[Daniel Olivas will return soon enough.]
La Bloga regularly covers many Latino, and
other, authors, but not as many journalists as other genre writers. Below
are excerpts of a sudamericano's vivid, realistic writing style that makes Hunter Thompson's gonzo
journalism seem like baño graffiti.
In a La Bloga post earlier this summer, poet
Martín Espada mentioned Uruguayan author, Eduardo Galeano. The Atlantic Monthly said of
Galeano:
"A native of Uruguay who was forced into exile under the country's
military regime during the 1970s, Galeano has always identified with the losing
side. His Open Veins of Latin America, published in Mexico, 1971,
employed captivating, elegiac prose to chronicle five centuries of plunder and
imperialism in Latin America. Radically different in style, Open Veins
quickly became a canonical text in radical circles, selling hundreds of
thousands of copies in the Southern Hemisphere. In a period of social upheaval,
guerrilla warfare, and dictatorship, the book, composed in three months of
intense labor, Open Veins was banned by the Pinochet regime."
Although Galeano recently "disavowed" some of his style, credentials and phraseology used in Open Veins, his legacy can't be
derailed, even should he become more conservative in his later years.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWVzu5F4Yt5JUiqIdJkeKK3ph5HrD53j6J7V3Q94ReeiqfiTpRB8Q5tbI-r_GXNPVGb2jxLeahV1gN1czEeKmmK9kT_MLwbmmO5Ef4e26znbkqVZerK04MfczQ7AxE9wVaQDWGPA/s1600/EduardoGaleano.jpg)
His most recent book, Mirrors
(publisher, Nation Books), is called "one of the great books of this
century, a history of humanity in 366 episodes, from our first myths to late
last night."
The following
passages--taken from TomDispatch.com--are excerpts from Galeano’s history of humanity, Mirrors -
Stories of almost everyone,
something you should consider reading if you want a different, great read.
Princeton, New Jersey, May 1947.
Photographer Philippe Halsman asks him: “Do you
think there will be peace?”
And while the shutter clicks, Albert Einstein says,
or rather mutters: “No.”
People believe that Einstein got the Nobel Prize
for his theory of relativity, that he was the originator of the saying
“Everything is relative,” and that he was the inventor of the atom bomb.
The truth is they did not give him a Nobel for his
theory of relativity and he never uttered those words. Neither did he invent
the bomb, although Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been possible if he
had not discovered what he did.
He knew all too well that his findings, born of a
celebration of life, had been used to annihilate it.
His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who
confused unity with unanimity.
And in that his enemies are right.
His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper
like Granma, no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at
Waterloo.
And in that his enemies are right.
His enemies say that he exercised power by talking
a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than
voices.
And in that his enemies are right.
But some things his enemies do not say: it was not
to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders’
bullets,
he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to
hurricane,
he survived 637 attempts on his life,
his contagious energy was decisive in making a
country out of a colony,
and it was not by Lucifer’s curse or God’s miracle
that the new country managed to outlive 10 U.S. presidents, their napkins
spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork.
And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare
country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup.
And they do not say that the revolution, punished
for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to
become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever
higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a
Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always
ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and
perpetuate itself.
And they do not say that in spite of all the
sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness,
this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in
Latin America.
And his enemies do not say that this feat was the
outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and
old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the
losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.
Ali
He was butterfly and bee. In the ring, he floated
and stung.
In 1967, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, refused
to put on a uniform.
“Got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said. “Ain’t
no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”
They called him a traitor. They sentenced him to a
five-year jail term, and barred him from boxing. They stripped him of his title
as champion of the world.
The punishment became his trophy. By taking away
his crown, they anointed him king.
Years later, a few college students asked him to
recite something. And for them he improvised the shortest poem in world
literature:
“Me, we.”
Walls
The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From morning
till night we read, saw, heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron
Curtain...
In the end, a wall which deserved to fall fell. But
other walls sprouted and continue sprouting across the world. Though they are
much larger than the one in Berlin, we rarely hear of them.
Little is said about the wall the United States is
building along the Mexican border, and less is said about the barbed-wire
barriers surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African
coast.
Practically nothing is said about the West Bank
Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will be
15 times longer than the Berlin Wall. And nothing, nothing at all, is said
about the Morocco Wall, which perpetuates the seizure of the Saharan homeland
by the kingdom of Morocco, and is 60 times the length of the Berlin Wall.
Why are some walls so loud and others mute?
Lied-About Wars
Advertising campaigns, marketing schemes. The
target is public opinion. Wars are sold the same way cars are, by lying.
In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson accused
the Vietnamese of attacking two U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf.
Then the president invaded Vietnam, sending planes
and troops. He was acclaimed by journalists and by politicians, and his
popularity skyrocketed. The Democrats in power and the Republicans out of power
became a single party united against Communist aggression.
After the war had slaughtered Vietnamese in vast
numbers, most of them women and children, Johnson’s secretary of defense, Robert
McNamara, confessed that the Tonkin Gulf attack had never occurred.
The dead did not revive.
In March 2003, President George W. Bush accused
Iraq of being on the verge of destroying the world with its weapons of mass
destruction, “the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
Then the president invaded Iraq, sending planes and
troops. He was acclaimed by journalists and by politicians, and his popularity
skyrocketed. The Republicans in power and the Democrats out of power became a
single party united against terrorist aggression.
After the war had slaughtered Iraqis in vast
numbers, most of them women and children, Bush confessed that the weapons of
mass destruction never existed. “The most lethal weapons ever devised” were his
own speeches.
In the following elections, he won a second term.
In my childhood, my mother used to tell me that a
lie has no feet. She was misinformed.
Lost and Found
The twentieth century, which was born proclaiming
peace and justice, died bathed in blood. It passed on a world much more unjust
than the one it inherited.
The twenty-first century, which also arrived
heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessor’s footsteps.
In my childhood, I was convinced that everything
that went astray on earth ended up on the moon.
But the astronauts found no sign of dangerous
dreams or broken promises or hopes betrayed.
If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps
they were never misplaced.
Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
![]() |
Rubén Salazar |
NOTE: The end of August will mark the 44th
anniversary of the murder of the Mexican-American
journalist Rubén Salazar during
East L.A.'s National Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, 1970. He was
killed by an L.A. deputy, much as Michael Brown was by policeman Darren
Wilson in Ferguson this month. The
after-quake by enforcement officers has made Ferguson our Gaza, for the moment.
Hands up, don't shoot,
RudyG
1 comment:
Rudy, thank you for this wonderful and important post. And thank you for covering for me. Still sick but on the road to recovery.
Post a Comment