Ateş Anıları-III: Rüzgârın Yüzyılı

Memoria del fuego #3

by Eduardo Galeano, Süleyman Doğru (Translator)

Eduardo Galeano, Ateş Anıları Üçlemesi'nin son cildi Rüzgârın Yüzyılı'nda bu kez, insanın doğaya savaş açtığı, baş döndürücü bir hızın hükmettiği, Camus'nün deyimiyle "bilinçli öldürmeler" çağı olan yirminci yüzyıla ışık tutuyor. İki dünya savaşının yanı sıra kıtlıklara, katliamlara, ekonomik krizlere, diktatörlere ve devrimlere, teknolojik değişimlere sahne olan bu yakın dönem onun sözcükleriyle yeniden hayat buluyor.

Toplumsal dayatmalara ve sömürüye direnmekten hiçbir zaman ödün vermeyen Galeano, yeni doğan yüzyılı selamlayıp 1984 yılına erişen, tarafgir fakat hamasetten uzak bir söylemle kaleme aldığı, Amerika kıtasının bilinmeyen yahut gözardı edilen bu öy külerini aktarırken alternatif bir tarih yazımının mümkün olduğunu bir kez daha kanıtlıyor.

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

375 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

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

[Glenn Russell]

Century of the Wind is Eduardo Galeano's third and final volume of Memory of Fire, covering the events and happenings across the 20th century, beginning with Thomas Edison's inventions in 1900 and concluding with Eduardo's 1986 letter to his translator, Cedric Belfrage, explaining that writing his trilogy was a joy.

In the Preface, Eduardo lets us know what he has written is not an anthology but a literary creation based on documented facts but a literary creation moving and dancing with complete freedom. He relates what has happened in America, especially Latin America, in light of an important point: he's done so in such a way that "the reader should feel that what has happened happens again when the author tells it."

There are well over 300 entries included, each about half a page long. The subjects range from the construction of the Panama Canal to the art of Picasso and the triumphs of Muhammad Ali, from the slaughter of Communist rebels in El Salvador and Nicaragua to the novels of Jules Verne and Jorge Amado. Politics, religion, literature, music, dance, comedy, tragedy, life and death in full bloom - it's all here. So as to savor the juice of Eduardo's wisdom, I took my time reading a small batch of entries in one sitting over a number of weeks. To share a modest taste, a very modest taste, here are lines from several of their number along with my comments that, I hope, will whet your literary appetite for Eduardo's writing.

1903: La Paz
“The Bolivian liberals have won the war against the conservatives. More accurately, it has been won for them by the Indian army of Pablo Zárate Huika....With the conservatives defeated, Colonel Pando appoints himself general and president, and, dotting all the t's, proclaims: The Indians are inferior beings. Their elimination is not a crime.
Then he gets on with it. Many are shot. Huilka, yesterday's indispensable ally, he kills several times, by bullet, blade, and rope."

Tragically, this sliver of history is one episode among thousands committed against the South American Indians. To gain a sense of just how extensive, Wikipedia reports there were an estimated 8 million people living in the Amazon during the time of Columbus. By 1900, the native indigenous population fell to 1 million and by early 1980s, the number dropped to less than 200,000.



1905: Montevideo
“The automobile, that roaring beast, makes it first kill in Montevideo. An innocent pedestrian crossing a downtown street falls and is crushed.”

When I was walking the streets in Tijuana some years back, I looked for the traffic lights. There were no traffic lights. I looked for the stop signs. There were no stop signs. Every time I crossed the street, I had to sprint like an Olympian sensing I was risking my life. And for good reason – the world over, the automobile is king and God help any pedestrian daring to enter its domain. There are currently 128 million cars and light trucks in Latin America. How many pedestrians in those countries south of the border have been run over in the 20th century? Round to the nearest 10,000.



1937: Dajabón
“The condemned are Haitian blacks who work in the Dominican Republic. The military exorcism, planned to the last detail by General Trujillo, lasts a day and a half. In the sugar region, the soldiers shut up Haitian day-laborers in corrals – herds of men, women, and children – and finish them off then and there with machetes; or bind their hands and feet and drive them at bayonet point into the sea.
Trujillo, who powders his face several times a day, wants the Dominican Republic white.”

Racism, such a repugnant part of the human experience. You can read all about this despicable brute Trujillo in Mario Vargas Llosa's 2000 novel, The Feast of the Goat.

1950: Hollywood
“She had thick eyelashes and a double chin, a nose round at the tip, and large teeth. Hollywood reduced the fat, suppressed the cartilage, filed the teeth, and turned the mousy chestnut hair into a cascade of gleaming gold. Then the technicians baptized her Marilyn Monroe and invented a pathetic childhood story for her to tell the journalists.”

Artificiality is an integral part of Tinseltown, all for the purpose of creating a glamorous star, an ideal beauty, to be sold to the public, or more to the point, shoved down the public's throat. All the better to rake in the millions. But Hollywood's artificial world goes well beyond manufacturing beauty – it lays the foundation for the American public being force-fed a made-up, artificial version of identity, culture, and even history, a superficial world of good guys and bad guys where everything Hollywood, everything American, stands on the side of truth, justice, and all that is worth living and dying for.



1958: Stockholm
Brazilian football glows. It dances and makes one dance. At the World Cup in Sweden, Pelé and Garrincha are the heros, proving wrong those who say blacks can't play in a cold climate.
Pelé. thin as a rake, almost a boy, puffs out his chest and raises his chin to make an impression. He plays football as God would play it, if God decided to devote himself seriously to the game."

One of the glories of Latin Americans - their ability to play Soccer at a phenomenal level.



1968: Mexico City
"In the silence, the heartbeat of another Mexico, Juan Rulfo, teller of tales about the misadventures of the dead and the living, keeps silent. Fifteen years ago he said what he had to say, in a small novel and a few short stories, and since then he says nothing. Or rather, he made the deepest kind of love, and then went to sleep."

20th century Latin American literature is now recognized as one of the greatest, richest contributions to world culture. Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Ricardo Piglia, Rubem Fonseca, Roberto Bolaño, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Clarice Lispector, Alejo Carpentier, the list goes on and on and on.


Juan Rulfo, 1917-1986

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of our imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable.
This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude ...

the quote is from the speech of Gabriel Garcia Marques before the Stockholm committee for the Nobel prize in literature, in 1982. The inclusion of it in the third volume of Eduardo Galeano’s monumental tapestry of a continent suffocated by five centuries of colonialism is not accidental. Its role is to shed some light on the manner in which this militant writer/ poet/ journalist has chosen to present his historical research.
More evident than in the previous two volumes, probably also because the reader is already familiar with events and personalities of the twentieth century, the approach is undeniably political, with the endless list of massacres, abuses of power and naked greed, corruption, venality. Yet, for every two-bit dictator and corporate high-roller, Galeano is offering an alternative: musicians, painters, poets, novelists, artisans and dancers who are as influential on the emerging national identity as the presidents and generals and industrialists who are put front and centre in the actual history books.
I could list both the ‘devils’ of capitalism who are put on public trial in the book, and the ‘angels’ who refused to bow down and chose art to make their voice heard. I’m sure almost all of them are already known to us bookworms and music lovers, or to those who tried to untangle the secret histories of military interventions against democratically elected governments, but this is not the point I was trying to convey when I settled on Marques to introduce the novel.

What I wanted to underline is that Galeano is not a hack: he is very careful to offer sources for what he claims in each vignette, and I often felt the need to bookmark some event and check alternative accounts when something seemed too odious or too exaggerated for emotional effect on the reader. Almost without fail, everything Galeano presents can be verified by independent sources. He may use inflaming language to get his point across, but this is not fiction: these events actually happened in the manner described. Where politics come into play is mainly in the selection of what to include in the novel and what to leave out: it was impractical to write an exhaustive, chronological history of the period here. “Century of the Wind” is more of a reference book, a starting point for further study either in the political or the cultural fields, and Galeano was the editor who cut the material down to size.

Galeano’s heroes are easy to pick up, since they have more than 10 vignettes each, compared with other names that appear once or at best twice: Augusto Cesar Sandino, Che Guevara, Miguel Marmol, Eva Peron, Emiliano Zapata, etc. They are not idols that would please everybody, but the least we can do is to try to understand what they represent in the context of the continent and of the political, economical developments of the last century.
Similarly, the involvement of the US in the internal affairs of sovereign countries is well known, even when officials claim reasonable deniability. We can cross check Galeano, and I recommend this, on the subjects of United Fruit, The School for Americas or Project Condor. In fact, a lot of documents and revelations about these events have come to light after the novel was published in 1986 and after the bloody decades of military dictatorships who tried to kill off the ideas of personal freedom and representative government.

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

This was not an easy book to read. It took me twice as long as the previous two volumes to reach the last page. Part of the reason were the frequent trips back to my computer, to read up on what Galeano compressed in a paragraph or two. Part of the reason was moral indignation and empathy for the suffering of millions. It often made me pause and go pick something lighter when the going got too rough.
Throughout this long march into the history and culture of Latin America, the poetic voice of the author never let me down when I came back to his world. His passion and his talent to get the message across, his range of interests and his extensive research have rekindled my interest in the works of the artists who are mentioned here. I have added dozens of new titles to my wishlist, and I had confirmed dozen others that I already tried and would like to return to. Galeano may have left himself open to criticism and interpretation on the political angle, but his love for the people of South America and his quest for social justice are the reasons I am sure I will come back to this three volume epic in the future for reference.

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

Here are a few of my snippets from the snippets Galeano offered in this last volume. I will refrain from further commentary: they mostly speak for themselves, and are more about me and my interests than about the key elements of the book.

- - -

the annihilation of the city of Saint Pierre, Martinique in the volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee, 1902

- - -

1904: Rio de Janeiro
Senator Rui Barbosa, pigeon chested and smooth-tongued orator, attacks vaccination using juridical weapons flowery with adjectives. In the name of liberty Rui Barbosa defends the right of every individual to be contaminated if he so desires.

- - -

1907: Iquique, Chile
General Roberto Silva Renard’s machineguns and rifles cut down the unarmed strikers and leave a blanket of bodies. Interior Minister Rafael Sotomayor justifies the carnage in the name of the most sacred things, which are, in order of importance, property, public order, and life.

- - -

1909: Paris – A Theory of National Impotence
Their thousand and one miseries thus spring from their own nature, not the voracity of their masters. Here is a people condemned by biology and reduced to zoology. Theirs is the bestial fate of the ox: incapable of making his own history, he can only fulfil his destiny. And that destiny, that hopeless disaster, is written not in the stars, but in blood.

- - -

1912: Niquinohomo – Daily Life in Central America: Another Invasion
Nicaragua pays the United States a colossal indemnity for moral damages, inflicted by fallen president Zelaya when he committed the grave offence of trying to impose taxes on North American companies.
As Nicaragua lacks funds, US bankers lend the necessary monies to pay the indemnity, and since Nicaragua lacks guarantees, US Secretary of State Philander Knox sends back the Marines to take charge of custom houses, national banks, and railroads.

- - -

1924: Merida, Yucatan
The Shooting of Felipe Carillo Puerto repeats the history of Juan Escudero in Acapulco. The government of the humiliated has lasted a couple of years in Yucatan. The humiliated govern with the weapons of reason. The humiliators don’t have the government, but they have the reason of weapons. And as in all of Mexico, death rides the dice of destiny.

- - -

1928: Cienaga – Carnage
On the shores of Cienaga, a high tide of banners. Men with machetes at their waists, women toting pots and children wait here amid the campfires. The company has promised that tonight it will sign an agreement ending the strike.
Instead of the manager of United Fruit comes General Cortes Vargas. Instead of an agreement he reads them an ultimatum.

- - -

1942: New York
The war accepts blacks, thousands and thousands of them, but not the Red Cross. The Red Cross bans black blood in the plasma banks, so as to avoid the possibility that races might mix by transfusion.
The research of Charles Drew, inventor of life, has finally made it possible to save blood. Thanks to him, plasma banks are reviving thousands of dying men on the battlefields of Europe.
When the Red Cross decides to reject the blood of blacks, Drew, director of the Red Cross plasma service, resigns. Drew is black.

- - -

1970: Santiago de Chile
From Washington, Secretary of State Heny 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.”

- - -

1965: San Juan, Puerto Rico
A journalist asks him over the phone if he is an enemy of the United States. No, he is only an enemy of U.S. imperialism.
“No one who has read Mark Twain,” says Bosch, “can be an enemy of the United States.”

[Taghreed Jamal El Deen · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب الأخير من الثلاثية يحكي قصة القرن العشرين، وهو الأغنى بالأحداث.
تابع غاليانو مع سرد حكايات الثوار والمدافعين بعد أن تحولوا من مقارعة الاستعمار إلى مواجهة الديكتاتوريات التي قامت على أنقاضه وبمعونته، إضافةً إلى بدء ظهور العبقريات التي نبتت في تلك الأرض وتغذّت من أوجاعها منذ الصغر؛ غيفارا، كاسترو، ماركيز، بورخيس، أمادو، نيرودا، كاهلو، بيليه، وغيرهم الكثير ممن نحتوا أسماءهم على صفحة التاريخ.

أحببت هذا الجزء لأنه يمنح الأمل بأن أولئك الذين تألموا كثيراً لا زالوا قادرين على ترميم أنفسهم والنهوض بقوة وعناد أكبر، وما زال لديهم الكثير ليقدموه للعالم.

نصيحتي لمن يرغب في قراءة الثلاثية هي التمهل الشديد وتجزئتها على فترات ولو طالت، لأن الاستعجال الذي اضطررت إليه أفقدني بعضاً من الاستمتاع بها.

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

The last volume of the trilogy Memory of Fire.

My expectation was less. I thought that after thoroughly enjoying the first (Genesis) and second (Faces & Masks) the novelty would have worn off and I'd have not much reason to gush over it. I was wrong. The metaphors here are as startling as ever, the characters as unforgettable, the relived history as heartbreaking and the prose as ecstatic.

For me Memory of Fire is one rare book which, if I find someone rating it a low 4 stars I'd wonder if he really knows how to read (with apologies to those who gave it 4 stars and the very few who rated any of the three volumes much lower). It is a shame that this has not become as popular as, say, GG Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (397,491 ratings here at GR with an ave. rating of 3.98) and I wonder if its rating would go down if it manages to improve its readership by even half as much as that of the latter. In the meantime the figures are:

1. Genesis 738 ratings 4.38 ave.rating
2. Faces & Masks 467 ratings 4.49 ave. rating
3. Century of the Wind 541 ratings 4.55 ave. rating


I have already read and reviewed four books by Galeano so enough of him. I'm sure there are other writers I need to discover.

[Lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic revelation for me:I hadn't previously known very much at all about Latin American history and Galeano's vignettes were a wonderful introduction. The emotive, personal perspective that he is able to share with readers is captivating and educational. I certainly shy away from any description of this novel as a fiction, because the events discussed are completely factual. The way Galeano expresses the brutality of Latin American history should make readers uncomfortable, but also is not the main point of the book-- the events presented are chosen because they illuminate the historical struggles endured by often-overlooked people and I believe Galeano's point was to show, from an insider's perspective, an unsanitized view of the lives of his people and the decisions that made it so. Responsibility, empathy, and reflection are a few of the things I took away from Galeano's words and I encourage everyone to give Galeano's words a chance to speak to you as well.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rui Barbosa believes in the law, and bases his belief on erudite quotations from imperial Romans and English liberals. But he doesn't believe in reality.

None admit to having killed anybody; but then, like them, poverty doesn't exactly sign its name to its crimes either.

For a lengthy time, inadvertently and otherwise, I've plowed through the list of the 1001 Books Before You Die. I've numbered the living, burned the dead, and continue to dream of a day when I've read enough that I can, in good conscience, create my own. There will be many recognizable derivatives from other eulogized lists, both official and otherwise, but I've developed my palate enough in the areas of the languishing and the deprived that the only places to go are both far away and underground, and even those works that have already been raised up in more rarefied air will breath true fresh air in a land where they are not the only one of their kind. Eduardo Galeano seems to have written Memory of Fire with that burden in mind, and today, I can finally set his work into its rightful place of being amongst my personal esteemed bests. The reading, however, does not stop there. I looked up a mere five or so of the many artists who lived and perished between these pages, and, between this and the first two volumes, there are hundreds of others that may spark something in an unaware reader who doesn't understand the origins of Day of the Dead beyond what has been taught to them by Disney and the Anglicized Pope. I know that it has sparked a fire in me.

[B.] Traven decides to be a mystery, so that no bureaucracy can label him. All the better to mock a world where the marriage contract and inheritance matter more than love and death.

For the opposition, Senator Borah denies his country's right to act as the censor of Central America, and Senator Wheeler suggests that the government send Marines to Chicago, not Nicaragua, if it really wants to take on bandits. The Nation magazine, for its part, takes the view that for the U.S. president to call Sandino a bandit is like George III of England labeling George Washington a thief.

I'm going to admit here that I wasn't totally behind my five star rating for volume two of this trilogy, as I still have a shakier grasp on the nebulous 1750-1899 region covered by Faces and Masks than I would like. I undeniably came to this realization while near effortlessly, in comparison, traversing this work, as it seemed that I knew every one, if not two to three, out of every five names mentioned, and some of the more famous ones popped up multiple times in unfamiliar yet easily acknowledged positions in time and space. Monroe, Kahlo, Allende, Luxemburg, Castro, Trotsky, Edison, Panama, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Dominican Republic: people and places that I've slowly but surely accumulated as a record of need to know, more than supplemented by the gaze of the flaming eye that obsesses not over the hippies and wars overseas when so much is won and lost and disemboweled right here, within the confines of nations and towns and indigenous civilizations who Prometheuseanly suffer to the tune of anti-communism. I've been told to look at history when it comes to the excesses of that particularly collectivism, and here in this book, I have, and many of the dictatorships set up in anti-communist opposition by past incarnations of Amazon and Walmart brutalized long before Mao. That is not the only theme, but it is a persistent one, and these days, amidst the dying down of news about US concentration camps and the rise of talk of US impeachment, I wonder what other hypocrisies will be birthed, and whether another will have to step into Galeano's shoes in the future, should the world not rend itself to pieces beforehand.

Neruda roams the Spanish earth so soaked in blood and is transformed. The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it makes itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body.

The war accepts blacks, thousands and thousands of them, but not the Red Cross. The Red Cross bans black blood in the plasma banks, so as to avoid the possibility that races might mix by transfusion.
The research of Charles Drew, inventor of life, has finally made it possible to save blood. Thanks to him, plasma banks are reviving thousands of dying men on the battlefields of Europe.
When the Red Cross decides to reject the blood of blacks, Drew, director of the Red Cross plasma service, resigns. Drew is black.

The scientist Albert Einstein appeals to intellectuals to refuse to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and to be prepared for jail or economic ruin. Filing this, believes Einstein, the intellectuals deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them.

This year has been a good one for five star ratings, which gives me hope that I'm finally clearing out most of the peer pressured layers and developing a true sense of what I prefer in my reading. I'm still not comfortable enough to do anything more than dip into the collection of white boy writing I have in storage, but I could make exceptions for some of my favorites, who I read so long ago that my love for them could use a far more contemporary evaluation. Galeano has survived in my estimation since 2014, and I still have at least one more read of his waiting for me till the time is right. I expect all authors that I love to meet similar standards of literary longevity, and I have been unsparing in my criticism of many who fell from my grace upon a renewed perusal. This book opened a world for me that I still barely perceive despite my conscious efforts directed towards 'balanced' reading, and it would be a pleasure to track down the names of unfamiliar authors and see what all the fuss, lodged largely in books not yet translated into English, is about. For now, I leave Galeano, but only as long as it takes others to find him and revel.

Stubbornly, Trotsky continues to believe in socialism, fouled as it is by human mud; for when all is said, who can deny that Christianity is much more than the Inquisition?

First we'll kill all the subversives. Then we'll kill the collaborators. Then the sympathizers. Then the undecided. And finally, we'll kill the indifferent.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the best one because he writes about Chaplin and Evita and the US coups

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Great writers dissolve old genres and found new ones. This trilogy (Memory of Fire of which 'Century of the Wind' is the final volume - Liam) by one of South America's most daring and accomplished authors is impossible to classify. Grounded in solid research, blending familiar historical techniques with metaphors, poetic imagery and a gift for aphorism, 'Memory of Fire' builds subversive history of the America's from more than a thousand episodes...

''Century of the Wind'...is coloured by moments of irony and outrage: in 1917 Eisenhower and Patton chase Pancho Villsa in Mexico and in vain; in 1928 Senator Bigham the 'discoverer' (see mt footnote *1 below) of Machu Picu, urges the United States to be the world's policeman; in 1954, after the CIA overthrows the government of Guatemala, books by Dostoevsky are burned for being Russian. And in 1984 the Mayas, perhaps the oldest living culture in the hemisphere, are still being killed, still hoping for a better time.

''Memory of Fire', brilliantly shaped from life and art, shoes us what the 'discovery' of America really meant: the casual looting of a hemisphere to finance the triumph of the West. - Times Literary Supplement.

'Passionate and lyrical, visual...Read, reread and keep returning to (t)his trilogy; no politically significant event is omitted, but all is revealed through new eyes, to create a radically different panorama. - New Statesman & Society' From the backcover of the 1990 paperback edition from Minerva.

Sometimes it is best to allow a work to be described as its publisher described it. I certainly could not say any better what the two reviews quoted above say. 'Memory of Fire' is an extraordinary work and 'Century of the Wind' as its concluding volume is as great as the two preceding ones. Perhaps for me it was more powerful because I am of an age, growing before the demise of the Cold War, to have watched with passionate anger the collusion of Western governments in ignoring monstrosities across Latin America nightly. The only time 'compassion' was apparent was allowing monsters like
Alfredo Astiz or Leopoldo Galtieri to escape unmolested from deserved prosecution.

I defy anyone not to be moved by the history of more than a continent that if known at all is as the backdrop to others discovering what the inhabitants were already aware of. It is magnificent, it is wonderful and it must be read.

*1 I cannot help pointing out that Senator Bingham discovered nothing - except in the sense that anyone visiting somewhere 'discovers' things they don't know. When I first explored New York, Dublin, London, Paris, Rome or Moscow I discovered many things that I did not know but what I did not do was 'discover' in an absolute sense New York, Dublin, London, etc.

[Lungstrum Smalls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me wonder why we ever read history any other way?

An answer that does come to mind: because this book focuses so much on individual personalities that it risks falling into the great/monstrous man vision of history.

But it is people that I connect to, for better or worse. And Galeano has found some of the truly brave, beautiful, humble and dignified people in history. And also the terrible.

In fact, this book is mostly about tragic events. Every time some group of people garners an impossible shred of justice, it is ripped away from them tenfold. Torture, genocide, coups, assassinations and cultural destruction fill these pages. Maybe 1 in 5 of these stories finds hope in the deluge. Can me cynical, but that ratio does seem more or less accurate.

I had to keep my phone near to look up so many of the people and events in these pages. It's a true history lesson.

And the writing. The writing! I'll have to read the other two in the trilogy, going backwards. I'm sure Galeano would approve.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read the historic and mythic Faces and Masks I knew (mostly) what I was getting into with Galeano's Century of the Wind. The previous book was an enraged artistic history of the Americas from the vantage of the oppressed. In this last volume it is again the story of the oppressed, especially the poor worker of the land, but here the oppressor, as well as the local landowner or "president," is also the American corporation and the American government. His short vignettes of violence, revolution, and art cover the years from 1900 to 1984. It is sobering reading, as beautiful, angry, ironic, and horrifying as before, but also more concrete as he recounts this century's violence in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Argentina, Cuba, Bolivia, Chile and on and on. Not exactly history, but one vantage of it related with controlled power and righteous rage.

[Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for all fans of history! It is more than just a book. It is a picture in words.

I strongly recommend reading the entire trilogy, Memory of Fire. This is the third installment of Galeano's ode to Latin America. each chapter is a vignette in the history of the America's.

It contains both the good and bad of an entire continent. After finishing writing it, Galeano wrote that "more now than ever, I feel proud to have been born in this paradise, in this shithole that is Latin America"

This book and entire trilogy is the El Dorado of Latin American history.

A must read!!

[Noor Abd-alhadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

لم أقرأ نصا يرصد ويوثق لفترة تاريخية أكثر حيوية وبراعة من هذا النص كالجزأين السابقين يتابع عاليانو سرد تاريخ أمريكا اللاتينية الحافل بالحياة والموت والدم والانتصارات والهزائم وخيبات الأمل بكثير من الصدق وكثير من الإبداع والكثير الكثير من الاختلاف.. تاريخ لا يشبه أي تاريخ مروي ببراعة لا تشبه أية براعة .. استمتعت كثيرا بهذا النص الذي أعتبره من أفضل النصوص الساردة للتاريخ على الإطلاق لأن التاريخ ما وجد إلا كي يحيا فينا مرة أخرى حاضرا خاليا من الأخطاء والعثرات وغاليانو أبدع في إضفاء الحياة على تاريخ أراده حاضرا أكثر إشراقا لدول أمريكا اللاتينية التي خضبت طريقها بالكثير من الدماء

[Michaella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be one of my favorite books ever. That's crazy talk, I know, but it's true. I did things a little backwards though since I haven't read the first two books of this trilogy, but if "Century of the Wind" is any indication, then I'm ready for some epistolary, fragmentary entries that render the last century into a beautiful collage of horror, humor, and industrialism. Wow.

[Emma Charala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μνήμη της Φωτιάς: III. Ο Αιώνας του Ανέμου – Ο κόσμος καίγεται, αλλά ο Galeano ξέρει να γράφει με τις στάχτες.

Ο τρίτος τόμος είναι εκείνος όπου το έργο του Galeano σταματά να είναι απλώς συγκλονιστικό και μετατρέπεται σε κάτι πιο υπόγειο, πιο επικίνδυνο, πιο απαραίτητο: μια αναρχική λειτουργία για τον αιώνα της ψευδαίσθησης. Αν οι δύο πρώτοι τόμοι μας θύμιζαν ότι η Ιστορία γράφεται από τους νικητές, εδώ βλέπουμε κάτι ακόμη πιο κυνικό: ότι διαγράφεται από τους διαχειριστές.
Ο Αιώνας του Ανέμου είναι η ιστορία του 20ού αιώνα όπως δεν τη διδάσκεται κανείς. Ή μάλλον, είναι το βλέμμα όλων όσων είχαν αποκλειστεί από την Ιστορία: ταπεινές γυναίκες με τατουάζ στον αυχένα, σκλάβοι με κοντυλοφόρους, ποιητές με ουλές, ονειροπόλοι με τρύπια παπούτσια. Και κάποιες φορές, ένας Χέμινγουεϊ που περιφέρεται σαν φάντασμα της ίδιας του της ελπίδας.
Ο Galeano φτάνει εδώ στο απόγειο της τεχνικής του: τα μικρά θραύσματα έχουν αποκτήσει πια την πυκνότητα της βαρύτητας. Δεν είναι απλώς λογοτεχνικά κομψοτεχνήματα· είναι παλίμψηστα όπου η πολιτική, η ποίηση και η φιλοσοφία γδέρνουν το ένα το άλλο μέχρι να μείνει μόνο το ερώτημα: Ποιος δικαιούται να θυμάται;
📚 Αγαπημένο απόσπασμα (από τα πολλά):
«Η αλήθεια μπαινοβγαίνει λαθραία σαν την ελπίδα, απ’ τα παράθυρα που ξέχασε να κλείσει η εξουσία.»
Αυτός ο τόμος δε σου επιτρέπει να πάρεις ανάσα — όχι επειδή είναι δύσκολος, αλλά επειδή είναι ειλικρινής. Δεν υπάρχει εδώ "κάθαρση"· υπάρχει αναγνώριση. Και σε έναν αιώνα που κατάφερε να σκοτώσει Θεούς, ιδέες και αθωότητες με τη σειρά, η αναγνώριση μοιάζει με την τελευταία πράξη αντίστασης. Ίσως και με την πρώτη πράξη ανθρωπιάς.
Για αυτό του έβαλα πέντε αστέρια. Όχι γιατί είναι "τέλειος", αλλά γιατί μιλάει με τη φωνή που θα έπρεπε να έχει η Ιστορία, αν είχε καρδιά αντί για ημερολόγιο.

Μετά από αυτόν τον τόμο, δεν θες απλώς να γράψεις· θες να ψιθυρίσεις. Και να το κάνεις σε σκοτεινά δωμάτια, σε βιβλιοθήκες χωρίς κατάλογο, σε βράδια που φυσάει. Γιατί ξέρεις πως ο άνεμος ίσως δεν φέρνει αλλαγή, αλλά θυμάται. Και αυτό, καμιά φορά, είναι το μόνο που μας σώζει.

[Lucía Vijil Saybe · Rating 5 out of 5]

EXCELENTE FINAL para esta trilogía, uno de los mejores libros que he leído. La culminación perfecta para explicar el siglo pasado y una perspectiva amplia de quiénes fueron los destacados en cada país que buscaron la liberación. El Che Guevara que jamás se me van a olvidar, cambio el frasco de medicamentos que solía aplicar a los enfermos por una caja de balas y como todo nuestro proceso de "progreso-capitalismo" ha sido la subordinación para nuestros pueblos, me encantó "Lo inconcebible es que haya hombres que se acuesten con hambre mientras quede una pulgada de tierra sin sembrar; lo inconcebible es que haya niños que mueran sin asistencia médica;De tanta miseria sólo es posible librarse con la muerte; y a eso sí los ayuda el Estado: a morir". Fascinada de este libro.

[Yaser Maadat · Rating 4 out of 5]

يختتم غاليانو ثلاثية ذاكرة النار بقرن الريح كما يسميه أو قرن الثورات في مواجهة الدكتاتوريات كما كان فعلا،زاباتا...بانتشو بيّا...ساندينو...جيفارا...كاسترو...سينفويغوس...الليندي،كانوا عناوين بارزة لاستيقاظ الروح الوطنية اللاتينية في مواجهة دكتاتوريات لا تستحق التسمية و ان كانت كلها واجهة حكم فقط لاضفاء شرعية ما على التدخلات الامبريالية التي ميّزت القرن بعد أفول حقبة الاستعمار المباشر.
يستمر غاليانو في عرض صور باهية لنضال اللاتينيين و عشقهم و ايمانهم و ارتباطهم بالارض و الوطن و الانسان في هذا الجزء كما فعل في سابقيه.

[Luke Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vol. 3 of Galeano's epic commonplace book-masterpiece is an indictment of the 20th century. For a US reader, it is probably the best one. The whole trilogy is nothing less than an exhumation, the reinterment is your job. Typically, you can expect one of the thousands of entries to follow a journalistic thread through the lives of unknown figures from American history. So, as an anti-textbook and people's history, it beats any textbook. For the US reader, you get this same kind of sentiment from Chomsky, exposés of various CIA dealings, or Daniel Ellsburg biographies-- that kind of surprise about what you're reading coupled with the surprise of how deaf one has been to it. Galeano, allows you to be a true American. He reminds you you're on a continent, and one completely dominated by the US by force, yet in the inches of his pages an invisible mass is looking at you. Galeano is as human as can be.

"1956: At the Foot of the Sierra Maestra Twelve Lunatics" (160).

"From the United States come the weapons and advisors of the dictator of Panama. "From the United States come the weapons and advisors comes the weapons and advisors of the dictator of Honduras... The war lasts one week," (206-207).

"Chaplin and Keaton are still the best. They know that there is nothing more serious than laughter, an art demanding infinite work, and that as long as the world revolves making others laigh is the most splendid of activities," (145).

"Against capitalism there's not much her can do; but against the right triangle, that oppressor, constrictor of space, his architecture triumphs. ... Niemeyer images human habitations in the form of a woman's body, a sinuous shoreline, or tropical fruit. ... designed by god on the day that day when God thought he was Niemeyer." (171)

"1924: Mexico City Nationalizing the Walls. 'Easel art invites confinement.'"

"The cinema robs the pubic of the circus. No longer does the crown queue up to see the mustachioed lion-tamer or Lovely Geraldine, sheathed in sequins, glittering erect on a horse...The puppeteers too, abandon Havana...All quit...No one can compete with eh cinema. The cinema is more miraculous than the water of Lourdes. Stomach chills are cured by Ceylon cinnamon; colds by parsley; everything else by cinema," (23).

"So Charlotte perkins Gilman raves, while the press attacks here, calling her an unnatural mother. ... This srubborn wayfarer travels tirelessly around the US, announcing a world upside down,"(19).

[Leanne Feliz Pastorpide · Rating 5 out of 5]

Century of The Wind, the third book in the Memory of Fire Trilogy written by Eduardo Galeano (1986), translated by Cedric Belfrage (1988), is about the history of Latin America in the Twentieth Century. The book is a tangible cry of how the people were brutally silenced and taken for granted. It is the living testimony of the countless unjust deaths. It is the use, misuse, and abuse of power captured in words. Vignette from vignette, it will touch your heart the way no other book can, forming a mosaic of what used to be vague and fogged.

Galeano’s delicate style complemented the intricately told story of numerous lives intertwined by the hands of God. The use of poetry and storytelling in exposing historical accounts of Latin America is pure ingenuity. Having a taste at the slice of life of people in different walks of life is an incomparable treasure.

The entries are labeled by year and location. It tells stories of good and bad events. My favorite part is an entry entitled ‘Learning to See’ from 1944 in New York for it tells not horrible sufferings but depicts a flickering light of hope and change for the future despite the tumult.

“It is noon and James Baldwin is walking with a friend through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A red light stops them.
“Look,” says the friend, pointing at the ground.
Baldwin looks. He sees nothing.
“Look, look.”
Nothing. There is nothing to look at but a filthy little puddle of water against the curb.
His friend insists: “See? Are you seeing?”
And then Baldwin takes a good look and this time he sees, sees a spot of oil spreading in the puddle. Then, in the spot of oil, a rainbow, and even deeper down in the puddle, the street moving, and people moving in the street: the shipwrecked, madmen, the magicians, the whole world moving, an astounding world full of worlds that glow in the world. Baldwin sees. For the first time in his life, he sees.

[Kevin Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

What It's About: "In Century of the Wind, the concluding volume of his immortal Memory or Fire trilogy, Eduardo Galeano offers us the turbulent twentieth century, from the bucolic New Jersey laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison to the armies of Emiliano Zapata and Fidel Castro to the Reagan-era CIA "neutralization" in the forests of Latin America. Dizzying, enraging, and beautifully written, Century of the Wind is a panoramic vision of the Americas no work of history has previously imagined."
What I Admired: Once again, Galeano's writing is incredible. It's dense yet fluid. It reeks of death, yet leaps with life. It boasts of ash, yet is fertile with hope. He tills forgotten soil and plants the seeds of humanism, nurturing them with passion, focus, and the belief in a better tomorrow. One day, they will sprout. And that product will be worth the centuries of toil. The sheer ambition of a project like this... to chronicle an entire hemisphere of Earth, is audacious, and perhaps in lesser hands, it would inevitably fall short. But Galeano, somehow, has rendered the history of various civilizations, the history of human society, and the history of the human spirit, as a sprawling, consuming, gripping testament acknowledging our greatest achievements and our greatest failures through VIGNETTES. And it works!!!!!!! One of the MOST INCREDIBLE BOOKS AND TRILOGIES EVER!!!!!

[Taighe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Memory of Fire Trilogy provides a unique way to learn the history of the Americas. Galeano utilizes gorgeous prose, constrained in short vignettes, to tell his perspective on the tumultuous story that is the colonization of the New World. This unique style allows for the evocation of more emotion and imagination than any straight-forward history text could convey. Though, as Galeano points out himself, this causes the trilogy to become his story of the history.

"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."
- Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire: Genesis, Pg. XV

I recommend this trilogy, or even each book in isolation, to anyone and everyone; especially to those with an interest in history who have struggled to break through the barrier of boredom that is often found within a typical history book.

[Rose Boehm · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Century of the Wind' apparently forms part of a trilogy: 'Memory of Fire'. I had not idea what I held in my hands when an old friend gave it to me last time I was in London, 'Because Latin America is where you live.' Indeed, I live in Peru, and this amazing book helps me understand so much better what happened here and why things are what they are. 'Century of the Wind' can't be described. It's not an easily pigeonholed book. It's a collection (in order of time and carefully researched) of prose poems? flash fiction? Who cares what they are called. Vignettes of historical veracity, of despair and irony, and you can't put it down. It wrings you out and churns your insides. The writer's outrage becomes the reader's. And, clearly, you can transpose the content to anywhere in the world, to amy time. It has always been thus. Apart from that, the content, it's poetic and beautiful - a joy.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

the finale of a masterpiece of scholarship... Galeano returns to his scathing critique and full-blown evisceration of the narrative of the Americas we all think we know... covering everyone from Edison to Reagan to Zapata to Castro, he covers the depth breadth of the land, detailing, with his unique brand of academia mixed with speechifying rhetorical barbs, the truths of 'actions' by the US in countries deemed dangerously socialist or revolutionary or just not acquiescent to its hegemony... interesting briefs of various figures of note, and others not so notable to the mainstream (read: racist colonizer types)... anyone who wants a different vantage point for the history of places they think they know well but probably don't should get this trilogy...

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the triology in no time, I just couldn't stop. It is not only beatifuly written, it is a piece of the untold history of a remarkable continent because its struggle for life, freedom, civil liberties and justice for their multiple ethnic population.Escapes from being panfletary because the poetry, the recuperation of legends and unknown people and written memorials. I would recommend it to anybody who wants to know Latin America.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

An hour or so from the close of the Memory of Fire trilogy, as I prepared for sleep, I learned of Galeano's passing. With a pain in my chest, I switched on the light and read until the final page. As I found myself at the end of this journey, my device reset itself and has been unresponsive since. On the home screen, beside the title of the series, where Eduardo Galeano's name ought be, there is a blank space.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written vignettes recreating moments in history. They may move you, give you goosebumps, haunt you. The prose is so alive and so brutally seductive --it would be easy to read it all in one sitting. I personally recommend reading one paragraph-sized entry a day --or one a week. So richly written, I needed time to digest each one. Galeano is brilliant, brilliant.

[Sejjad.ebn.Fatma · Rating 4 out of 5]

١٩٠٢: سينت بيير
..............
انفجر بركان في جزيرة المارتينك ، سهل الجبل بيليو كأنه يشق العالم الى نصفين .سحابة حمراء كبيرة غطت السماء وسقطت متوهجة على الارض . في رفة جفن دمرت مدينة سينت بيير واختفى سكانها الأربع وثلاثون ألفا ً باستثناء واحد .
كان الناجي هو هو لودجر سيلياريس ، السجين الوحيد في المدينة ، ذلك ان جدران السجن كانت مصممة ضد الهرب .

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Venas Abiertas after a few decades in the cellar.

[Jessie Kwak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slowly making my way through Galeano's beautiful historical snippets. He makes history so haunting.

[Marc Larrivée · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to put into works how both beautiful and sad is writing is.

[Anastasia Alén · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this trilogy a lot, much of Latin American history that I didn't know before. Educational & great read.