Mirrors

by Eduardo Galeano

  The farmers and fishermen on lands and waters both near and far knew that something very serious had occurred. They heard the bad news from the bees, wasps, and birds that took flight and vanished over the horizon, and from the worms that burrowed several feet underground, leaving the fishermen without bait and the chickens without food.

  A couple of decades later, a tsunami struck South Asia and gigantic waves swallowed another multitude.

  As the tragedy was brewing, when the earth had barely begun to move deep under the sea, elephants raised their trunks and blared desperate laments. No one understood when the beasts broke their chains and stampeded into the jungle.

  Flamingos, leopards, tigers, boars, deer, water buffalo, monkeys, and snakes also fled before the disaster.

  The only ones to die were the humans and the turtles.

  ARNO

  Nature had not yet been committed to the insane asylum, but it already suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns that warned of things to come.

  At the end of 1966, the Arno River’s dream of having a flood all its own came true, and the city of Florence faced the worst inundation in its entire history. In a single day, Florence lost more than it had in all the bombings of the Second World War.

  Soon after, Florentines knee-deep in mud set to rescuing whatever might have survived the shipwreck. There they were, men and women, dripping wet, working, cursing the Arno and all its relatives, when a long truck came barreling past.

  The truck carried an enormous body mortally wounded by the flood: the head bounced along over the rear wheels and a broken arm hung over the side.

  As the wooden giant passed, men and women put aside their shovels and pails, uncovered their heads, crossed themselves. And in silence they watched it disappear from view.

  He too was a son of the city of Florence.

  This Jesus crucified, Jesus broken, had been born here seven centuries ago from the hand of Giovanni Cimabue, teacher of Giotto.

  GANGES

  The great river of India used to bathe not the earth, but the heavens above and beyond. The gods refused to give up the river that brought them water and cool air.

  And thus it was until the Ganges decided to move. It moved to India, where it now flows from the Himalayas to the sea, so the living can purify themselves in its waters, and the ashes of the dead may find their destiny.

  The sacred river, which took pity on the earthborn, never imagined that it would receive offerings of garbage and poison that would make its life in the world impossible.

  THE RIVER AND THE FISH

  An old proverb has it that teaching fishing is better than handing out fish.

  Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga, who lives in the Amazon, says yes, that is correct, a very good thought. But suppose someone buys the river that had belonged to all and outlaws fishing? Or suppose toxic waste pollutes the river and poisons the fish? In other words, suppose what happens is what is happening now?

  THE RIVER AND THE DEER

  The oldest book on education was written by a woman.

  Dhouda of Gascony wrote Liber Manualis, a manual for her son, in Latin at the beginning of the ninth century.

  She did not impose a thing. She suggested, she advised, she showed. One of the pages invites us to learn from deer that “ford wide rivers swimming in single file, one after the other, with the head and shoulders of each resting on the rump of the deer ahead; they support one another and thus are able to cross the river more easily. And they are so intelligent and clever that when they realize the one in the very front is tiring, they send him to the end of the line and another takes the lead.”

  THE HANDS OF THE TRAIN

  Mumbai’s trains, which transport six million passengers a day, break the laws of physics: more passengers enter them than fit.

  Suketu Mehta, who knows about these impossible voyages, says when every jam-packed train pulls out, people run after it. Whoever misses the train, loses his job.

  Then the cars sprout hands out of windows or from roofs, and they help the ones left behind clamber aboard. And these train hands do not ask the one running up if he is foreign or native-born, nor do they ask what language he speaks, or if he believes in Brahma or in Allah, in Buddha or in Jesus, nor do they ask which caste he belongs to, if he is from a cursed caste or no caste at all.

  DANGER IN THE JUNGLE

  Savitri left.

  The savage who had heard her call trampled the fence, knocked over the guards, and entered the tent. Savitri broke free of her chains and the two of them disappeared, together, into the jungle.

  The owner of the Olympic Circus calculated the loss at about nine thousand dollars and said, to make matters worse, Savitiri’s friend Gayatri was very depressed and refused to work.

  At the end of 2007, the fugitive couple was located at the edge of a lake, 150 miles from Calcutta.

  The pursuers dared not approach. The male and female elephants had intertwined their trunks.

  DANGER AT THE TAP

  According to Revelation 21:6, God will create a new world and say:

  “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of water of life freely.”

  Freely? Meaning the new world won’t make room for the World Bank or the private companies that ply the noble trade in water?

  So it seems. Meanwhile, in the old world where we all still live, sources of water are as coveted as oil reserves, and are becoming battlegrounds.

  In Latin America, the first water war was the invasion of Mexico by Hernán Cortés. More recently, combat over the blue gold took place in Bolivia and Uruguay. In Bolivia, the people took to the streets and won back their lost water. In Uruguay, the people voted in a plebiscite and kept their water from being lost.

  DANGER ON THE LAND

  One afternoon in 1996, nineteen landless peasants were shot in cold blood by members of the military police of Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon.

  In Pará and in much of Brazil, the lords of the land reign over empty vastnesses, thanks to the right to inheritance or the right to thievery. These property rights give them the right to impunity. Ten years after the massacre, no one is in jail. Not the lords, not their thugs.

  But the tragedy did not frighten or discourage the landless farmers. The membership of their organization mushroomed, and so did their will to work the land, even though that is a capital offense and an act of incomprehensible madness.

  DANGER IN THE SKY

  In the year 2003, a tsunami of people washed away the government of Bolivia.

  The poor were sick and tired. Everything had been privatized, even the rainwater. A “for sale” sign had been hung on Bolivia, and they were going to sell it, Bolivians and all.

  The uprising shook El Alto, perched above the incredibly high city of La Paz, where the poorest of the poor work throughout their lives, day after day, chewing on their troubles. They are so high up they push the clouds when they walk, and every house has a door to heaven.

  Heaven was where those who died in the rebellion went. It was a lot closer than earth. Now they are shaking up paradise.

  DANGER IN THE CLOUDS

  According to incontrovertible testimony that has reached the Vatican, Antoni Gaudí merits sainthood for his numerous miracles.

  The artist who founded Catalan modernism died in 1926, and since then he has cured many who were incurable, found many who were unfindable, and sprinkled jobs and housing everywhere.

  The beatification process is under way.

  Heaven’s architecture had better watch out, for this chaste puritan who never missed a procession had a pagan hand, evident in the carnal labyrinths he designed for homes and parks.

  What will he do with the cloud he is given? Will he not invite us to stroll through Adam and Eve’s innards on the night of the first sin?

  INVENTORY OF THE WORLD

  Arthur Bispo do Rosario was black and poor, a sailor, a boxer, and, on God’s account, an artist.

  He lived in the Rio de Janeiro
insane asylum.

  There, seven blue angels delivered an order from the divine: God wants an inventory taken of the world.

  The mission was monumental. Arthur worked day and night, every day, every night, until the winter of 1989 when, still immersed in the task, death took him by the hair and carried him off.

  The inventory, incomplete, consisted of scrap metal,

  broken glass,

  bald brooms,

  walked-through sneakers,

  emptied bottles,

  slept-in sheets,

  road-weary wheels,

  sea-worn sails,

  defeated flags,

  well-thumbed letters,

  forgotten words, and

  fallen rain.

  Arthur worked with garbage, because all garbage is life lived and from garbage comes everything the world is or has ever been. Nothing intact deserved a listing. Things intact die without ever being born. Life only pulsates in what bears scars.

  THE ROAD GOES ON

  When someone dies, when his time is up, what happens to the wanderings, desirings, and speakings that were called by his name?

  Among the Indians of the upper Orinoco, he who dies loses his name. His ashes are stirred into plantain soup or corn wine and everybody eats. After the ceremony no one ever names the dead person again: the dead one, now living in other bodies, called by other names, wanders, desires, and speaks.

  DANGER IN THE NIGHT

  Sleeping, she saw us.

  Helena dreamed we were waiting in line at an airport.

  A long line where every passenger had under the arm the pillow on which he or she had slept the night before.

  The pillows were sent through a dream-reading machine.

  The machine detected any dangerous dreams that threatened to disturb the peace.

  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.

  INDEX OF NAMES

  Abbeville

  Abdallah, Susan

  Abdullah

  Abdullah, Sarhan

  Abdullah, Yasmin

  ABC

  Acapulco

  Achaemenes

  Acheson, Dean

  Achilles

  Acosta, Josep de

  Acuña, Cristóbal de

  Adam

  Adams, John

  Aegisthus

  Aeneas

  Aeschylus

  Afghanistan

  Africa

  Agamemnon

  Agrippina

  Aguilera, Griselda

  Akkra

  Al Qaeda

  Alabama

  Aleijadinho the Cripple, see Lisboa, Antonio Francisco

  Alexander, Alfonso

  Alexander VI

  Alexander the Great

  Alexandria

  Algeria

  Alhambra

  Ali, Imam

  Ali, Muhammad

  Al-Khwarizmi, Muhammed

  Al-Kamil, Sultan

  Allende, Salvador

  Al-Ma’arri, Abu Ali

  Almagro, Diego de

  Alps

  Al-Sukkar

  Aluzinnu

  Alvarado, Pedro de

  Álvarez Argüelles, Father Antonio

  Alwar, Maharaja of

  Ama, José Feliciano

  Amazon

  Amazons

  Ambrose, Saint

  Amecameca

  American Colonization Society

  Americas

  Amherst

  Amherst, Lord Jeffrey

  Amset

  Amsterdam

  Anaxagoras

  Andalusia

  Anderson, John Henry

  Andes

  Andrade, José Leandro

  Anenecuilco

  Angela of Foligno, Saint

  Anti-Imperialist League

  Antilles

  Antiochus

  Apaza, Gregoria

  Aphrodite

  Apollo

  Apollonius, Saint

  Aponte, Carlos

  Arabia

  Ararat, Mount

  Archimedes

  Arcimboldo, Giuseppe

  Ardila Gómez, Rubén

  Arenal, Concepción

  Argentina

  Argos

  Arias-Salgado, Gabriel

  Aristophanes

  Aristotle

  Arizona

  Arkah

  Arles

  Armstrong, Louis

  Arnaud-Amaury, Archbishop

  Arno River

  Artemis

  Artigas, José

  Asera

  Asia

  Aspasia

  d’Aspremont Lynden, Harold

  Assisi

  Assumar, Count of

  Assyria

  Astiz, Alfredo

  Asturias

  Atahualpa

  Athena

  Athens

  Atlanta

  Atlantis

  Atreus

  Augustine, Saint

  Augustus

  Auschwitz

  Austin

  Austin, Stephen

  Australia

  Austria

  Averroes

  Avicenna

  Ayesha

  Babel, Isaac

  Babylon

  Bacchus

  Bachelet, Michelle

  Baden-Powell, Colonel Robert

  Baghdad

  Baker, Josephine

  Baku

  Bakunin, Mikhail

  Balestrino, Esther

  Balkans

  Bangladesh

  Barcelona

  Barnard, Christian

  Baroda, Maharaja of

  Bartola

  BASF

  Basra

  Bassa, Ferrer

  Bastidas, Micaela

  Bastidas, Rodrigo de

  Battle, José

  Baudelaire, Charles

  Bayer

  Bayley, George

  Beethoven, Ludvig von

  Behmai

  Beijing

  Belgium

  Bell, hermanos, see Brontë, sisters

  Benedict XVI

  Bengal

  Berger, John

  Berlin

  Bernard, Saint

  Bernardo de Tolosa

  Bernhardt, Sarah

  Bertelsmann

  Betances, Ramón

  Bethlehem

  Beveridge, Albert

  Bezerra, João

  Béziers

  Bharatpur, Mahraja of

  Bhopal

  Bierce, Ambrose

  Bingen

  Bioho, Domingo

  Bismarck

  Black Hills

  Black Panthers

  Black Sea

  Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich

  BMW

  Boccaccio

  Boeotia

  Bogotá

  Bolden, Buddy

  Bolivia

  Bolívar, Simón

  Bologna

  Bombay

  Bonaparte, Napoleon

  Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

  Borges, Jorge Luis

  Borgia, Rodrigo, see Alexander VI Born, Bertrand de

  Borromeo, Carlo

  Bosch

  Bosch, Hieronymus

  Bosporus

  Boss, Hugo

  Boston

  Botticelli, Sandro

  Bouzid, Saâl

  Bowring, John

/>   Bragança y Bourbon, Pedro de Alcântara Francisco Antônio João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim de, see Pedro I

  Brandenburg, Archbishop of

  Brazil

  Brecht, Bertolt

  Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme

  British Museum

  Brontë sisters

  Brooklyn

  Brunete

  Bruno, Giordano

  Brussels

  Brutus, Marcus

  Büchner, Georg

  Buckingham, Duke of

  Buenos Aires

  Buffalo Bill

  Bukharin, Nikolai

  Bull of Heaven

  Bülow, Chancellor von

  Burkina Faso

  Bush, George

  Bush, George W.

  Bush, Prescott

  Byron, Ada

  Byron, Lord

  Byzantium

  Cádiz

  Caeiro, Alberto

  Cairo

  Calcutta

  California

  Callender, James

  Callixtus III

  Calvin, John

  Cambodia

  Campaoré, Blaise

  Campos, Álvaro de

  Cancuc

  Cang Jie

  Cangas

  Canning, George

  Capetown

  Capua

  Carabanchel Prison

  Caribbean

  Carlos, John

  Caron, George

  Carrera, José Miguel

  Cartagena de Indias

  Carter, Robert

  Carvallo, Luis Alfonso de

  Casaldáliga, Pedro

  Casasola, Augustín Víctor

  Cascais

  Cascia

  Caspian Sea

  Cassandra

  Castañega, Father Martín de

  Castelli, Juan José

  Castile

  Castro, Fidel

  Catamarca