Mirrors

  Meanwhile in China, Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping launches the slogan “To grow rich is glorious.” And to enrich her glorious leaders, China offers the world market her millions of cheap and very obedient workers, and her air, land, and water, a natural bounty all too willing to immolate itself on the altars of success.

  Communist bureaucrats become businessmen. That must be why they studied Das Kapital: to live off the dividends.

  DIVINE LIGHT,MURDEROUS LIGHT

  The flames crackle.

  On the pyre burn discarded mattresses, discarded easy chairs, discarded tires.

  A discarded god also burns: the fire blackens the body of Pol Pot.

  At the end of 1998, the man who killed with such abandon died at home, in his bed.

  No plague had ever so reduced the population of Cambodia. Invoking the sacred names of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, Pol Pot erected a colossal slaughterhouse. To save time and money, every charge came complete with sentence, and every jail had a door to a common grave. The entire country was a great burial mound and a temple to Pol Pot, who purified society to make it worthy of him.

  Revolutionary purity demanded liquidating the impure.

  The impure: those who thought, those who dissented, those who doubted, those who disobeyed.

  CRIME PAYS

  At the end of his many years in power, General Suharto could not keep track of either his victims or his money.

  He began his career in 1965 by exterminating Indonesia’s Communists. How many, no one knows. Not less than half a million, perhaps more than a million. Once the military gave the green light to kill, anyone with a cow or a few chickens coveted by the neighbors suddenly became a Communist worthy of the noose.

  U.S. Ambassador Marshall Green conveyed his government’s “sympathy and admiration for what the army is doing.” Time reported that dead bodies impeded navigation on the rivers, but went on to celebrate the events as “the best news for years.”

  A few decades later, the same magazine revealed that General Suharto had “a tender heart.” By then, he had lost count of the many dead, and was about to turn the gardens of Timor Island into cemeteries.

  His savings account was not negligible either by the time he was forced to resign, after more than thirty years of service to his country. Deep pockets: Abdurrahman Wahid, his successor as president, estimated Suharto’s personal fortune to be equal to everything Indonesia owed the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

  We know he loved Switzerland and enjoyed walking along the streets of Zurich and Geneva, but he never managed to recall precisely where he had left his money.

  In the year 2000, a medical team examined General Suharto and declared him physically and mentally unfit to stand trial.

  ANOTHER CASE OF AMNESIA

  A medical report ruled that General Augusto Pinochet was suffering from senile dementia.

  Incapable of judgment, he could not be judged.

  Pinochet maneuvered past three hundred criminal charges without losing his cool, and died without ever doing time. Chile’s reborn democracy, meanwhile, was saddled with paying his debts and forgetting his crimes. He joined in the official amnesia.

  He had killed, he had tortured, but he said:

  “It wasn’t me. Besides, I don’t remember. And if I do remember, it wasn’t me.”

  In the international language of soccer, bad teams are still called “Pinochets” because they fill stadiums in order to torture people, but the general does not lack admirers. Santiago’s September 11 Avenue was christened, not in memory of the victims of the Twin Towers, but in homage to the terrorist coup that brought down Chile’s democracy.

  In an unintended endorsement, Pinochet died on December 10, International Human Rights Day.

  By then, thirty million dollars stolen by him had turned up in one hundred and twenty accounts in various banks around the world. The revelation somewhat tarnished his prestige. Not because he was a crook, but because his take was so meager.

  PHOTOGRAPH: THIS BULLET DOES NOT LIE

  Santiago de Chile, Government House, September 1973.

  We do not know the name of the photographer. It is the last image of Salvador Allende: he wears a helmet, walks with rifle in hand, looks up at the airplanes spitting out bombs.

  The freely elected president of Chile said:

  “I won’t get out of here alive.”

  In the history of Latin America, that is an oft-heard expression. Many presidents say it, but at the moment of truth they decide to go on living in order to go on saying it.

  Allende did not get out of there alive.

  A KISS OPENED THE DOORS TO HELL

  The kiss was the signal of betrayal, just as in the Gospels:

  “Whomsoever I kiss, that same is the one.”

  In Buenos Aires at the end of 1977, the Blond Angel kissed, one by one, the three founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Esther Balestrino, María Ponce, and Azucena Villaflor, as well as the nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet.

  And the earth swallowed them. Spokesmen for the dictatorship denied holding the mothers and said the sisters were in Mexico working as prostitutes.

  Later on it came out: all of them, mothers and sisters alike, had been tortured and thrown, still alive, from an airplane into the sea.

  And the Blond Angel’s identity came out too. The papers published a photograph of Captain Alfredo Astiz, his head bowed, surrendering to the English, and despite his beard and cap he was recognized. It was the end of the Falklands War and he had not fired a shot. He was a specialist in another sort of heroism.

  FAMILY PORTRAIT IN ARGENTINA

  Argentine poet Leopoldo Lugones proclaimed:

  “For the good of the world, the hour of the sword has struck!” In this way he applauded the 1930 coup d’état, which installed a military dictatorship.

  In the service of that dictatorship, the poet’s son, Police Chief Polo Lugones, devised new uses for the cattle prod and other instruments of coercion by experimenting on the bodies of the disobedient.

  Forty-some years later, a disobedient named Piri Lugones, granddaughter of the poet, daughter of the police chief, endured her father’s techniques firsthand in the torture chambers of a more recent dictatorship.

  That dictatorship disappeared thirty thousand Argentines.

  Among them, her.

  THE AGES OF ANA

  In her first years, Ana Fellini believed her parents had died in an accident. That was what her grandparents told her. They said that her parents were on their way to pick her up when their plane went down.

  At the age of eleven, someone else told her that her parents had died fighting Argentina’s military dictatorship. She asked nothing, said nothing. She had been a bubbly child, but from then on she said little or nothing.

  At the age of seventeen, she had trouble kissing. There was a sore under her tongue.

  At the age of eighteen, she had trouble eating. The sore was growing deeper.

  At the age of nineteen, they operated.

  At the age of twenty, she died.

  The doctor said it was cancer of the mouth.

  Her grandparents said it was the truth that killed her.

  The neighborhood witch said she died because she did not scream.

  THE NAME MOST TOUCHED

  In the spring of 1979, the archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, traveled to the Vatican. He asked, pleaded, begged for an audience with Pope John Paul II:

  “Wait your turn.”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  In the end, by lining up with the faithful waiting to be blessed, just one among the many, he surprised His Holiness and managed to steal a few minutes with him.

  Romero tried to deliver a voluminous report with photographs and testimony, but the pope handed it back:

  “I don’t have time to read all this!”

  And Romero sputtered that thousands of Salvadoreans had been tortured
and murdered by the military, among them many Catholics and five priests, and that just yesterday, on the eve of this audience, the army had riddled twenty-five people with bullets in the doorway of the cathedral.

  The head of the Church stopped him right there:

  “Mr. Archbishop, do not exaggerate!”

  The meeting did not last much longer.

  Saint Peter’s successor demanded, commanded, ordered:

  “You must reach an understanding with the government! A good Christian does not look for trouble with the authorities! The Church wants peace and harmony!”

  Ten months later, Archbishop Romero was shot down in a parish of San Salvador. The bullet killed him as he was saying Mass, at the moment he raised the host.

  From Rome, the pontiff condemned the crime.

  He forgot to condemn the criminals.

  Years later, in Cuscatlán Park, names on an infinitely long wall commemorate the civilian victims of the war. Thousands upon thousands of names are etched in white on black marble. The letters of Archbishop Romero’s name are the only ones that show wear.

  From the touch of so many fingers.

  THE BISHOP WHO DIED TWICE

  Memory is held prisoner in museums and is not allowed out.

  Bishop Juan Gerardi led an investigation into Guatemala’s terror.

  One spring night in 1998, in the courtyard of the cathedral, the bishop presented the results, fourteen hundred pages, testimony from over a thousand witnesses. And he said:

  “We all know that this path, the path of memory, is dangerous.”

  Two nights later, he was found lying in his own blood, his skull smashed with a chunk of concrete.

  As if by magic, the blood and fingerprints were immediately wiped away. Several people confessed, but their confessions were more like confusions, the advance party of a gigantic international operation to turn the murder into an impenetrable maze.

  And thus occurred the second death of the bishop. Lawyers, journalists, writers, and criminologists for hire did the dirty work. New culprits and new evidence appeared and disappeared at a dizzying pace, shovelfuls of infamy were heaped onto the body of the victim to safeguard the untouchable impunity of the authors of this crime and of two hundred thousand murders more:

  “It was one of the Communists who infiltrated the Church.”

  “It was the cook.”

  “It was the woman who kept the keys.”

  “It was that drunk who slept in the park across the street.”

  “It was jealousy.”

  “Among fags, busting heads happens all the time.”

  “It was revenge, a priest had sworn to get him.”

  “It was that priest, and his dog.”

  “It was . . . ”

  GLOBAL TAXES

  Love wanes, life weighs, death wastes.

  Some griefs are inevitable. That is the way it is, and not much can be done about it.

  But those in charge of the planet pile grief on top of grief, and then charge us for the favor.

  We pay the value-added tax every day in cold hard cash.

  And every day, in cold hard misfortune, we pay the grief-added tax.

  The added grief comes disguised as fate or destiny, as if the anguish born of the fleeting nature of life were the same as the anguish born of the fleeting nature of jobs.

  THEY ARE NOT NEWS

  In the south of India, at the Nallamada hospital, a failed suicide revives.

  Around his bed, smiles from the ones who brought him back to life.

  The survivor eyes them and says:

  “What are you expecting, a thank-you? I owed a hundred thousand rupees. Now I’m also going to owe for four days in the hospital. Some favor you imbeciles did me.”

  We hear a lot about suicide bombers. The media blather on about them every day. But we hear nothing about suicide farmers.

  According to official figures, India’s farmers have been killing themselves steadily, at a rate of a thousand a month since the end of the twentieth century.

  Many suicide farmers die from drinking the pesticides for which they cannot pay.

  The market drives them into debt, then unpayable debt drives them into the grave. They spend more and more, earn less and less. They buy at penthouse prices and sell at bargain-basement markdowns. They are held hostage by the foreign chemical industry, by imported seeds, by genetically modified crops. Once upon a time, India worked to eat. Now India works to be eaten.

  CRIMINOLOGY

  Every year, chemical pesticides kill no fewer than three million farmers.

  Every day, workplace accidents kill no fewer than ten thousand workers.

  Every minute, poverty kills no fewer than ten children.

  These crimes do not show up on the news. They are, like wars, normal acts of cannibalism.

  The criminals are on the loose. No prisons are built for those who rip the guts out of thousands. Prisons are built as public housing for the poor.

  More than two centuries ago, Thomas Paine wondered:

  “Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?”

  Texas, twenty-first century: the last supper sheds light on the cellblock’s clientele. Nobody chooses lobster or filet mignon, even though those dishes figure on the farewell menu. The condemned men prefer to say goodbye to the world with the usual: burgers and fries.

  LIVE AND DIRECT

  All Brazil is watching.

  A reality show in real time.

  From the moment the criminal, he had to be black, takes the passengers of a Rio bus hostage one morning in the year 2000, television broadcasts every detail.

  The commentators treat it as a mixture of soccer and war, the heartbreaking emotion of a World Cup final narrated in the tragic-epic tone of the invasion of Normandy.

  The police lay siege to the bus.

  In a long exchange of gunfire, a girl is killed. The crowd in the street shouts curses at the beast for whom innocent lives mean nothing.

  At last, after four hours of shooting and other dramatics, a bullet from the forces of order brings the public enemy down. The police show off their trophy, critically wounded, bathed in blood, to the camera.

  Everyone wants to lynch him, the thousands present and the millions watching.

  The policemen pull him free from the angry crowd.

  He gets into the patrol car alive. He comes out strangled.

  In his brief passage through the world, he was Sandro do Nascimento, one of many children sleeping on the steps of the cathedral on a night in 1993, when it rained bullets. Eight died.

  Of the survivors, nearly all were killed soon thereafter.

  Sandro was lucky, but he was a dead man on leave.

  Seven years later, the sentence was carried out.

  He always dreamed of becoming a TV star.

  DIRECT AND LIVE

  All Argentina is watching.

  A reality show in real time.

  From the moment the bull, he had to be black, turns up in a Buenos Aires suburb one morning in 2004, television broadcasts every detail.

  The commentators treat it as a mixture of bullfighting and war, the heartbreaking emotion of a corrida in Seville narrated in the tragic-epic tone of the fall of Berlin.

  The morning passes and the police do not show up.

  The animal eats grass, threateningly.

  The people watch from afar, fearfully.

  “Watch out,” warns a journalist walking through the crowd, microphone in hand. “Careful, he might get nervous.”

  Off on his own, the beast nibbles and chews, focused on the little piece of greenery he discovered amid the gray buildings.

  At last police cars filled with officers arrive and they take up positions around the animal. They watch him, unsure what to do.

  Then a few brave souls break out of the crowd and, demonstrating great courage and skill, leap on the wild bull. Kicking and punching, they knock him over and wrap him in chains. The camera records the mome
nt when one of them puts his foot triumphantly on the trophy.

  They take him away in a cart. His head hangs over the side. Whenever he raises it, blows rain down on him. Voices scream:

  “He’s trying to escape! He’s trying to escape again!”

  And thus ends the life of this little calf, an escapee from the slaughterhouse whose horns are barely beginning to show.

  The plate was his fate.

  He never dreamed of becoming a TV star.

  DANGER IN PRISON

  In 1998, the National Directorate of the Penitentiary System of the Republic of Bolivia received a letter signed by every prisoner in a jail in the Cochabamba Valley.

  The letter respectfully requested that the prison wall be made higher, for as it was, people from the neighborhood were climbing over and stealing the clothes the prisoners hung out to dry.

  Since no budget was available, there was no response. And since there was no response, the prisoners had no choice but to get to work. With bricks and straw they raised the wall high enough to protect themselves from their neighbors on the other side.

  DANGER IN THE STREET

  For half a century, Uruguay has not won a single world soccer championship, but during the military dictatorship the country won other titles: relative to its population, it had the most political prisoners and the most victims of torture.

  “Libertad” was the name of the biggest jail. Perhaps inspired by the name, imprisoned words sometimes broke out. Through the bars slid poems written on tiny cigarette papers. Like this one: