“The History of the West is becoming a theatrical spectacle as it unfolds” Galeano, 213.
Regarding this week’s readings, I must say that Eduardo Galeano’s excerpts stand perhaps as my favorite texts read so far in my academic career. I Had previously read him in LAST 100, in an excerpt again, this time from his Venas Abiertas de Latino America, regarding the Potosi mines. While that was also a great read, this compilation really packs a punch in many aspects, in a very poetic, digestible manner.
To begin, I will relate how the reading made me think about human rights. Two vignettes in particular come to mind, the siege on the Cahapultepec castle (160) and the description of child soldiers in the wars against Paraguay (202). Both of these instances deal with what today be interpreted as a human rights violation: the idea of underage fighters. Galeano’s text conveys the atrociousness of such a condition without any recourse to the rights discourse. I thought that, not only are rights a sociological construction, but also many of the concepts they defend, such as “childhood”, are also recent constructs of our society. This lead me to ponder wether many of our discourses for justice, change, or whatever is sought, are built on the quicksands of concepts that mean one thing today, and something else in ten years.
I thought that Galeano’s choice of events to relate was subversive in several ways: I found that it challenged the institution of History by uncovering peoples within it that have been largely obscured. Among these stood out for me the story of the Saint Patrick’s Irish Battalion (161), and the roles of Chinese folk both in the ‘development’ of Cuba (184) and Peru (218). It also challenged His-story by narrating events of the historical ‘other’, even those that would be deemed superstitious (to spare words) by the positivist, such as the cross at Chan Santa Cruz (171, 183), and the disappearance of the buffalos “Into the Beyond” (211). He records them with the same veracity and tone as any other factual historical event he describes.
I found this quote quite appropriate for the course: “Our Rights are born of victory” (223). Perhaps the chance to create, enshrine or declare rights are the spoils of the victor and nothing more? Some of the men who got to write their own sure thought so.
Of interest to me was the way in which he narrates the history of the entire “Americas” together, showing that the ties between “North” and “Latin” America are many, that their histories have been shaped by each other, and that in reality, the differences are quite ambiguous, even when it comes to the shifting physical/geographical border. Some of the instances that highlighted this interrelation where the migrations to California (166), and the life-story of Geronimo, defined by his defiance of both the American and Mexican governments (182). When the U.S. treatment of the Kiowas (211) is compounded alongside the atrocities perpetrated all the way down to Tierra del Fuego in a single text, one is left with a feeling that all these actions were not the acts of random, different enterprises acting on whims, but that they were all part of a single system of conquest through which all these lands where taken over with, if by different actors at certain given points.
A third point of interest to me was the way in which the european economy shaped the events of the nascent nations of Latin America, although I will elaborate on this if discussed in class, as this post is getting long. To see what I mean, refer to the blockade of Buenos Aires (169), the demographics of Argentina (207, 229), the nitrates war (197, etc) the effects of the UK’s need for cattle on the geography of the continent (215), among other examples.
To close, I would like to say that all this read a bit like a pulp or noir novel novel written by Garcia Marquez. I refer to the feeling of surreal that the real history of Latin America leaves one with. De Las Casas captures this perfectly in his synopsis:
“Everything that has happened since the marvelous discovery of the Americas...has been so extraordinary that the whole story remains quite incredible to anyone who has not experienced it first hand.” (3)
Peace.
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