Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

  On this same helicopter, Barrientos paraded with Che Guevara’s body tied to its skids through the skies of Bolivia. On this helicopter Barrientos arrives at Arque Pass on one of his incessant junkets, and as usual tosses money down on the campesinos; but on taking off, he collides with a wire fence and crashes against some rocks, burning himself alive. After burning so many pictures and books, fiery Barrientos dies cooked to a crisp in his helicopter, filled to the brim with banknotes that burn with him.

  (16, 17, and 474)

  1969: San Salvador and Tegucigalpa

  Two Turbulent Soccer Matches

  are played between Honduras and El Salvador. Ambulances remove the dead and wounded from the stands, while fans continue the stadium uproar in the streets.

  Immediately, the two countries break relations. In Tegucigalpa, automobile windshields carry stickers that say: Honduran—grab a stick, be a man, kill a Sal-va-dor-e-an. In San Salvador, the newspapers urge the army to invade Honduras to teach those barbarians a lesson. Honduras expels Salvadoran campesinos, who are mostly unaware they are foreigners, having never seen an identity document. The Honduran government forces the Salvadorans to leave with nothing but what they have on, and then burns their shacks, describing the expulsion as “agrarian reform.” The government of San Salvador considers all Hondurans who live there to be spies.

  War soon breaks out. The army of El Salvador crosses into Honduras and advances, machinegunning border villages.

  (84, 125, and 396)

  1969: San Salvador and Tegucigalpa

  The Soccer War

  pits as enemies two fragments of Central America, shreds of what was a single republic a century and a half ago.

  Honduras, a small agrarian country, is dominated by big landlords.

  El Salvador, a small agrarian country, is dominated by big landlords.

  The campesinos of Honduras have neither land nor work.

  The campesinos of El Salvador have neither land nor work.

  In Honduras there is a military dictatorship born of a coup d’état.

  In El Salvador there is a military dictatorship born of a coup d’état.

  The general who governs Honduras was trained at the School of the Americas in Panama.

  The general who governs El Salvador was trained at the School of the Americas in Panama.

  From the United States come the weapons and advisers of the dictator of Honduras.

  From the United States come the weapons and advisers of the dictator of El Salvador.

  The dictator of Honduras accuses the dictator of El Salvador of being a Communist in the pay of Fidel Castro.

  The dictator of El Salvador accuses the dictator of Honduras of being a Communist in the pay of Fidel Castro.

  The war lasts one week. While war continues, the people of Honduras think their enemy is the people of El Salvador and the people of El Salvador think their enemy is the people of Honduras. They leave four thousand dead on the battlefields.

  (84 and 125)

  1969: Port-au-Prince

  A Law Condemns to Death Anyone Who Says or Writes Red Words in Haiti

  Article One: Communist activities are declared to be crimes against the security of the state, in whatsoever form: any profession of Communist faith, verbal or written, public or private, any propagation of Communist or anarchist doctrines through lectures, speeches, conversations, readings, public or private meetings, by way of pamphlets, posters, newspapers, magazines, books, and pictures; any oral or written correspondence with local or foreign associations, or with persons dedicated to the diffusion of Communist or anarchist ideas; and furthermore, the act of receiving, collecting, or giving funds directly or indirectly destined for the propagation of said ideas.

  Article Two: The authors and accomplices of these crimes shall be sentenced to death. Their movable and immovable property shall be confiscated and sold for the benefit of the state.

  Dr. François Duvalier

  President-for-Life

  of the Republic of Haiti

  (351)

  1970: Montevideo

  Portrait of a Torture Trainer

  The Tupamaro guerrillas execute Dan Anthony Mitrione, one of the North American instructors of the Uruguayan police.

  The dead man gave his courses to officers in a soundproof basement. For his practical lessons he used beggars and prostitutes pulled off the street. He showed his pupils the effects of various electric voltages on the most sensitive parts of the human body, and how to apply emetics and other chemical substances efficaciously. In recent months three men and a woman died during these classes in the Technique of Interrogation.

  Mitrione despised disorder and dirt. A torture chamber should be as aseptic as an operating room. And he detested incorrect language: “Not balls, commissioner. Testicles.”

  He also abominated useless expense, unnecessary movement, avoidable damage.

  “It’s an art, more than a technique,” he said. “The precise pain in the precise place, in the precise amount.”

  (225)

  1970: Managua

  Rugama

  A distinguished poet, a little man in a surplice who received Holy Communion standing up, shoots his last bullet and dies resisting a whole battalion of Somoza’s troops.

  Leonel Rugama was twenty.

  Of friends, he preferred chess players.

  Of chess players, those who lose because of the girl passing by.

  Of those who pass by, the one who stays.

  Of those who stay, the one who has yet to come.

  Of heroes, he preferred those who don’t say they are dying for their country.

  Of countries, the one born of his death.

  (399)

  1970: Santiago de Chile

  Landscape after Elections

  In a display of unpardonably bad conduct, the Chilean people elect Salvador Allende president. Another president, of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, offers a million dollars to whoever can put an end to this disgrace, while the president of the United States earmarks ten million for the affair. Richard Nixon instructs the CIA to prevent Allende from sitting in the presidential chair; or, should he sit, to see that the chair doesn’t stay under him long.

  General René Schneider, head of the army, rejects the call for a coup d’etat and is struck down in an ambush: “Those bullets were for me,” says Allende.

  Loans from the World Bank and all other official and private banks are suspended, except those for the military. The price of copper plummets.

  From Washington, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explains: “I don’t see why we should have to stand by and let a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

  (138, 181, and 278)

  1971: Santiago de Chile

  Donald Duck

  and his nephews spread the virtues of consumer civilization among the savages of an underdeveloped country with picture-postcard landscapes. Donald’s nephews offer soap bubbles to the stupid natives in exchange for nuggets of pure gold, while Uncle Donald fights outlaw revolutionaries who disturb order.

  From Chile, Walt Disney’s comic strips are distributed throughout South America and enter the souls of millions of children. Donald Duck does not come out against Allende and his red friends; he doesn’t need to. The world of Disney is already the lovable zoo of capitalism: Ducks, mice, dogs, wolves, and piglets do business, buy, sell, respond to advertising, get credit, pay dues, collect dividends, dream of bequests, and compete among themselves to have more and get more.

  (139 and 287)

  1971: Santiago de Chile

  “Shoot at Fidel,”

  the CIA has ordered two of its agents. Certain TV cameras that appear to be busy filming Fidel Castro’s visit to Chile conceal automatic pistols. The agents zoom in on Fidel, they have him in their sights—but neither shoots.

  For many years now, specialists of the CIA’s technical services division have been dreaming up attacks on F
idel. They’ve spent fortunes trying out cyanide capsules in chocolate malteds, and pills that dissolve in beer and rum and are untraceable in an autopsy. They’ve tried bazookas and telescopic rifles, a thirty-kilo plastic bomb that an agent was to put in a drain beneath a speaker’s platform. Even poisoned cigars: They fixed up a special Havana for Fidel—supposed to kill the moment it touched his lips. But it didn’t work, so they tried another guaranteed to produce nausea and, worse yet, a high-pitched voice—if they couldn’t kill him, they hoped at least to kill his prestige. To this end also they tried spraying the microphone with a powder guaranteed to provoke in mid-speech an irresistible tendency to talk nonsense, and then, as the coup de grâce, concocted a depilatory potion to make his beard fall out, leaving him naked before the crowd.

  (109, 137, and 350)

  1972: Managua

  Nicaragua, Inc.

  The tourist arrives in Somoza’s plane or ship and lodges in one of Somoza’s hotels in the capital. Tired, he falls asleep on a bed and mattress manufactured by Somoza. On awaking, he drinks Presto coffee, property of Somoza, with milk from Somoza’s cows and sugar harvested on a Somoza plantation and refined in a Somoza mill. He lights a match produced by Somoza’s firm, Momotombo, and tries a cigarette from the Nicaraguan Tobacco Company, which Somoza owns in association with the British-American Tobacco Company.

  The tourist goes out to change money at a Somoza bank and buys the Somoza daily Novedades on the corner. Reading Novedades is an impossible feat, so he throws the paper into the garbage which, tomorrow morning, will be collected by a Mercedes truck imported by Somoza.

  The tourist climbs on one of Somoza’s Condor buses, which will take him to the mouth of the Masaya volcano. Rolling toward the fiery crest, he sees through the window the barrios of tin cans and mud where live the dirt-cheap hands used by Somoza.

  The tourist returns at nightfall. He drinks a rum distilled by Somoza, with ice from the Somoza Polar company, eats meat from one of his calves, butchered in one of his slaughterhouses, with rice from one of his farms and salad dressed with Corona oil, which belongs jointly to Somoza and United Brands.

  Half past midnight, the earthquake explodes. Perhaps the tourist is one of the twelve thousand dead. If he doesn’t end in some common grave, he will rest in peace in a coffin from Somoza’s mortuary concern, wrapped in a shroud from El Porvenir textile mill, property of …

  (10 and 102)

  1972: Managua

  Somoza’s Other Son

  The cathedral clock stops forever at the hour the earthquake lifts the city into the air. The quake shakes Managua and destroys it.

  In the face of this catastrophe Tachito Somoza proves his virtues both as statesman and as businessman. He decrees that bricklayers shall work sixty hours a week without a centavo more in pay and declares: “This is the revolution of opportunities.”

  Tachito, son of Tacho Somoza, has displaced his brother Luis from the throne of Nicaragua. A graduate of West Point, he has sharper claws. At the head of a voracious band of second cousins and third uncles, he swoops down on the ruins. He didn’t invent the earthquake, but he gets his out of it.

  The tragedy of half a million homeless people is a splendid gift for this Somoza, who traffics outrageously in debris and lands; and, as if that weren’t enough, he sells in the United States the blood donated to victims of the quake by the International Red Cross. Later, he extends this profitable scam: Showing more initiative and enterprising spirit than Count Dracula, Tachito Somoza founds a limited company to buy blood cheap in Nicaragua and sell it dear on the North American market.

  (10 and 102)

  Tachito Somoza’s Pearl of Wisdom

  I don’t show off my money as a symbol of power, but as a symbol of job opportunities for Nicaraguans.

  (434)

  1972: Santiago de Chile

  Chile Trying to Be Born

  A million people parade through the streets of Santiago in support of Salvador Allende and against the embalmed bourgeoisie who pretend to be alive and Chilean.

  A people on fire, a people breaking the custom of suffering: In search of itself, Chile recovers its copper, iron, nitrates, banks, foreign trade, and industrial monopolies. It also nationalizes the ITT telephone system, paying for it the small amount that ITT said it was worth in its tax returns.

  (278 and 449)

  1972: Santiago de Chile

  Portrait of a Multinational Company

  ITT has invented a night scope to detect guerrillas in the dark, but doesn’t need it to find them in the government of Chile—just money, of which the company is spending plenty against President Allende. Recent experience shows how worthwhile it is: The generals who now rule Brazil have repaid ITT several times over the dollars invested to overthrow President Goulart.

  ITT, with its four hundred thousand workers and officials in seventy countries, earns much more than Chile. On its board of directors sit men who were previously directors of the CIA and the World Bank. ITT conducts multiple businesses on all the continents: It produces electronic equipment and sophisticated weapons, organizes national and international communication systems, participates in space flights, lends money, works out insurance deals, exploits forests, provides tourists with automobiles and hotels, and manufactures telephones and dictators.

  (138 and 407)

  1973: Santiago de Chile

  The Trap

  By diplomatic pouch come the dollars that finance strikes, sabotage, and lies. Businessmen paralyze Chile and deny it food. There is no other market than the black market. People have to form long lines for a pack of cigarettes or a kilo of sugar. Getting meat or oil requires a miracle of the Most Sainted Virgin Mary. The Christian Democrats and the newspaper El Mercurio abuse the government and openly demand a redemptory coup d’état, since the time has come to finish with this red tyranny. Newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations echo the cry. For the government it is tough to make any move whatsoever: judges and parliamentarians dig in their heels, while in the barracks key military men whom Allende believes loyal conspire against him.

  In these difficult times, workers are discovering the secrets of the economy. They’re learning it isn’t impossible to produce without bosses or supply themselves without merchants. But they march without weapons, empty-handed, down this freedom road.

  Across the horizon sail U.S. warships preparing to exhibit themselves off the Chilean coast. The military coup, so much heralded, occurs.

  (181, 278, and 449)

  1973: Santiago de Chile

  Allende

  He likes the good life. He has said many times that he doesn’t have what it takes to be an apostle or a martyr. But he has also said that it’s worthwhile to die for that without which it’s not worthwhile to live.

  The rebel generals demand his resignation. They offer him a plane to take him out of Chile. They warn him that the presidential palace will be bombarded.

  Together with a handful of men, Salvador Allende listens to the news. The generals have taken over the country. Allende dons a helmet and readies his rifle. The first bombs fall with a shuddering crash. The president speaks on the radio for the last time:

  “I am not going to resign …”

  (449 and 466)

  1973: Santiago de Chile

  Great Avenues Will Open Up, Announces Salvador Allende in His Final Message

  I am not going to resign. Placed in a critical moment of history, I will pay with my life for the loyalty of the people. And let me tell you that I am sure the seed we sowed in the dignified conscience of Chileans will definitely not be destroyed. They have the force. They might be able to overcome us, but social processes cannot be stopped with crime or force. History is ours and the people make it …

  Workers of my country: I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will surmount this gray and bitter moment when treason seeks to impose itself. Rest assured that, much sooner than later, great avenues will once again open up through which fr
ee mankind shall pass to build a better society. Long live Chile, long live the people, long live the workers! These are my last words. I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain.

  1973: Santiago de Chile

  The Reconquest of Chile

  A great black cloud rises from the flaming palace. President Allende dies at his post as the generals kill Chileans by the thousands. The Civil Registry does not record the deaths, because the books don’t have room enough for them, but General Tomás Opazo Santander offers assurances that the victims do not exceed .01 percent of the population, which is not, after all, a high social cost, and CIA director William Colby explains in Washington that, thanks to the executions, Chile is avoiding a civil war. Señora Pinochet declares that the tears of mothers will redeem the country.

  Power, all power, is assumed by a military junta of four members, formed in the School of the Americas in Panama. Heading it is General Augusto Pinochet, professor of geopolitics. Martial music resounds against a background of explosions and machinegun fire. Radios broadcast decrees and proclamations which promise more bloodshed, while the price of copper suddenly rises on the world market.

  The poet Pablo Neruda, dying, asks for news of the terror. At moments he manages to sleep, and raves in his sleep. The vigil and the dream are one great nightmare. Since he heard Salvador Allende’s proud farewell on the radio, the poet has begun his death-throes.

  (278, 442, and 449)

  1973: Santiago de Chile

  The Home of Allende

  Before attacking the presidential palace, they bombarded Allende’s house.

  Afterward, the soldiers wiped out whatever remained. With bayonets they ripped up paintings by Matta, Guayasamín, and Porto-carrero; with axes they smashed furniture.