Mirrors

  Dwight Eisenhower, president of the United States, told British Foreign Secretary Lord Alec Douglas-Home:

  “I wish Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles.”

  Lord Douglas-Home took a week to reply:

  “Now is the time to get rid of Lumumba.”

  And the minister for African affairs of the Belgian government, Harold d’Aspremont Lynden, offered his own opinion:

  “Lumumba must be eliminated once and for all.”

  At the beginning of 1961, a firing squad of eight soldiers and nine policemen commanded by Belgian officers shot him along with his two closest collaborators.

  Fearing a popular uprising, the Belgian government and its Congolese tools, Mobutu Sese Seko and Moise Tshombe, covered up the crime.

  Two weeks later, the new president of the United States, John Kennedy, announced:

  “We will not allow Lumumba to return to the government.”

  And Lumumba, who by then had already been killed and dissolved in a barrel of sulfuric acid, did not return to the government.

  RESURRECTION OF LUMUMBA

  The assassination of Lumumba was an act of colonial reconquest.

  The Congo’s mineral wealth, copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, uranium, oil, gave the orders from the depths of the earth.

  The sentence was carried out with the complicity of the United Nations. Lumumba had good reason to mistrust the officers of troops that claimed to be international, and he denounced “the racism and paternalism of people whose only vision of Africa is lion hunting, slave markets, and colonial conquest. Naturally they would understand the Belgians. They have the same history, the same lust for our wealth.”

  Mobutu, the free-world hero who trapped Lumumba and had him crushed, held power for more than thirty years. The international financial institutions recognized his merits and showered him with generosity. By the time he died, his personal fortune was nearly equal to the foreign debt of the country to which he had devoted his best energies.

  But Lumumba had announced:

  “History will one day have its say. It will not be the history taught in the United Nations, Washington, Paris, or Brussels. Africa will write its own history.”

  The tree where Lumumba was executed still stands in the woods of Mwadingusha. Riddled with bullets. Like him.

  MAU MAU

  In the fifties, terrorism was black, its name was Mau Mau, and it hid out in the shadows of the Kenyan jungle.

  According to world opinion, the Mau Mau danced as they slit the throats of the English. Then they chopped them to pieces, and in satanic ceremonies drank their blood.

  The supposed leader of those savages, Jomo Kenyatta, fresh out of prison, became the first president of his free country in 1964.

  Later on, it came out: during the years of struggle for independence, fewer than two hundred British citizens, civilians or soldiers, had been slain. More than ninety thousand natives were hanged, shot, or killed in concentration camps.

  EUROPE’S LEGACY

  When Belgium left the Congo, a total of three Congolese held positions of responsibility in government.

  When Great Britain left Tanzania, the country had but two engineers and twelve doctors.

  When Spain left Western Sahara, the country had one doctor, one lawyer, and one specialist in commerce.

  When Portugal left Mozambique, the country had a 99 percent illiteracy rate, not a single high school graduate, and no university.

  SANKARA

  Thomas Sankara changed Upper Volta’s name. The old French colony came to be called Burkina Faso, “land of honest men.”

  Following the long period of colonial domination, honest men inherited a desert: fields exhausted, rivers gone dry, forests devastated. One of every two newborns did not survive beyond three months old.

  Sankara headed up the transformation. Community energies were marshaled to produce more food, teach literacy, replant native forests, and protect the scarce and sacred water.

  The voice of Sankara echoed around Africa and out to the world:

  “We propose that at least one percent of the fabulous sums spent studying life on other planets be used to save life on this planet.”

  “The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund deny us financing to dig down three hundred feet for water, but they offer it to dig down nine thousand feet for oil.”

  “We want to create a new world. We refuse to choose between hell and purgatory.”

  “We accuse those men whose selfishness causes the misfortune of their fellows. In the world, no one is yet held to account for the murderous attacks on the land and the air that destroy the biosphere.”

  In 1987, the so-called international community decided to rid itself of this new Lumumba.

  The mission was assigned to his best friend, Blaise Campaoré.

  The crime placed Campaoré in power for life.

  ORIGIN OF CUBA

  Revolution, revelation: blacks set foot on beaches formerly closed to any whose skin might stain the water, and all of the Cubas that Cuba held exploded into the light of day.

  Deep in the mountains, deep inside Cuba, children who had never seen a movie made friends with Charlie Chaplin, and volunteers brought reading and writing to far-flung places where such strange wonders were unknown.

  In an attack of tropical lunacy, the entire National Symphony Orchestra took Beethoven and his cohorts to villages that had fallen off the map, and the euphoric residents scrawled posters that invited:

  “Come dance to the National Symphony! It’s hot!”

  I was out in the East, where colorful snails fall like rain from the trees, and the blue mountains of Haiti peek over the horizon.

  On a dusty path, I met up with a couple.

  She was on a donkey, riding under an umbrella.

  He, on foot.

  The two were dressed for a party, queen and king of these hamlets, invulnerable to time or mud: not a wrinkle, not a stain violated the whiteness of their attire, which had been waiting years if not centuries in the back of a closet ever since the day of their wedding.

  I asked them where they were going. He answered:

  “We’re headed for Havana. To the Tropicana Cabaret. We’ve got tickets for Saturday.”

  And he patted his pocket.

  I CAN SO

  In 1961, a million Cubans learned how to read and write, and thousands of volunteers erased the mocking smiles and pitying looks they got whenever they said what they planned to accomplish.

  Some time later, Catherine Murphy collected their stories:

  • Griselda Aguilera:

  My parents taught literacy here in Havana. I asked to go along, but they wouldn’t let me. Every morning very early, the two of them would head off until nighttime and I’d stay home. One day, after so much whining, they finally let me. I went with them. Carlos Pérez Isla was the name of my first student. He was fifty-eight. I was seven.

  • Sixto Jiménez:

  They didn’t let me go either. I was twelve, I knew how to read and write, and every day I’d ask and argue, but no. It’s really dangerous, my mother said. And right then was when the invasion took place at the Bay of Pigs, those criminals came to take revenge, they came with blood in their eyes, those people, the ones who used to own Cuba. We knew who they were. In the old days they set our house on fire twice up there in the mountains. That was when my mother packed my knapsack. Bye-bye, she said.

  • Sila Osorio:

  My mother taught literacy in the mountains beyond Manzanillo. She was assigned a family with seven children. None of them knew how to read or write. My mother lived in their house for six months. During the day she harvested coffee, carried water . . . At night, she taught. Once everyone had learned, she left. She arrived there by herself, but she didn’t leave by herself. Imagine that: if it hadn’t been for the literacy campaign, I wouldn’t exist.

  • Jorge Oviedo:

  I was fourteen when the volunteers turned up in Palma
Soriano. I’d never been to school. But I went to the first literacy class. I drew a few letters and I realized: this is for me. And the next morning I slipped out of the house and took to the road. I had the volunteers’ manual under my arm. I walked a long way until I came to a town deep in the mountains of the East. I introduced myself as a literacy teacher. I gave the first class, repeating everything I’d heard back in Palma Soriano. I remembered every detail. For the second class I studied the manual, or rather I guessed at what it said. And for the following ones . . . I taught literacy before I was literate. Or maybe it happened all at once, I don’t know.

  PHOTOGRAPH: THE WORLD’S MOST POPULATED EYES

  Havana, Plaza of the Revolution, March 1960. The bearded ones have been in power a little more than a year.

  A ship has been blown up in the port. Seventy-six workers dead. The ship carried weapons and munitions for Cuba’s defense, and the Eisenhower administration would not permit Cuba to defend itself.

  A multitude fills the streets of the city.

  From the podium, Che Guevara observes so much rage concentrated in one place.

  He has the crowd in his eyes.

  Alberto Korda snaps the picture.

  His newspaper does not publish it. The editor sees nothing special.

  Years will pass. The photograph will become a symbol of our times.

  COMEBACK KID

  What is it about Che Guevara? The more they manipulate and betray him, the more he rises anew. There is no comeback kid like him.

  Could it be because Che said what he thought and did what he said? In this world words and deeds so rarely meet, and when they do they fail to say hello, because they do not recognize each other. Perhaps that is why he is still so dangerous.

  FIDEL

  His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who confused unity with unanimity.

  And in that his enemies are right.

  His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper like Granma, no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at Waterloo.

  And in that his enemies are right.

  His enemies say that he exercised power by talking a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than voices.

  And in that his enemies are right.

  But some things his enemies do not say: it was not to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders’ bullets,

  he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to hurricane,

  he survived six hundred and thirty-seven attempts on his life,

  his contagious energy was decisive in making a country out of a colony,

  and it was not by Lucifer’s curse or God’s miracle that the new country managed to outlive ten U.S. presidents, their napkins spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork.

  And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup.

  And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.

  And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America.

  And his enemies do not say that this feat was the outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.

  PHOTOGRAPH: FISTS HELD HIGH

  Mexico City, Olympic Stadium, October 1968.

  The Stars and Stripes waves triumphantly on the highest flagpole, while the strains of the national anthem of the United States ring out.

  The Olympic champions mount the podium. Then at the climactic moment, gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos, both black, both Americans, raise their black-gloved fists against the night sky.

  Life photographer John Dominis captures the scene. Those raised fists, symbols of the Black Panther Party, denounce before the entire world racial bigotry in the United States.

  Tommie and John are immediately expelled from the Olympic Village. Never again will they be allowed to take part in any sports competition. Race horses, fighting cocks, and human athletes have no right to spoil the party.

  Tommie’s wife divorces him. John’s wife commits suicide.

  Back home, no one will hire these troublemakers. John gets by as best he can, and Tommie, who holds eleven world records, washes cars for tips.

  ALI

  He was butterfly and bee. In the ring, he floated and stung.

  In 1967, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, refused to put on a uniform.

  “Got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said. “Ain’t no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”

  They called him a traitor. They sentenced him to a five-year jail term, and barred him from boxing. They stripped him of his title as champion of the world.

  The punishment became his trophy. By taking away his crown, they anointed him king.

  Years later, a few college students asked him to recite something. And for them he improvised the shortest poem in world literature:

  “Me, we.”

  THE GARDENER

  At the end of 1967, in a hospital in South Africa, Christian Barnard carried out the first human heart transplant and became the most famous doctor in the world.

  In one of the pictures sent around the world, a black man appears among his assistants. The head of the hospital explained that he had snuck in.

  At the time, Hamilton Naki lived in a hut without electricity or running water. He had no degree, but he was Dr. Barnard’s right-hand man. He worked by his side in secret. Law or custom forbade a black man from touching the flesh or blood of whites.

  Shortly before he died, Barnard admitted:

  “He probably had more technical skill than I had.”

  In the final analysis, Barnard’s achievement would not have been possible without the man of magic fingers who had rehearsed the heart transplant several times with pigs and dogs.

  On the hospital payroll, Hamilton Naki was listed as a gardener.

  He retired on a gardener’s pension.

  THE NINTH

  Deafness kept Beethoven from ever hearing a note of his Ninth Symphony, and death kept him from learning of his masterpiece’s adventures and misadventures.

  Bismarck proclaimed the Ninth an inspiration for the German race, Bakunin heard it as the music of anarchy, Engels declared it would become the hymn of humanity, and Lenin thought it more revolutionary than “The Internationale.”

  Von Karajan conducted it for the Nazis, and years later he used it to consecrate the unity of free Europe.

  The Ninth accompanied Japanese kamikazes who died for their emperor, as well as the soldiers who gave their lives fighting against all empires.

  It was sung by those resisting the German blitzkrieg, and hummed by Hitler himself, who in a rare attack of modesty said that Beethoven was the true führer.

  Paul Robeson sang it against racism, and the racists of South Africa used it as the soundtrack for apartheid propaganda.

  To the strains of the Ninth, the Berlin Wall went up in 1961.

  To the strains of the Ninth, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

  WALLS

  The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From morning till night we read, saw, heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain . . .

  In the end, a wall which deserved to fall fell. But other walls sprouted and continue sprouting across the world. Though they are much larger than the one in Berlin, we rarely hear of them.

  Little is s
aid about the wall the United States is building along the Mexican border, and less is said about the barbed-wire barriers surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.

  Practically nothing is said about the West Bank Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will be fifteen times longer than the Berlin Wall. And nothing, nothing at all, is said about the Morocco Wall, which perpetuates the seizure of the Saharan homeland by the kingdom of Morocco, and is sixty times the length of the Berlin Wall.

  Why are some walls so loud and others mute?

  PHOTOGRAPH: THE WALL FALLS

  Berlin, November 1989. Ferdinando Scianna photographs a man pushing a wheelbarrow. It holds, just barely, an enormous bust of Stalin. The bronze head was liberated from its body when a furious people armed with sledgehammers brought down the wall that had divided Berlin in two.

  The wall is not all that falls. With it crumbles the regimes that started out proclaiming the dictatorship of the proletariat and ended up running the dictatorship of the bureaucracy. And with it falls political ideology reduced to religious faith, and parties that invoked Marx but acted like churches inspired by the old dictum of Pope Gregory VII: “The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.”

  Without shedding a tear or a single drop of blood, Eastern Europeans watch the death throes of the powers that acted in their name.