(42, 243, 414, and 438)
1949: Washington
The Chinese Revolution
Between yesterday and tomorrow, an abyss. The Chinese revolution springs into the air and leaps the gap.
The news from Peking provokes anger and fear in Washington. After their long march of armed poverty, Mao’s reds have triumphed. General Chiang Kai-shek flees. The United States enthrones him on the island of Formosa.
The parks in China had been forbidden to dogs and the poor, and beggars still froze to death in the early mornings, as in the old days of the mandarins; but it was not from Peking that the orders came. It was not the Chinese who named their ministers and generals, wrote their laws and decrees, and fixed their tariffs and salaries. By a geographical error, China was not in the Caribbean.
(156 and 291)
1949: Havana
Radio Theater
“Don’t kill me,” pleads the actor to the author.
Onelio Jorge Cardoso had had it in mind to polish off Captain Hook in the next episode; but if the character dies of a sword-thrust on the pirate ship, the actor dies of hunger in the street. The author, a good friend of the actor, promises him eternal life.
Onelio devises breathtaking adventures, but his radio plays enjoy little success.
He doesn’t pour it on thick enough, he doesn’t know how to wring hearts out like laundry—to the last drop. José Sánchez Arciila, by contrast, touches the most intimate fibers. In his serial “The Necklace of Tears,” the characters struggle against perverse destiny in nine hundred and sixty-five episodes that bathe the audience in tears.
But the greatest success of all time is “The Right to Be Born,” by Felix B. Caignet. Nothing like it has ever been heard in Cuba or anywhere else. At the scheduled nighttime hour, it alone gets a hearing, a unanimous Mass. Movies are interrupted, streets empty, lovers suspend their dalliances, cocks quit fighting, and even flies alight for the duration.
For seventy-four episodes, all Cuba has been waiting for Don Rafael del Junco to speak. This character possesses The Secret. But not only is he totally paralyzed, he lost his voice in episode 197. We’ve now made it to episode 271 and Don Rafael still can only clear his throat. When will he manage to reveal The Truth to the good woman who sinned but once, succumbing to Mad Passion’s call? When will he have the voice to tell her that Albertico Limonta, her doctor, is really the fruit of that same illicit love, the baby she abandoned soon after birth into the hands of a black woman with a white soul? When, oh, when?
The public, dying of suspense, does not know that Don Rafael is on a silence strike. This cruel silence will continue until the actor who plays Don Rafael del Junco gets the raise he has been demanding for two and a half months.
(266)
1950: Rio de Janeiro
Obdulio
Although the dice are loaded against him, Obdulio steps firmly and kicks. The captain of the Uruguayans, this commanding, muscular black man does not lose heart. The more the hostile multitude roars from the stands, the more Obdulio grows.
Surprise and sorrow in Maracaná Stadium: Brazil, the great, pulverizing, goal-scoring machine, the favorite all along, loses this last match at the last minute. Uruguay, playing for its life, wins the world football championship.
That night Obdulio Varela flees from his hotel, besieged by journalists, fans, and the curious. Preferring to celebrate alone, he goes looking for a drink in some remote dive or other, but everywhere meets weeping Brazilians.
“Obedulio is giving us the game,” they were chanting in the stadium just hours ago, midway through the match. Now, bathed in tears, the same people cry, “It was all Obedulio’s fault.”
And Obdulio, having so recently disliked them, is stunned to see them individually. The victory begins to weigh on him. He has ruined the party of these good folk and begins to wonder if he shouldn’t beg their pardon for the tremendous sin of winning. So he keeps on wandering the Rio streets, from bar to bar. Dawn finds him still drinking, embracing the vanquished.
(131 and 191)
1950: Hollywood
Rita
Changing her name, weight, age, voice, lips, and eyebrows, she conquered Hollywood. Her hair was transformed from dull black into flaming red. To broaden her brow, they removed hair after hair by painful electrolysis. Over her eyes they put lashes like petals.
Rita Hayworth disguised herself as a goddess, and perhaps was one—for the forties, anyway. Now, the fifties demand something new.
(249)
1950: Hollywood
Marilyn
Like Rita, this girl has been improved. 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.
This new Venus manufactured in Hollywood no longer needs to climb into strange beds seeking contracts for second-rate roles in third-rate films. She no longer lives on hot dogs and coffee, or suffers the cold of winter. Now she is a star; or rather a small personage in a mask who would like to remember, but cannot, that moment when she simply wanted to be saved from loneliness.
(214 and 274)
1951: Mexico City
Buñuel
Stones rain upon Luis Buñuel. Most of the newspapers and press syndicates insist that Mexico expel this Spanish ingrate who repays favors with infamy. The film that arouses national indignation, Los Olvidados, depicts the slums of Mexico City. Adolescents who live hand to mouth in this horrendous underworld eat whatever they find, including each other, with garbage heaps for their playground. They peck each other to pieces, bit by bit, these baby vultures, and so fulfill the dark destiny their city has chosen for them.
A mysterious resonance, a strange force, echoes in Buñuel’s films. Some long, deep roll of drums, perhaps the drums of his infancy in Calanda, make the earth tremble, even if the sound track registers no noise, and the world simulates silence and forgiveness.
(70 and 71)
1952: San Fernando Hill
Sick unto Death
is Colombia since Gaitán was murdered on that Bogotá street. In mountains and plains, frozen prairies and steamy valleys—everywhere—campesinos kill each other, poor against poor, all against all. A tornado of vendettas and vengeance allows Blackblood, the Claw, Tarzan, Tough Luck, the Roach, and other artists of butchery to excel at their chosen trade, but more ferocious crimes are committed by the forces of order. The Tolima Battalion kills fifteen hundred, not counting rapes or mutilations, in its sweep of the area from Pantamillo to San Fernando Hill. To leave no seed from which the future might grow, soldiers toss children aloft and run them through with bayonet or machete.
“Don’t bring me stories,” say those who give the orders, “bring me ears.”
Campesinos who manage to escape seek protection deep in the mountains, leaving their smoking shacks in cinders behind them. Before leaving, in a sad ceremony they kill the dog, because he makes noise.
(217, 227, and 408)
1952: La Paz
El Illimani
Though you can’t see him, he watches you. Hide where you like, he watches over you. No cranny escapes him. The capital of Bolivia belongs to him, although they don’t know it, the gentlemen who till last night thought themselves masters of these houses, these people.
El Illimani, proud king, washes himself with mist. At his feet, the city begins its day. Campfires die out, the last machinegun volleys are heard. The yellow hats of miners overwhelm the military caps. An army that has never won against those outside nor lost against those within, collapses. People dance on any street corner. Handkerchiefs flutter, braids and multilayered skirts undulate to the beat of the cueca.
In the absolute blueness of the sky gleams El Illimani’s crown of three peaks: From the snowy summits the gods contemplate the happiness
of their children in arms, at the end of this endless foot-by-foot struggle through the back streets.
(17, 172, and 473)
1952: La Paz
Drum of the People
that beats and rolls and rolls again, vengeance of the Indian who sleeps in the yard like a dog and greets the master with bended knee: The army of the underdogs fought with homemade bombs and sticks of dynamite until, finally, the arsenal of the military fell into their hands.
Víctor Paz Estenssoro promises that from this day Bolivia will be for all Bolivians. By the mines the workers fly the national flag at half-mast, where it will stay until the new president fulfills his promise to nationalize tin. In London they see it coming: As if by magic, the price of tin falls by two-thirds.
On the Pairumani estate, Indians roast on a grill the prize bulls Patiño imported from Holland.
Aramayo’s tennis courts, surfaced with brick dust from England, are turned into mule corrals.
(17, 172, and 473)
A Woman of the Bolivian Mines Gives the Recipe for a Homemade Bomb
Look for a little milk can. Put the dynamite right in the middle, a capsule. Then, bits of iron, slag, a little dirt. Add glass and small nails. Then cover it up good. Like this, see? You light it right there and—shsss!—throw it. If you have a sling you can throw it farther. My husband can throw from here to six blocks away. For that you put in a longer wick.
(268)
1952: Cochabamba
Cries of Mockery and Grievance
All over the Bolivian countryside times are changing: a vast insurgency against the large estates and against fear. In the Cochabamba valley, the women too hurl their defiance, singing and dancing.
At ceremonies of homage to the Christ of the Holy Cross, Quechua campesinos from the whole valley light candles, drink chicha, sing ballads, and cavort to the sound of accordions and charangos, around the Crucified One.
The young girls implore Christ for a husband who won’t make them cry, for a mule loaded with corn, a white sheep and a black sheep, a sewing machine, or as many rings as their hands have fingers. Afterward they sing stridently, always in the Indian language, their protest. To Christ, to father, to boyfriend and to husband they promise love and service, at table as well as in bed, but they don’t want to be battered beasts of burden anymore.
Singing, they shoot bullets of mockery at the bull’s eye of the naked macho, well ravaged by years and insects, who sleeps or pretends to sleep on the cross.
(5)
Shameless Verses Sung by Indian Women of Cochabamba to Jesus Christ
Little Father, to your flock,
“Daughter, daughter,” you keep saying.
But how could you have fathered me
When you haven’t got a cock?
“Lazy, lazy,” you’re reproving,
Little Father, Holy Cross,
But limp and lazy—look at you:
Standing up there, never moving.
Little fox with tail all curls,
Beady eyes on women spying,
Little old man with mousey face
And your nose so full of holes.
You won’t put up with me unwed,
You condemn me to bear kids,
Dress and feed them while alive,
Bury them proper when they’re dead.
Will you send to me a mate
Who would give me blows and kicks?
Why must every budding rose
Suffer the same wilted fate?
(5)
1952: Buenos Aires
The Argentine People Feel Naked Without Her
Long live cancer! wrote some hand on a wall in Buenos Aires. They hated her, they hate her, the well-fed—for being poor, a woman, and presumptuous. She challenged them in talk and offended them in life. Born to be a servant, or at best an actress in cheap melodramas, Evita refused to memorize her part.
They loved her, they love her, the unloved—through her mouth they spoke their minds and their curses. Evita was the blonde fairy who embraced the leprous and ragged and gave peace to the despairing, a bottomless spring that gushed jobs and mattresses, shoes and sewing machines, false teeth and bridal trousseaux. The poor received these charities at a side door, while Evita wore stunning jewelry and mink coats in midsummer. Not that they begrudged her the luxury: They celebrated it. They felt not humiliated but avenged by her queenly attire.
Before the body of Evita, surrounded by white carnations, people file by, weeping. Day after day, night after night, the line of torches: a procession two weeks long.
Bankers, businessmen, and landowners sigh with relief. With Evita dead, President Perón is a knife without a cutting edge.
(311 and 417)
1952: On the High Seas
Wanted: Charlie the Tramp
Charles Chaplin sails for London. On the second day at sea, news reaches the ship that he won’t be able to return to the United States. The attorney general applies to his case a law aimed at foreigners suspected of communism, depravity, or insanity.
Some years earlier Chaplin had been interrogated by officials of the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service:
Are you of Jewish origin?
Are you a Communist?
Have you ever committed adultery?
Senator Richard Nixon and the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper agree: Chaplin is a menace to our institutions. Outside theaters showing his films, the Legion of Decency and the American Legion picket with signs demanding: Chaplin, go to Russia.
The FBI has for nearly thirty years been seeking proof that Chaplin is really a Jew named Israel Thonstein and that he works as a spy for Moscow. Their suspicions were aroused in 1923 when Pravda printed the comment: Chaplin is an actor of undoubted talent.
(121 and 383)
1952: London
An Admirable Ghost
named Buster Keaton has returned to the screen after long years of oblivion, thanks to Chaplin. Limelight opens in London, and in it for a few precious minutes Keaton teams up with Chaplin in an absurd double act that steals the show.
This is the first time Keaton and Chaplin have worked together. They appear gray-haired and wrinkled, though with the same charm as in those moments long ago, when they made silence wittier than words.
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 laugh is the most splendid of activities.
(382 and 383)
1953: Washington
Newsreel
The United States explodes the first H-bomb at Eniwetok.
President Eisenhower names Charles Wilson secretary of defense. Wilson, an executive of General Motors, has recently declared: What’s good for General Motors is good for America.
After a long trial, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair. The Rosenbergs, accused of spying for the Russians, deny guilt to the end.
The American city of Moscow exhorts its Russian namesake to change its name. The authorities of this small city in Idaho claim the exclusive right to call themselves Muscovites, and ask that the Soviet capital be rebaptized to avoid any embarrassing associations.
Half the citizens of the United States decisively support Senator McCarthy’s campaign against the Communist infiltration of democracy, according to opinion polls.
One of the suspects McCarthy plans to interrogate, engineer Raymond Kaplan, commits suicide by throwing himself under a truck.
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. Failing this, believes Einstein, the intellectuals deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them.
(45)
1953: Washington
The Witch Hunt
Incorrigible Albert Einstein, according to Senator McCarthy’s list, is America’s foremost fellow tra
veler. To get on the list, all you need to do is have black friends or oppose sending U.S. troops to Korea; but the case of Einstein is a much weightier one. McCarthy has proof to spare that this ungrateful Jew has a heart that tilts left and pumps red blood.
The hearing room, where the fires of this Inquisition burn, becomes a celebrity circus. Einstein’s is not the only famous name that echoes here. For some time the Un-American Activities Committee has had its eye on Hollywood. The Committee demands names, and Hollywood names cause scandal. Those who won’t talk lose their jobs and find their careers ruined; or go to jail, like Dashiell Hammett; or lose their passports, like Lillian Hellman and Paul Robeson; or are expelled from the country, like Cedric Belfrage. Ronald Reagan, a minor leading man, brands the reds and pinks who don’t deserve to be saved from the furies of Armageddon. Another leading man, Robert Taylor, publicly repents having acted in a film in which Russians smile. Playwright Clifford Odets begs pardon for his ideas and betrays his old comrades. Actor José Ferrer and director Elia Kazan point their fingers at colleagues. To dissociate himself clearly from Communists, Kazan makes a film about the Mexican leader Emiliano Zapata in which Zapata is not the silent campesino who championed agrarian reform, but a charlatan who shoots off bullets and speeches in an unceasing diarrhea.
(41, 219, and 467)
1953: Washington
Portrait of a Witch Hunter
His raw material is collective fear. He rolls up his sleeves and goes to work. Skillful molder of this clay, Joseph McCarthy turns fear into panic and panic into hysteria.