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 several 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
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