read the papers and learn about what happened to the world the day before. Memory of Fire: Genesis--divided into short chapters, each with a footnote (or footnotes) disclosing their sources--tells the reader what happened to the Americas starting sometime before their colonization (with their mythologies) up to the 16th century. It likewise mirrors a part of the history of my country because the Philippines was also colonized by Spain within this specific time-frame. In fact there is a chapter here too about Ferdinand Magellan and his Spanish fleet.

A newspaper, however, can't possibly get an average of 4.40 from 444 readers. The difference here is this: in a newspaper one gets to know the bare facts. Here, it is facts plus emotions. Galeano's language is poetic and his creativity is almost god-like: out of the dead and confused details of the centuries past he has molded a coherent, engaging, living and breathing history. A history that you experience through the magic of language.

The very first chapter is aptly entitled "The Creation" and its footnote says it is taken from a book called "Watunna: Mitologia Makiritare." Galeano presented it this way:

"The woman and the man dreamed that God was dreaming about them.
God was singing and clacking his maracas as he dreamed his dream in a cloud of tobacco smoke, feeling happy but shaken by doubt and mystery.
The Makiritare Indians know that if God dreams about eating, he gives fertility and food. If God dreams about life, he is born and gives birth.
In their dream about God's dream, the woman and the man were inside a great shining egg, singing and dancing and kicking up a fuss because they were crazy to be born. In God's dream happiness was stronger than doubt and mystery. So dreaming, God created them with a song:
'I break this egg and the woman is born and the man is born. And together they will live and die. But they will be born again. They will be born and die again and be born again. They will never stop being born, because death is a lie.'"

For "Language", Galeano referenced the mythology of the Guarani Indian nation and wrote:

"The First Father of the Guaranis rose in darkness lit by reflections from his own heart and created flames and thin mist. He created love and had nobody to give it to. He created language and had no one to listen to him.
Then he recommended to the gods that they should construct the world and take charge of fire, mist, rain, and wind. And he turned over to them the music and words of the sacred hymn so that they would give life to women and to men.
So love became communion, language took on life, and the First Father redeemed his solitude. Now he accompanies men and women who sing as they go:
'We're walking this earth,
We're walking this shining earth.'"

How beautiful were these Indian languages? Galeano didn't need a long discourse on this. In a short chapter which he gave the heading "Language of Paradise", which he took from a study of the language of another Indian nation, he simply wrote:

"The Guaraos, who live in the suburbs of Earthly Paradise, call the rainbow 'snake of necklaces' and the firmament 'overhead sea.' Lightning is 'glow of the rain.' One's friend, 'my other heart.' The soul, 'sun of the breast.' The owl, 'lord of the dark night.' A walking cane is 'a permanent grandson'; and for 'I forgive,' they say 'I forget.'"

Echoing Adam and Eve is a chapter "Love." This charming tale reads:

"In the Amazonian jungle, the first woman and the first man looked at each other with curiosity. It was odd what they had between their legs.
'Did they cut yours off?' asked the man.
'No,' she said. 'I've always been like that.'
He examined her close up. He scratched his head. There was an open wound there. He said: 'Better not eat any cassava or bananas or any fruit that splits when it ripens. I'll cure you. Get in the hammock and rest.'
She obeyed. Patiently she swallowed herb teas and let him rub on pomades and unguents. She had to grit her teeth to keep from laughing when he said to her, 'Don't worry.'
She enjoyed the game, although she was beginning to tire of fasting in the hammock. The memory of fruit made her mouth water.
One evening the man came running throught the glade. He jumped with excitement and cried, 'I found it!'
He had just seen the male monkey curing the female monkey in the arm of a tree.
'That's how it's done,' said the man, approaching the woman.
When the long embrace ended, a dense aroma of flowers and fruit filled the air. From the bodies lying together came unheard of vapors and glowings, and it was all so beautiful that the suns and the gods died of embarrassment."

Then the Spaniards came (and, later, the other Europeans). They had their guns, swords, cannons, their lust for gold and spices, and their attack dogs. These dogs--some of them given ranks and salaries in the army--didn't hunt birds or rabbits. They sniffed out the native Indians. One of these dogs was named "Becerrillo." In a chapter carrying this dog's name, with the time and place of the incident indicated (1511: Aymaco), Galeano gives us the following account:

"The insurrection of chiefs Agueynaba and Mabodamaca has been put down and all the prisoners have gone to their deaths.
Captain Diego de Salazar comes upon the old woman hidden in the underbrush and does not run his sword through her. 'Here,' he says to her, 'take this letter to the governor, who is in Caparra.'
The old woman opens her eyes slightly. Trembling, she holds out her fingers.
And she sets off. She walks like a small child, with a baby-bear lurch, carrying the envelope like a standard or a flag.
While the old woman is still withing crossbow range, the captain releases Becerrillo. Governor Ponce de Leon has ordered that Becerrillo should receive twice the pay of a crossbowman, as an expert flusher-out of ambushes and hunter of Indians. The Indians of Puerto Rico have no worse enemy.
The first arrow knocks the old woman over. Becerrillo, his ears perked up, his eyes bulging, would devour her in one bite.
'Mr. Dog,' she entreats him, 'I'm taking this letter to the governor.'
Becerrillo doesn't know the local language, but the old woman shows him the empty envelope.
'Don't do me harm, Mr. Dog.'
Becerrillo sniffs at the envelope. He circles a few times the trembling bag of bones that whines words, lifts a paw, and pees on her."

An Indian chief can carry a chapter too. Here is one--

"1511: Yara
HATUEY

In these islands, in these Calvaries, those who choose death by hanging themselves or drinking poison along with their children are many. The invaders cannot avoid this vengeance, but know how to explain it: the Indians, 'so savage that they think everything is in common,' as Oviedo will say, 'are people by nature idle and vicious, doing little work. For a pastime many killed themselves with venom so as not to work, and others hanged themselves with their own hands.'
Hatuey, Indian chief of the Guahaba region, has not killed himself. He fled with his people from Haiti in a canoe and took refuge in the caves and mountains of eastern Cuba.
There he pointed to a basketful of gold and said: 'This is the god of the Christians. For him they pursue us. For him our fathers and our brothers have died. Let us dance for him. If our dance pleases him, this god will order them not to mistreat us.
They catch him three months later.
They tie him to a stake.
Before lighting the fire that will reduce him to charcoal and ash, the priest promises him glory and eternal rest if he agrees to be baptized. Hatuey asks: 'Are there Christians in heaven?'
'Yes.'
Hatuey chooses hell, and the firewood begins to crackle."

A vignette of one, insignificant Indian life--

"1618: Lima
SMALL WORLD

"The owner of Fabiana Criolla has died. In his will he has lowered the price of her freedom from 200 to 150 pesos.
Fabiana has spent the night without sleeping, wondering how much her guaiacum-wood box full of powdered cinnamon would be worth. She does not know how to add, so she cannot calculate the freedoms she has bought with her work through the half century that she has been in the world, nor the price of the children who have been made on her and taken from her.
With the first light of dawn, the bird comes and taps its beak on the window. Every day the same bird announces that it is time to wake up and get going.
Fabiana yawns, sits up on the mat, and inspects her worn-down feet."

And slave trade, the most profitable business of those days (even better than piracy)--

"1672: London
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

The duke of York, brother of the king of England, founded the Company of Royal Adventurers nine years ago. English planters in the Antilles bought their slaves from Dutch slavers; but the Crown could not permit the purchase of such valuable articles from foreigners. The new enterprise, set up for trade with Africa, had prestigious shareholders: King Charles II, three dukes, eight earls, seven lords, a countess, and twenty-seven knights. In homage to the duke of York, the captains burned the letters DY with hot irons onto the breasts of the three thousand slaves they carried yearly to Barbados and Jamaica.
Now the enterprise is to be called the Royal Africa Company. The English king, who holds most of the stock, encourages slave-buying in his colonies, where slaves cost six times as much as in Africa.
Behind the ships, sharks make the trip to the islands, awaiting the bodies that go overboard. Many die because there is not enough water and the strongest drink what little there is, or because of dysentery or smallpox, and many die from melancholy: they refuse to eat, and there is no way to open their jaws.
They lie in rows, crushed against each other, their noses touching the deck above. Their wrists are handcuffed, and fetters wear their ankles raw. When portholes have to be closed in rough seas or rain, the small amount of air rises to fever heat, but with portholes open the hold stinks of hatred, fermented hatred, fouler than the foulest stench of slaughterhouse, and the floor is always slippery with blood, vomit, and shit.
The sailors, who sleep on deck, listen at night to the endless moans from below and at dawn to the yells of those who dreamed they were in their country."

I could go on and on. I had lost count of how many dog-ears I had made on my copy of this book.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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.”

We are not born into a void. We are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us and, hopefully, we would carry the weight of those who come after us into the future. Ignoring this continuity, denying this heritage, the good and the bad inter-weaved, will only lead to a disregard for the planet that sustains us and for the people who will have to deal with our wasteful ways.
Eduardo Galeano has chosen as his focus Latin America through the ages, but this is an exercise we should all be involved in, as the modern world has reduced the globe to the size of a village in which the actions of each and every one of us have repercussions. We don’t have time for more deadly mistakes to give us an experience that is painfully clear to those who have turned their eyes towards history.

Through the centuries, Latin America has been despoiled of gold and silver, nitrates and rubber, copper and oil: its memory has also been usurped. From the outset it has been condemned to amnesia by those who have prevented it from being.

This stubborn amnesia (I have just watched last week the movie “Don’t Look Up”) , this anti-intellectual and anti-science stance is on the rise, while the religious intransigence that gave us the conquistadores and the Inquisition tries to become once again the dominant political force on the planet. Personally, I consider Galeano to be required reading, regardless of the stated bias of his presentation. After all, if you want to combat any of his articles, you can go to alternative sources and sustain your point of view, just like you can do with Howard Zinn, another militant historian. But please, get your facts straight in the first place. Galeano certainly did his homework.

I did not want to write an objective work – neither wanted to nor could. There is nothing neutral about this historical narration. Unable to distance myself, I take sides: I confess it and am not sorry. However, each fragment of this huge mosaic is based on a solid documentary foundation. What is told here has happened, although I tell it in my style and manner.

>>><<<>>><<<

“Genesis” is the first volume of the massive trilogy that covers Latin America from its oral history , through the invasion of the Europeans and up the year 1700. Given the amount of information available, the author has done a necessary work of pruning and condensing the reference material from his bibliography. He has also put a personal, literary, touch to the often short essays that serve more as a starting point for the journey than an exhaustive presentation.
What this means for me is that it is better to own all three of his history, and use them either as reference for further study, or as daily treats to myself as I open a page at random and read what it has to say.
Based on the first volume so far, I can attest that I didn’t find any of these pages to be trivial or unappealing.

God was singing and clacking his maracas as he dreamed his dream in a cloud of tobacco smoke, feeling happy but shaken by doubt and mystery.

The first chapters , before Columbus, were easily my favourites, as they tickled my interest in folklore and exotic cosmogonies. The later chapters were most of them painful, with few uplifting or cheerful stories, being an account of the wholesale destruction of countless cultures, religious book (and people) burning, deadly epidemics and large scale slavery. Few accounts of the indigenous culture have survived the fires of the zealots, which makes the occasional glimpse of poetry even more precious.

Ballad of Cuzco
A llama wished
to have golden hair,
brilliant as the sun,
strong as love
and soft as the mist
that the dawn dissolves,
to weave a braid
on which to mark,
knot by knot,
the moons that pass,
the flowers that die.

>>><<<>>><<<

I couldn’t really start to comment on any of the historical developments (Potosi, Palmares, etc) over such a long period, without feeling that I have done a disservice to the work of the author and to his integrating vision.
I can only mention some of the pages that I bookmarked, with the caveat that these are simply some of the things that caught my eye and not necessarily representative for the whole book:

The Night Bird (Urutau)
The Rabbit
Mate ( The tea of the mate awakens sleepers, activates the lazy, and makes brothers and sisters of people who don’t know each other.)
1496: La Conception - Sacrilege
1514: Sinu River The Summons
1524: Quetzaltenango - The Poet Will Tell Children the Story of This Battle
1562: Mani - The Fire Blunders
1583: Tlatelolco - Sahagun
1625: Samayac - Indian Dances Banned in Guatemala
1637: Mystic Fort
1666: New Amsterdam - New York
1674: Yorktown - The Olympian Steeds ( I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have either for a hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them. William Berkeley)
1695: Serra Dois Irmaos - Zumbi

>>><<<>>><<<

I look forward to continue my journey with the second volume.

[Taghreed Jamal El Deen · Rating 3 out of 5]

ثلاثية ذاكرة النار هي محاولة لإعادة كتابة تاريخ أميركا اللاتينية، بدءاً من رحلة كولومبوس الشهيرة مروراً بكل ما لم تذكره الكتب سنة وراء سنة وصولاً لزمن تأليف العمل، فكانت مزجاً سحرياً بأسلوب غاليانو المتفرد بين التاريخ والأسطورة وخيال الكاتب، وأخذت شكل النصوص السردية القصيرة كالعادة. مشاعر اللاتيني الثائر على أزمنة اضطهاده والحامل لمآسي ماضيه كانت الدافع لإنجاز هذا العمل، والسمة الأشد ظهوراً بين ثناياه.

قطعاً هذه الثلاثية هي المشروع الأهم لإدواردو غاليانو الإنسان، لكن لا أعتقد أنها المشروع الأفضل لغاليانو الكاتب - حتى الآن على الأقل -، فمعظم أعماله التي قرأتها مسبقاً كانت أقوى وأكثر حياةً رغم كونها جميعاً تسعى لبعث ذكرى الموتى الذي تم نسيانهم أو تغييبهم، أما هنا فأشعر فعلأ بأن ما بين يدي ورقة نعي. غاليانو كان حزيناً وهادئاً حد الانطفاء حين كتب ما كتب، أعتقد أنه كان من الأنسب تسميتها ذاكرة الرماد.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, I am white and second, the history I know about Latin America Is depressing in what we did to the natives. I am sorry for this. Reading this book, told in small segments or stories reinforced what the Europeans did to the Americans, was just painful. I started in earnst but after awhile it was shelved for anything happier. It took me about four months to read and was glad to finish it. One of those books that I am glad its out there but the guilt for being white is too painful.

[Glenn Russell]

Genesis (Memory of Fire, Volume 1) is a monumental work that makes for a rich education. Eduardo Galeano includes more than three hundred entries, each about a page in length, capturing events, happenings, or short tales taken from the Americas, mostly Latin America, beginning with the first voices prior to Columbus and continuing up to the year 1700. Eduardo Galeano has his own way of expressing what he reports, often incorporating humor, irony, or satire. However, whatever he writes, a perceptive reader can detect great nuggets of wisdom in each and every entry.

Here are four quotes from Eduardo's Preface that set the tone. I've also includes my modest comments.

"Poor History had stopped breathing: betrayed in academic texts, lied about in classrooms, drowned in dates, they had imprisoned her in museums and buried her, with floral wreaths, beneath statuary bronze and monumental marble.
Perhaps Memory of Fire can help give her back breath, liberty, and the world."

As they say, history is the story told by the winners. When Eduardo was a youngster sitting in class, he had the good sense to know what the teacher was saying amounted to nothing more than a pile of deadly lies students were being forced to memorize. When he raised any objection, he was either told to keep his mouth shut or, more usually, ordered to leave the classroom.

"I am not a historian. I am a writer who would like to contribute to the rescue of the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land: I would like to talk to her, share her secrets, ask of what difficult clays she was born, from what acts of love and violation she comes."

This surely counts as one of the book's charms: Eduardo is not a historian or academic; he's a writer who knows the way something is told is equally important to what is told, the subject being addressed.

"Memory of Fire is not an anthology, clearly not; but I don't know if it is a novel or essay or epic poem or testament or chronicle or . . . . Deciding robs me of no sleep. I do not believe in the frontiers that, according to literature's customs officers, separate the forms."

Call it what you will, but Eduardo has written a work of great literature that will take its place on the shelf alongside Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jorge Amado.

"There is nothing neutral about this historical narration. Unable to distance myself, I take sides: I confess it and am not sorry. However, each fragment of this huge mosaic is based on a solid documentary foundation. What is told her has happened, although I tell it in my style and manner."

Tell it like it is, Eduardo! In Memory of Fire, as in each of the author's many works, he speaks out against hatred, greed, stupidity, regimentation, violence, repression, and exploitation in their many repugnant forms.

THE RAIN
There's dozens of short passages from American societies and civilizations addressing things like The Creation, Time, Day, The Flood, Resurrection, Magic and Laughter. The event or subject will always have a connection with nature and the natural world. And why does it rain? We're given a sweet tale of a little girl who suddenly discovers she's alive. One day, on a rocky mountain, when she went to fetch water, snakes were about to eat her up when the little girl sang. “From far away, the thunder birds heard the call. They attacked the rocky mountain with lightning, rescuing the prisoner, and killed the snakes.
The thunder birds left the little girl in the fork of the tree.
“You'll live here,” they told her. “We'll come every time you sing.”
Whenever the little green tree frog sings from his tree, the thunderclaps gather and it rains upon the world.”

1531: A LETTER
“Fray Bartolomé de las Cases is writing to the Council of the Indies. It would have been better for the Indians, he maintains, to go to hell with their heresies, their procrastination and their isolation, than to be saved by the Christians. The cries of so much spilled human blood reach all the way to heaven: those burned alive, roasted on grills, thrown to wild dogs.”

This short passage is representative for much of the history of Europe's invasion of the Americas from 1492 – 1700. Europe seeks all the gold and other resources from the New World. As for the native peoples, if they are unwilling to submit to slavery or do things like spend their lives toiling in sugar fields or breaking their backs in silver mines, better they should be tortured and murdered, pagans that they are.

To underscore this dreadful point, another entry from 1531 relates that a Bishop Zumárraga was “guardian of the branding iron that stamps on the Indians' faces the names of their proprietors. He threw the Aztec codices into the fire, papers printed by the hand of Satan, and destroyed five hundred temples and twenty thousand idols.” Most unfortunately, it wasn't until deep into the 20th century that scholars, historians, and archeologists began to appreciate Aztec culture and art.

1538: BLACKBEARD, REDBEARD, WHITEBEARD
Eduardo includes a humorous episode of three armies meeting in the Valley of Bogotá, prepared to slice one another to pieces before claiming the golden city of El Dorado as their own. “Then the German bursts out laughing, doubles up with mirth, and the Andalusians catch the contagion until the three captains collapse, floored by laughter and hunger and what brought them all there, that which is without being and arrived without coming: the realization that El Dorado won't be anybody's."

1666: NEW YORK
As with many of Eduardo's entries, we can learn a number of shocking facts about history. I'll close with this entry that can serve as a prime example. How many people, especially Americans, know how Wall Street, the hub of the financial district in downtown New York City, got its name? Eduardo lets us know back when New York was New Amsterdam belonging to the Dutch, the industrious Dutch ran the most important slave market in North America – and Wall Street is named after the wall built to stop blacks from escaping.


Eduardo Galeano from Uruguay, 1940-2015

[Sarah saied · Rating 4 out of 5]

مولانا غاليانو...حكاء أمريكا اللاتينية الأعظم...في الجزء الأول من ثلاثية عن التاريخ...تاريخ البشرية كما لم يروي من قبل..
بسم الله..فلنبدأ..
*******************************************
علمونا عن الماضي بطريقة جعلتنا نستكين الي الحاضر بضمائر جافة. لا لنصنع التاريخ الذي صنع سابقا .بل لكي نقبله..توقف التاريخ المسكين عن التنفس. تمت خيانته في النصوص الأكاديمية. كذب عليه في المدارس. أغرق بالتواريخ. سجنوه في المتاحف ودفنوه تحت أكاليل الورود ووراء تماثيل برونزية ورخام تذكاري.
جردت أمريكا اللاتينية طوال قرون من الذهب والفضة. ومن النترات والمطاط والنحاس والزيت وانتهكت ذاكرتها..
حكم عليها بداء النسيان أولئك الذين منعوها من الوجود. إن التاريخ الرسمي لأمريكا اللاتينية يقتصر علي استعراض عسكري لطغاة يرتدون بزات عسكرية لم تستخدم من قبل.
لست مؤرخا. أنا كاتب يحب أن يساهم في إنقاذ الذاكرة المخطوفة لكل أمريكا وخصوصا لأمريكا اللاتينية . الأرض المحتقرة والمحبوبة. أحب أن أتحدث معها . أن أشاطرها أسرارها. أن أسألها من أي صلصال شاق ولدت. ومن أي ممارسات جنسية واغتصابات جاءت..
غاليانو العظيم من مقدمة ثلاثيته..ذاكرة النار
********************************************
كتاب صعب..متعب وممتع في آن واحد... غاليانو يكتب تاريخ أمريكا اللاتينية تماما كما تم صناعته...بالدماء..

[Ο σιδεράς · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Αυτό το χρυσάφι, το τρως;" ρωτάει ο Ίνκα τον κατακτητή, κι εκείνος του απαντά: "Το τρώμε." 

Τι έπος.. με παρέσυρε, ως τροπικός κυκλωνας. Τα 400+ εντελώς ποιητικά στιγμιότυπά του πρώτου μέρους, διαθέτουν τόση πυκνότητα νοήματος που καθένα τους θα μπορούσε να γίνει από ένα διήγημα, ή ίσως και μυθιστόρημα ακόμα.. Μαγικό βιβλίο, τίποτα λιγότερο από αυτό.. 


"Καλότυχα ας είναι τώρα τα βήματα μιυ

καλότυχα, μες στην καταρρακτωδη βροχή. 

Καλότυχα να διαβούν μέσα από τις φυλλωσιές

και πάνω στα ίχνη της γύρης. 

Ας είναι όμορφο αυτό που με περιμένει

Κι ας είναι όμορφο ό,τι αφήνω πίσω. 

Όμορφα να είναι όσα βρίσκονται κάτω

και όσα επάνω. 

Μακάρι να είναι όλα γύρω μου ωραία 

και ωραία να τελειώσουν. "

Νυκτερινό τραγούδι των Ναβάχο..


Το ξέρω ότι κάπου κοντά - σε μία από τις επόμενες αναγνωστικές στροφές μου- ίσως σε κάποιο ράφι, κομοδίνο ή βιβλιοντάνα, βρίσκεται και με περιμένει εκείνο το βιβλίο που ήδη χαμογελάει, σαρκαζοντας τον, υπερβολικό ίσως, τωρινό ενθουσιασμό μου. Δεν πειράζει, ας χαμογελάει.. 


"Να το πω θέλω και δεν μπορώ 

κι όμως το λέω δίχως να το θέλω.

Θέλω και δεν θέλω ν' αγαπώ

κι όμως αγαπώ μα δεν το θέλω."

 Από ένα μεξικάνικο, ερωτικό τραγουδάκι.. 


Προς την κορυφή Καταραχιάς, 2268 μ. 

[Nada Elshabrawy · Rating 3 out of 5]

ماكرهتوش و ماحبتوش. فكرته مميزة بس مليت بعد اول ١٥٠ صفحة تقريبا.

[عبد الحميد بوحسين · Rating 5 out of 5]

هل أنا من سلالة الهنود الحمر؟ بدات اعتقد ذلك،هذا الهوس بثقافتهم و بالمحو العنيف للتاريخ للروح للحضارة الذي لم يبق لنا الا القليل من نفحاتها
لماذا أحلم بكابوس مريع كلما قرأت عن إبادتهم؟
أو ربما يجب أن يكون السؤال على الشكل التالي لماذا لا أحلم بالكابوس ؟
هنا في هذا الكتاب الخارج عن قانون الأجناس لأدبية ( ليسا تاريخا،أو مجموعة قصص ،ليس شعرا ..و إن كان يدمج كل هذه الأجناس ليعيد كتابة تاريخ هنود أمريكا اللاتينية منذ كولمبوس و تلك السنة المشؤومة 1492 و حتى نهاية القرن السابع عشر ليتابع المسيرة في الجزئين المواليين
كرونولوجيا مكتوبة بلغة جميلة احتفظت بها الترجمة البديعة لأسامة اسبر،أحيانا تشعر كأنك تقرأ قصة قصيرة جدا،أحيانا تأتي الحوارات لتذكرك بالمسرح ،ثم تأتي الأغاني ،أغاني الهنود الرقيقة و أشعارهم الناجية من حريق الروح و الثقافة،إضافة الى أغاني الإسبان أنفسهم
هنا سنقف وجها لوجه أمام الدم ،الاغتصابات ،النهب ،الغدر القادم من أوربا المتلهفة للذهب برجال دينها ، ملوكها ،ومغامريها

أحد الزعماء الهنود سيختصر المسألة " إنهم يعبدون الذهب" و من أجله فليمت الهنود في المناجم ،الحرائق المطاردات الدامية التي لم تمنعها رقتهم و ترحيبهم بورثة "كورتيس" و " بيسارو"أكثر القادة دموية في تاريخ القارة التي لم تعرف الملكية و لا الجشع،لم تعرف الكذب أو النفاق،لم تعرف الجذري و لا الطاعون إلا مع قدوم البيض

طبعا الكتاب ليس محايدا ،كما هو الشأن بالنسبة لتودوروف في كتابه"فتح أمريكا" هنا يعلن ادواردو غاليانو انحيازه المسبق للهنود ،و أعتقد أمام الإبادات و العنف الواضح أنني منحاز اليهم أيضا كأني أنا المباد ( برتولومي دو لاس كاساس الراهب الذي عايش الأحداث كان أ كثر من صرخ لإيقاف بحر الدم الذي حول تلك البلاد الى مكان للحداد، هذا الراهب لا نستطيع قراءة ما كتب دون أن نشعر بالجرم لأننا بشر(
لكنني أشعر الآن بأنني هندي أحمر و سأختار عما قريب إسما هنديا لي، "

[Orestis · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Δεν είμαι ιστορικός. Είμαι συγγραφέας που θα ήθελα να συμβάλω στη διάσωση της απαχθείσας μνήμης όλης της Αμερικής, αλλά κυρίως της Λατινικής Αμερικής." Δεν θα μπορούσα να διαφωνώ περισσότερο με τον συγγραφέα αυτού του έργου.
Ξεκινησα να το διαβάζω γέματος καχυποψία, καθώς οποιαδήποτε προσπάθεια θηματοποίησης ενός πληθυσμού μου, ειδικά σε ένα ιστορικό γεγονός, προκαλεί φοβερή πλήξη. Αντιθέτως, διάβασα ένα έργο με ειλικρίνεια και οξυδέρκεια που θα ζήλευε κάθε ιστορικό non-fiction. Ο συγγραφέας με τον χαρακτηριστικό τρόπο των Λατινοαμερικανών συγγραφέων, μέσα από θρύλους, ιστορικά γεγονότα, παραδόσεις, ιστορίες, ποίηση, παραδοσιακά τραγούδια, μας εισάγει στον κόσμο της αποικιακής Αμερικής του 16 αιώνα.
Τελειωνοντας το βιβλίο, είμαστε σε θέση να κατανοήσουμε την αίσθηση της εποχής, τον πόνο τον ντόπιων, την αγωνιά των εισβολέων, το δράμα των σκλάβων, την έλεγχο του κλήρου, την μοτίβο κοινωνικοοικονομικοπολιτισμικων αναταραχών που που προκάλεσε η ανακάλυψη της νέας ηπείρου. Βαθια κατανόηση που σου επιτρέπει να προβληματιστείς, να συμφωνήσεις, να διαφωνήσεις, να αναπτύξεις τις θέσεις σου πάνω σε. αυτά τα ζητήματα, πέρα από επικλήσεις στο συναίσθημα.
Για έμενα αυτό είναι ιστορία!

[Ηλίας Α. · Rating 5 out of 5]

1511 – Γιάρα
Ατουέι

Σε αυτά τα μαρτυρικά νησιά, πολλοί είναι εκείνοι που διαλέγουν το θάνατό τους: κρεμιούνται ή πίνουν δηλητήριο μαζί με τα παιδιά τους. Είναι μια εκδίκηση για την οποία οι κατακτητές δεν μπορούν να κάνουν τίποτα, αλλά έχουν βρει την εξήγηση: οι Ινδιάνοι είναι αγριάνθρωποι, λέει ο Οβιέδο, άτομα εκ φύσεως οκνηρά και ακόλαστα, που δεν αγαπούν την εργασία…, και όλα τα έχουν κοινά. Πολλοί από αυτούς δηλητηριάστηκαν πρόθυμα, προκειμένου να αποφύγουν την εργασία, ενώ άλλοι απαγχονίστηκαν με τα ίδια τους τα χέρια.
Ο Ατουέι, φύλαρχος στην περιοχή Γουαχάβα, δεν αυτοκτόνησε. Έφυγε με ένα κανό από την Αϊτή, μαζί με τους δικούς του, και βρήκε καταφύγιο στις σπηλιές και τα βουνά της ανατολικής Κούβας.
Εκεί, δείχνοντας ένα καλάθι γεμάτο χρυσάφι, είπε:
«Αυτός είναι ο θεός των Χριστιανών. Γι' αυτόν μας κυνηγούν και γι' αυτόν πέθαναν οι γονείς και τ' αδέρφια μας. Ας χορέψουμε προς τιμήν του. Αν ο χορός μας τον ευχαριστήσει, δεν θα αφήσει να μας πειράξουν.»
Τον πιάνουν τρεις μήνες αργότερα.
Τον δένουν σ΄ένα στύλο.
Πριν ανάψουν φωτιά για να τον κάνουν στάχτη και κάρβουνο, ένας παπάς τού υπόσχεται αιώνια ανάπαυση και δόξα αν δεχτεί να βαπτιστεί. Ο Ατουέι ρωτά:
«Θα είναι και οι χριστιανοί εκεί;»
«Ναι.»
Ο Ατουέι διαλέγει την κόλαση, και τα ξύλα παίρνουν φωτιά.



1536 – Κοιλάδα του Ουλούα
Γκονθάλο Γκερέρο

Οι καβαλάρηδες του Αλφόνσο ντε Άβιλα αποσύρονται. Έχουν νικήσει. Στο πεδίο της μάχης κείτεται νεκρός, ανάμεσα στους ηττημενους, ένας Ινδιάνος με γένια. Το γυμνό του σώμα είναι ζωγραφισμένο με σχέδια από μελάνι και αίμα. Φορά χρυσά στολίδια στη μύτη, τα χείλη και τα αυτιά. Μια βολή από αρκεβούζιο του άνοιξε το κεφάλι.
Ονομαζόταν Γκονθάλο Γκερέρο. Στην πρώτη του ζωή ήταν ναυτικός στο λιμάνι Πάλος. Η δεύτερη ζωή του άρχισε πριν είκοσι πέντε χρόνια, όταν ναυάγησε στις ακτές του Γιουκατάν. Από τότε έζησε με τους Ινδιάνους. Σε περίοδο ειρήνης ήταν φύλαρχος, και σε περίοδο πολέμου οπλαρχηγός. Από τη γυναίκα του, της φυλής των Μάγια, απέκτησε τρία παιδιά.
Το 1519 ο Ερνάν Κορτές έστειλε να τον βρούν:
«Όχι», είπε ο Γκονθάλο στον αγγελιοφόρο, «Κοίτα τα παιδιά μου πόσο όμορφα είναι. Άφησε μου μερικές πράσινες χάντρες από αυτές που κουβαλάς. Θα τις δώσω στα παιδιά μου και θα τους πώ: "Αυτά τα παιχνίδια τα στέλνουν τα αδέρφια μου, από την πατρίδα μου".»
Πολύ αργότερα, ο Γκονθάλο Γκερέρο έπεσε υπερασπιζόμενος άλλη πατρίδα, πολεμώντας δίπλα σε άλλα αδέρφια, εκείνα που ο ίδιος είχε επιλέξει. Ήταν ο πρώτος κατακτητής που κατακτήθηκε από τους Ινδιάνους.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes.

I fell in love with history the second I got out of high school and realized how much of history is a story of people struggling against oppression and injustice. Struggling for democracy and equality. Struggling to make a better world...those born oppressed and those born oppressor, together.

Colonialism is as much the story of those who fought back as the story of those who "won." America* is as much the story of its Indigenous nations as the story of its first undocumented** immigrants. As much the story of Palmares as conquistadores. I wish I could give you some concrete examples of all this or quotes or something, from the book, but I left my copy with my dad the other day.***

Genesis is a beautiful book of history-as-story. This isn't something to pick up without a certain grounding in the more mundane facts of Latin American history: being familiar with the characters and settings in Galeano's stories is key. I'd probably recommend starting with Open Veins of Latin America if you want to read Galeano's work, rather than with Memory of Fire. However, having read this I will certainly be reading the rest of the trilogy at some point.

*You know I usually mean the continent, right?
**In which I find that I cannot bring myself to say "illegal," even ironically.
***Who semi-despises the Latin American left, but he'll come around one of these days.

[Schuyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not going to use the word 'boring' because my father says that 'boring' or 'boredom' is a word that intellectually lazy people use, that in fact you're not actually bored, but just not properly describing your state of mind/opinion, and that you should probably just go outside and play or turn down the thermostat in your room because, apparently, cold temperatures 'build character'. Or something like that. I will say that this book didn't hold my attention, for the following reasons: basically a history lesson of N America from pre-1492 Creation Myths, up to 1700AD, with the death of Charles II, told in a rather dry narrative, in short Vonnegut-like chapters. There is little dialogue, no over-arching plot (unless you consider conquering of cilivations a plot), many many 'characters' that rarely appear for more than a chapter (which, again, are usually no more than a page long), and varying elements of Magic-Realism, which I've never been a fan of anyway. I really wanted to like this book. It was a gift from a very dear friend (I'm sorry I didn't like the book Jorge but please, keep giving me books) and I'm trying to broaden my horizons but ultimately, I struggled to finish this novel/fiction-infused historical text. So I'm gonna be that person who gives two-stars (keep in mind, it still means I thought it was 'Ok') to a work that averages 4.3 stars. I kinda feel like the one person who can't see the rocketship in the 3D Magic Eye poster and just sees a mess of pixels. And I'm okay with that.

[Vasilis Manias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eίναι γνωστό πως το account θαυμάζει με τρομερή ένταση κ σθένος τον Εντουάρντο, δηλώνει απεριφραστα και σε κάθε ευκαιρία το πόσο πολύ λείπει η πένα του από τον κόσμο των ζώντων, και συστήνει ανερυθρίαστα στο διηνεκές το σύνολο του έργου του στον οποιονδήποτε αναζητά μέσω της ανάγνωσης να κατανοήσει τί σημαίνει προσωπικό ύφος κ συγγραφικό στυλ.
Η Μνήμη της Φωτιάς, Ι. Η Αρχή, είναι όπως λέει και ο τίτλος το ξεκίνημα και η εξέλιξη των πάντων από τους Θεά Γη και τους ομιλώντες Ιαγουάρους μέχρι τους μοχθηρούς Κονκισταδόρες και τον Μαύρο Πειρατή Μόργκαν (ναι, αυτόν που έδωσε το όνομά του στο Ρούμι), και ο Γκαλεάνο φυσικά και είναι για τη Νοτιοαμερικάνικη Μυθολογία ότι ο Τσιφόρος για την Ελληνική, ένας φανταστικός παραμυθάς στα πόδια του οποίου ο αναγνώστης κάθεται ήσυχος σα μικρό παιδί και ταξιδεύει στην Ιστορία με έναν τρόπο απίθαξο υπό τον ήχο των φανταστικών του διηγήσεων.
Βουρ λοιπόν στο 2ο μέρος.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review #17 of "Year of the Review All Read Books"

The Guaros, who live in the suburbs of Earthly Paradise, call the rainbow snake of necklaces and the firmament overhead sea. Lightning is glow of the rain. One’s friend, my other heart. The soul, sun of the breast. The owl, lord of the dark night. A walking cane is a permanent grandson; and for “I forgive,” they say I forget.

-Eduardo Galeano. Genesis


"Eduardo Hughes Galeano died today, Eduardo Hughes Galeano was a Latin Boom writer and journalist, and he died today on April 13th of lung cancer at the age of 74 and woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble!


So, an old man with white hair died. What's that got to do with the price of rights, right? And why is it woe to us that Eduardo Hughes Galeano died? Because you people and 120 other million Americans won't read more than 6 books this year. Because less than 3% of those books are in translation. Less than 15% of use speak a foreign language. Because the only truth you know is what you get over the Tube...This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if we fail to tear our eyes away from it in favor of a book every now and then, and that’s why woe is us that Eduardo Hughes Galeano died."

-Peter Beale on Eduardo Galeano's death.


*When I was little I used to lie, like hell. I still do, but I used to too. One of the innocuous little examples of this was that I would claim (though not loud enough so someone could call me out on it) I had seen something I was watching on television on "sixits" before. To my brain "sixits" was a videotape recording of various culturally relevant moments from TV and Movies that, by identifying, I could indirectly state I was culturally with-it. Who knows where the name of this came from. My rationale has always been that it was a collection of six different moments of television or movies or whatever but I said this so many times and so reflexively I certainly exceeded that definition. As an occasional creative letter-scribbler, I'll find myself reading someone like Galeano and quietly muttering to myself, "well I've come up with/thought about/written this before" not wanting to admit even to myself that I haven't come up with these things; rather, these passages seem to mark a universality--an everywherespeak. Illuminations so bright that it feels impossible that it were not already part of the human canon and of everyday thought.

*Galeano writes his vignettes as though he has a microphone to drop on each one's last word.

*Possible protagonists
South America: If she is to include Central America, the Carribean and occasional flecks of the North.
War: As she provides us with plenty of conflict, though don't worry she never goes hungry.
Memory: As she is fluid and can take multiple forms without ever seemingly losing her truth.
The Natives: Because as Kurt Vonnegut reminded many writers "Be A Sadist. Show the reader what your characters are made of"
The Spaniards/Europeans: Because, yes, they are the bad guys, but so much of us is not possible without their cruelty and conquest.

*It is hard to say anything about this book without eliciting the response of "that's sad." It is sad. And perhaps it is more sad because it is true or very nearly true. There are painstaking efforts and over 220 sources used to construct the numerous tiny histories from both sides, including the cosmogonies and common myths of the Pre-Colombian natives. And yet we all know how it goes. If not precisely than vaguely. An invisible fire called Memory scalds the continent and marks us all with scars like Original Sin.

*So woe is us that Eduardo Hughes Galeano is dead. We all know how it goes (for all of us). But it's still sad. Even if necessary.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Copy via Netgalley and Open Road


This is a book you are either going to love or going to hate. There really is no in-between. And you wouldn’t know until you have read at least a quarter or more of it.
Genesis is the story of the Americas, in particular South America, and the invasion of it by the Europeans, mostly the Spanish in this book. The story is conveyed via the use of small, short mini stories. Some of these stories are creation myths of First Peoples, some are the views of the Incas, Mayas, and other tribes as the Spanish arrive, some the view of the would be conquerors, and some the view of those who stayed in the Old World. Men, women, rich poor, royal, servant, playwright and theatre grower, prostitute and nun.
The book is one that you can alternately dip into and out while at times being engrossing. The first few stories are creation myths, stories not only about the start of the world but about the birth of animals. You will never look at bats the same way. This opening salvo is peaceful and magical.
And then it ends.
What follows is the arrival of those from the Old World. The central setting is South America, so it most South America. While the majority of the chapters are about the invasion or clash of the two forces, there are some pre-contact stories, such as rise of the Incas (the section about Incan tax is my favorite).
The discovery/ invasion section is mostly on the side of the natives, but there are some nicely shaded sections. One of them is about La Malinche, the woman who travels with Cortez and who, according to Michael Wood’s documentary, is routinely cursed because of her guiding of Cortez throughout the country. Galeano’s view of her is more nuanced than that of a either demon or victim. He also looks at the role of women, both native and Spaniard, and how power shifts and changes.
The stories are brief but complex. Part of this is because of the subject matter, and part because of the shifting styles. Poetry, plays, and traditional story telling are all used. The book might a bastard version of different styles, but in many ways those of us we currently live the Americas are all bastard versions of something.

In short, the book is powerful, thought provoking, and not at all easy reading.


Crossposted at Booklikes.

[Esther]

Finally! Started this bc I love Eduardo galeano and didn’t stop bc I must finish every book I start. But once I was like 10 pages in I was like damb I’m just not in the mood to read a rly broad survey history of all of Latin America rn! Even though this was done in a cool genre-bending way and even now and then I was shook by Galeanos prose. No rating bc I can tell this was high quality except was a slog to get through

[Erset · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deslumbrantes historias desgarradoras, reveladoras. Las narrativas contrahegemónicas de la Abya Yala reunidas en un sólo libro ¡qué trabajo de compilación de Eduardo Galeano! Comparto aquí uno de los relatos qué más me impresionaron.

En épocas remotas, las mujeres se sentaban en la proa de la canoa y los hombres en la popa. Eran las mujeres quienes cazaban y pescaban. Ellas salían de las aldeas y volvían cuando podían o querían. Los hombres montaban las chozas, preparaban la comida, mantenían encendidas las fogatas contra el frío, cuidaban a los hijos y curtían las pieles de abrigo.

Así era la vida entre los indios onas y los yaganes, en la Tierra del Fuego, hasta que un día los hombres mataron a todas las mujeres y se pusieron las máscaras que las mujeres habían inventado para darles terror.

Solamente las niñas recién nacidas se salvaron del exterminio. Mientras ellas crecían, los asesinos les decían y les repetían que servir a los hombres era su destino. Ellas lo creyeron. También lo creyeron sus hijas y las hijas de sus hijas...

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book that exist in the strange ground between Howard Zinn”s People’s History and Borges’s Brief History of Infamy. It featured the rage and the unpeeling of the veneer of nostalgia and romance of history of the former and the irony, pocket novels, morbid humor of the latter. This is not a scholarly or popular history though the author does show his research, but more in the realm of epic poem and Borges, a savage and beautiful book. I can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy.

[Shaimaa Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

صعبة .. متعبة

[s · Rating 5 out of 5]

A history of the colonization of the Americas up to 1700 in the form of deeply evocative 1-2 page vignettes. You, specifically, should read this.

[Rachelle Ghanem · Rating 5 out of 5]

في كل مرة اقرأ كتاب ل غاليانو، اتأكد مرة اخرى انه لا يشبه اي شيء قرأته او عرفته من قبل لا في الشكل ولا المضمون

لا يكتب رواية ولا مقالة ولا قصيدة ولا تأريخ، يكتب نص خام بعيد عن (ضباط الأدب) كما يسميهم هو، والذين حرصوا على تقسيم الاجناس الأدبية والتعصب لتلك الأقسام

تمرد غاليانو وتبحر في هذا التمرد، وهذا ما جعل منه حالة فريدة نادرة تأسر القارئ وتغيره داخلياً لتصل به الى مرحلة جديدة من النضوج النفسي والأدبي والانساني

هذه الكتب هي التي يجب أن تعتمد في الجامعات والمدارس
الكتب التي تحمل بؤس التاريخ الحقيقي مع امل بسيط بإعادة النظر
بالمستقبل

اعادتي لسلسلة ذاكرة النار
خمس نجوم

[Amal · Rating 5 out of 5]

"لست مؤرخاً، أنا كاتب يحب أن يساهم في إنقاذ الذاكرة المخطوفة لكل أمريكاوخصوصاً لأمريكا اللاتينية،الأرض المحتقرة والمحبوبة : أحب أن اتحدث معها ، أن اتقاسم أسرارها ، أن أسألها من أي صلصال شاق ولدت ومن أية (...)اغتصابات جاءت

-أنشودة كوزكو-

رغبت لامة
ان يكون لها شعر ذهبي
متألقاً كالشمس
قوياً كالحب
وناعماً كالضباب
يحله الفجر
لينسج ضفيرة
يعلم عليها
عقدة بعد عقدة
الأقمار التي تعبر
والأزهار التي تذبل"

[Emanuela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avrei potuto finirla prima ma ho voluto “prenderlo” a piccole dosi perché è stata davvero una lettura molto dura e non volevo rischiare di non dargli la giusta importanza.

Il libro parte dall’epoca delle tribù indigene e delle loro leggende, raccontate tramite definizioni di parole di uso comune e quotidiano, per arrivare ai re Filippo e re Carlo in Europa, i re spagnoli (e non solo) che dominarono nella conquista del nuovo mondo, nella colonizzazione dell’intera America Latina e nei commerci con quelle che erano considerate le Indie, commerci di beni, oggetti preziosi, e schiavi che rapinavano dalle loro terre in Africa. O meglio, in realtà la curiosità alquanto ironica, che ho scoperto è che la Spagna era l’unica a non avere una impresa negriera. Perfino la Svezia e la Danimarca.
Non ne aveva bisogno.
Tutte le nazioni europee, per poter commerciare schiavi nelle colonie, dovevano pagare la licenza al re spagnolo, quindi le casse si riempivano lo stesso.

“Nessuno ha domandato loro perché avessero sepolto le immagini. Speravano che i nuovi dei rendessero fertili i campi di mais, yuca, patate dolci e fagioli.”

Sicuramente riguardo le atrocità commesse dagli spagnoli prima e dagli altri europei poi, ne sapevo e ne avevo letto, anche se ogni volta è sempre una tortura leggere di questi massacri, della crudeltà di cui siamo stati capaci e di come abbiamo architettato tutto con cupidigia ed estrema furbizia, in maniera tale da giustificare le azioni e soprattutto le motivazioni al punto da leggerci persino la giustizia divina nel prevaricare e sterminare, non ammettendo che si trattasse solo di pura e semplice avidità per terre ricchissime e praticamente vergini, oro e argento e materie prime di tutti i generi gratis, manodopera gratuita e donne, sporche incantatrici capaci di attirare nel loro letto tutti gli uomini appena arrivati e tenerli lontani da mogli e fidanzate nel vecchio continente.

“In queste isole, in questi luoghi di umiliazione, sono molti quelli che scelgono la morte, impiccandosi o bevendo veleno insieme ai propri figli. Gli invasori non possono evitare questa vendetta, peró sanno spiegarla: gli indios, tanto selvaggi da pensare che tutto sia in comune, dirà Oviedo, sono gente per sua natura oziosa e viziosa e di poco lavoro…Molti di loro, per passatempo, si uccisero col veleno per non lavorare, e altri si impiccarono con le proprie stesse mani.”

Quello che però mi ha colpita maggiormente è stato leggere storie sui singoli, aneddoti sui piccoli uomini e i piccoli gesti che però fanno il tutto. Sia in negativo, nel senso di quello che erano le emozioni e i pensieri di chi si trovava a subire questi comportamenti imprevedibili e immotivati alla semplicità degli occhi degli indios, prima, e dei negri, poi. Ma anche, però, in positivo, per fortuna, nel fare la conoscenza con le esistenze di piccoli grandi uomini e donne, perlopiù religiosi, che hanno avuto il coraggio di andare contro la massa e contro le posizioni dei potenti e dei sovrani.

“Non è da cuori generosi-dice Tereupillan-togliere la vita a sangue freddo. Quando noi impugnammo le armi contro gli spagnoli tiranni che ci perseguitavano e ci opprimevano, non ho avuto compassione di loro solo in battaglia. Ma poi, quando li vedevo prigionieri, mi causavano dolore e pena grandi e la mia anima ne era ferita, ché in verità non odiavamo le loro persone. La loro cupidigia, sí. Le loro crudeltà, sì. La loro superbia, s ì.”

“(Gli uroni) Credono che il sogno sia il linguaggio dei desideri non realizzati e chiamano ondinnonk i desideri segreti dell’anima, che la veglia ignora. Gli ondinnonk si affacciano nei viaggi che l’anima compie mentre il corpo dorme.
-Poverini-pensa padre Ragueneau.
Per gli uroni, chi non rispetta ciò che dice il sogno si rende colpevole di un grave crimine. Il sogno comanda. Se il sognatore non adempie ai suoi ordini, l’anima si arrabbia e fa ammalare il corpo o lo uccide. Tutti i popoli della famiglia irochese sanno che la malattia può venire dalla guerra o dal caso, o dalla strega che infila nel corpo denti d’orso o schegge d’osso, ma viene anche dall’anima, quando vuole qualcosa che non le danno.”

Vi ricorda qualcosa?

[Rob Prince · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of the `Memory of Fire' trilogy, which taken together make up Galeano's modern history of Latin America - a mosaic of historical moments carefully put together, well researched and quite moving. About as good as history gets. Taken in its entirety the series is a never ending - mostly painful journey of Latin America's struggle to define its own future. The political critique is quite accurate and not overdone. Very painful stuff.
This first volume starts with native legends - fantastic, humane - every bit as rich as Greek mythology, from which Latin America can never completely disassociate itself (despite trying). It goes on to cover the period of the conquistadores - those bold thugs, sadists doing God's work. Much of this section has been covered by others; still the way that Galeano puts it all together is quite remarkable.

Worst part of reading it was, after reading the first volume I was doomed - propelled to read volumes 2 and 3, neither of which disappoints.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels ungrateful and churlish to not give it 5 stars. This is a massive and beautiful and utterly devastating portrait of the history of the violation, enslavement, and genocide carried out upon the people of so-called America, up to 1700. Actually, yes, give it 5 stars.

But here is the challenge: beautifully written though each of these short pieces are (most under a page) -- and they are tight concise little works of art -- the sheer span of history leaves few recurring characters and this combined with the litany of disgusting violence, slavery, betrayal, and murder makes it quite a slog by the end. BUT WHAT ELSE COULD IT BE? It has to be so, else we fall back into the same old whitewashed comforting myths of progress.

Powerful, skillful work, but I will be taking a break before I move on to Faces and Masks, Volume 2 of Memory of Fire.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A book of short vignettes, mostly prose with some poems, covering the period of Latin American history from 1492 to 1700, including vignettes on the settlements on the east coast of North America.

The book begins with stories of the first people of Latin America about the local animals. The book then moves on to how the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus had an impact on the native Indians. The effect of the conquest of the Spaniards on the local people. The decline in the native population due to disease and fighting with the Europeans. How the Europeans exploited the Indians and the land to produce riches for the Europeans. The introduction of the black African slave trade.

An interesting, thought provoking read.

This book was first published in 1982 and is the first book of a trilogy.