The following are Ernesto Guevara’s comments about books that he read, mainly during his stay in Mexico (1954–56), although these notes have no dates. They show the breadth of his literary interests and the rigor and depth of his reading. Neruda’s Canto General, which he considered “the best book in all of Latin America,” was particularly influential and would be a particular favorite throughout his life.
In Latin American literature, there is a primitive connection with old Spain, consisting of those Spaniards who were writing from these lands. The extraordinary history by Bernal Díaz is one of these.
Bernal Díaz is Spanish, but the heart of his chronicle is about the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés and his army, an adventure that approaches the conceivable limits of human daring and that, on the lips of the chronicler, becomes something truly alive.
This is both the most important and the most literary aspect of his work; its worth is as a personal testimony. The history related is not as important as how an intelligent soldier, with no other claim to culture, has set down his memories of the heroic era of imperial Spain and that Cortés, Sandoval, Alvarado and Cristóbal de Olid are described in their true, extraordinary— and human—dimensions.
Bernal Díaz has not set himself the task of investigating whether or not the conquest had any religious justification, as did his more erudite contemporary Cieza de León, and he often compares his compatriots unfavorably with the Incas. For Díaz, the action had the primary justification that he was part of it—or, rather, that he was a member of the attacking army.
Bernal never tried to depict nor could he have depicted the Indians’ spirit, but he has presented the most extraordinary historical picture of the conquistadors.
His colorful prose, which is both antiquated and fresh, presents the central figure of this drama (from the invaders’ point of view): the intrepid, elusive, clever, intriguing, mellifluous and embittered Captain Hernán Cortés. He depicts the captain’s character and his grandeur—grandeur felt not only by his racial enemies but also by his Spanish friends and enemies— much better than any hagiography has done.
When Bernal narrates his horror at the deep, low sound of the horns with which the Aztecs announced the sacrifice of captured Spaniards, the reader is transported to the state of mind of those uncultured soldiers, who were convinced of their god’s superiority over the bloody Huitzilobos, but whose faith faltered when they felt the imagined bite of the Aztec warriors on their arms and legs and knew what fate had in store for them. Close to a thousand of their compañeros in the small troop had already passed through the stomachs of the enemy army. Nevertheless, seeing no alternative, they kept on fighting until they became masters over the natives. And then came the sad part, the squabbles over money, Indians and glory. That heroic and pointless expedition to Higueras and the meaningless, stupid death of the Emperor Cuauhtémoc, who had been conquered both morally and physically, because of the torture to which Cortés subjected him in his search for gold. He was executed more to calm his captors’ inner anger than to put down a revolt that, by then, was no longer possible.
1. Bernal Dìaz del Castillo (1492-1585) was a Spanish conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico for Hernán Cortés. His manuscript was only published in 1632, some decades after his death.
This is the first part of a monumental work written about everything that happened in Peru from its inhabitants’ earliest memories up to the time Cieza de León sat down to write. [In] the prologue, speaking of the four parts of the work, he says:
“This first part is about marking the boundaries of Peru’s provinces, both at sea and on land, with longitude and latitude; a description of them all; the founding of new cities by the Spaniards; who the founders were; when they were settled; the Indians’ ancient rites and customs; and other strange things that are very different from ours and are worth noting.
“The next three parts are on the rule of the Incas, the war of conquest and the civil wars.”
In view of so many insubstantial, false accounts, the fairness and veracity of the data given by Cieza—who never cited anything if he was not sure of his facts, either because he himself knew them to be true or because they were attested to by some authoritative person, to whom he sometimes gave written testimony—are amazing.
This part, the least interesting one in his account, nevertheless gives a precise idea of the historic setting in which he acted, and, although he defends the religious need for the conquest, he passes harsh judgment on the Spaniards who were guilty of mistreating the Indians. He absolves the Indians of their sins because the light of Christianity was, as yet, unknown to them.
The most amazing thing about Cieza’s work is Cieza himself. This strange product of humanity was much less interested in gold and the feats of war than in the moral character of the conquerors and the conquered, who appeared in a setting in which the conquistadors, in their thirst for gold, were destroying everyone and everything in their path.
1. Pedro Cieza de León (1520-54) was a Spanish soldier, who chronicled the conquest of Peru.
The first epic poem of the Americas. The first great American poem. These are the broad distinctive characteristics of La araucana [The Araucanian Maiden], but it is a work that eludes the diagnostic precision of the critics. It breathes double nuances that are matched only in Bernal’s naive prose: the author’s admiration for both sides. This allows him to sing the praises of both the enormous courage of the Spanish invaders and the perseverance and intelligence with which Lautaro’s hosts defended themselves against their attackers.
The work is too long for all of it to be good, but Antonio de Undurraga has made a beautiful synthesis of the poem. It is amazing to think that the soldier was a contemporary of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. Truly, such a good poet should be an unchallenged Latin American classic. Right from the beginning of the poem:
Chile, distinguished and fertile
province in the famed Antarctic region...
up to the last verse, Ercilla holds your interest. What he writes is not always poetry—sometimes, it is simply an account—but his hendecasyllabic verse always shows considerable technical perfection combined with a complete naturalness that makes the poem flow like a steady stream.
The people’s interests are a constant underlying theme in the poem. The masses are the actors in history; names are accidents of that mass. During the struggle for power, Colocolo says:
Oh, Araucanians, when will end
the rage that leads you all to hell?
You fight your relative and friend
but ’gainst the tyrant don’t rebel.
His admonition has an effect; carrying a tree trunk on one’s shoulders is taken as the test for aspiring to leadership. Caupolicán is the victor, and the spectators pronounce sentence, saying:
“On the shoulders of such strong men
we place our obligations, then.”
The ruthless struggle continues until Valdivia falls into the hands of those defending their land.
There are no heroic scenes, theatrical words or anything like that. Valdivia wants to save his life and humbles himself before the victor:
Caupolicán, glad he’s not dead
— and is reduced to this condition—
with victor’s voice and high-held head
threatens him with inquisition.
Valdivia the captive’s led
to humble pie and to petition
for his life. He says he’ll cease
to fight and leave the land in peace.
Throughout the poem, Ercilla shows respect for the opponents, recognizing in Lautaro a true war leader:
Lautaro was wise, industrious and sure,
a man with good advice, of gentle mien
and medium height whose refined gesture
lent authority such is seldom seen.
And when Lautaro dies—betrayed by an Indian and caught off guard while making love—Ercilla’s laments reach a peak; it seems that he does not want his side to win:
O, cruel fate! On the left side
the point flies straight to wrest
the most courageous heart that I’d
e’er met, from out his breast.
The Indians die around their chief, refusing to accept honorable surrender or quarter of any kind, and Ercilla narrates the death of his indigenous heroes with sorrow against the backdrop of the Spanish scourge, a pretext for emphasizing the indomitable courage of the conquered race. Ercilla knows that the Spaniards will win; he knows that, one day, the entire region will belong to the hosts of the kings and queens of Castile; but the final stanza hints at a subtle melancholy when, describing Chile, he says:
See the stains of earth so covered
that in secret they are kept.
They will never be discovered;
here, foreigners will never step...
until God decides to let them show
so their secret, thus, will grow.
1. Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533–94) was a Spanish nobleman, soldier and poet. His epic poem La Araucana describes the courageous resistance of the indigenous Mapuche people to the Spanish conquest of Chile.
Sarmiento is one of those meteors that shoot across a people’s horizon every so often, only to be lost in a turn in the road, but always leaving the memory of their brilliance. In his historical work, his love for the people’s education should be remembered; in his political work, there is the handing over of Argentina to the imperialist voracity of the railroads; in his literary work, Facundo will ensure his name lives on even after everything else has been forgotten.
He tried to make Facundo historical and dispassionate, cold as an account of bygone times, but it is just the opposite; it is such a vigorous, anecdotal, impassioned and exciting account that it makes for a timely document even today. History is the framework in which the novelist Sarmiento moves his very lifelike characters: Facundo, the savage with a certain nobility, the prototype of the pampas and the “barbarism” that Sarmiento censures; and Rosas, the cold and intelligent despot, whom Sarmiento astutely interprets as a product of the great cattle-raising latifundios; but above his characters he places the most important actor—the pampas, with all its barbaric grandeur.
In the first part of the work, Sarmiento presents a brief description of the pampas, a sketch the poetic depth and penetration of which has only been surpassed by Hernández.
The whole second part is dedicated to the life and death of Facundo Quiroga, up to the tragedy of Barranca-Yaco. Sarmiento takes it for granted that Rosas was responsible for his death—a hypothesis that has been repeated systematically throughout history, but for which there is no conclusive proof, though it is true that Facundo was a rival to be feared and the tyrant was the direct beneficiary of his death.
In the third part, Sarmiento takes a look at the future, when the nightmare will have ended.
The almost fantastic grandeur of the entire epic is further enhanced by Sarmiento’s correct analysis of the events that he experienced. (Sarmiento shows that he has read Guizot and has interpreted his theory of the class struggle.) Truly, Sarmiento was a genius, and Facundo proves it.
1. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-88) was a prominent Argentine intellectual and president (1868-74). His greatest literary creation, Facundo, is a work of creative non-fiction and a scathing critique of the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas.
This work, consisting of two tracts, serves as a magnificent means for measuring how much progress humanity has made. At the end of the 1800s, the period in which the tracts were written, they were a terrible anathema against the church, and it took courage to write them.
The standard-bearer and guide, the Antichrist, was the United States, the symbol of liberalism. In the first tract, Dr. Montúfar analyzes in detail the Syllabus issued by Pius IX and shows its falsity from the primitive Christian point of view. In the second, he advocates a separation of church and state as the only valid solution for the problem of the two coexisting powers.
The charming, lively work makes us smile today, but, in its time, it must have caused quite an uproar. It is dedicated to Montalvo, who had seen García Moreno fall in Ecuador.
The final analysis shows that no government that is based on a religion gives its citizens freedom of belief. The author analyzes several kinds of relationships between church and state and comes down heavily on the side of the one adopted in the United States.
1. Lorenzo Montúfar y Rivera (1823–98) was a Guatemalan politician and lawyer, who wrote a history of Central America.
There are so many and such exhaustive commentaries on classical works that it is often very difficult to add anything, especially in this case, in which the author’s unacknowledged intention was his dispute with Sarmiento—who, at that time, represented the most progressive part of Argentine society. The poem’s social intent is worthy, as it gives a good description of the life and ill-treatment of the gauchos, but, basically, there is not much more to it than that.
Martín Fierro achieves its lasting value because of the sustained, realistic tone of the poem, which paints a general panorama of the era in bright colors, and because of the true picture it gives of the characters through their words. It achieves poetic value in only a few exceptional passages, but some of those phrases and sentences are well worth inclusion in anthologies.
The deserved fame of the passage about old Vizcacha is due to the perfect synchronization of the gaucho’s speech with the quaintness employed by the masses in every country. The Argentine Sancho Panza is much more alert and consciously lively than his famous predecessor, and there are some verses that are rather coarse, such as:
If the oven’s to be heated,
let the baker go and try.
I won’t bestir myself. Know why?
I take a lesson from the pig,
who eats its young and grows so big:
I work for me, myself and I.
Don’t suffer, even if the world
falls down around your feet.
The first thing you must do to beat
the odds is to discover who
provides the meals that come to you.
Protect this source, and you can eat.
But while old Vizcacha is convincingly depicted, Fierro and Cruz are less so, and their sons are weaker characters. Moreover, there is something jarring here, for the author states that 10 years have gone by, while the story gives the impression that it was much longer.
When the novel ceases to be a novel and becomes true poetry, the tailcoat that Calixto Oyuela mentioned when criticizing the work appears many times, but my main criticism is that it is too subjective; I don’t think that a gaucho would investigate his impulses like that, even though the author’s rigorous analysis has broken down the vocabulary perfectly.
I don’t know what occurred
within my thoughts just then.
The proud Indian again
with all his hatred stirred,
shot me a look. Enough: no word would
pierce so far in men.
But, in any case, these poetic nuances, which fall intermittently on the popular aspects, help to solidify the book.
In the two parts there is a clear allusion to two different periods: of Sarmiento, the scorned man of the people, who denied everything related to gauchos, and Avellaneda, the man of culture, who paid homage to the substratum of Argentine society living on the pampas.
The most false note struck by the book is the moment in which Fierro sums up his feats and apologizes for them in the same way that José Hernández— but not the protagonist—would. Time and the political situation have made Hernández-Fierro, now an old man, forget the anguished cry of rebellion:
no sponsor and no friend.
No one will him defend;
all are his masters now.
So, like the ox, he’ll bow,
accept his fate—and plow.
To conclude, in such straitened circumstances:
For him who must live so,
his torment never ceases
but with his pride increases.
By doing as he should,
he’ll make his master good.
If not, he’ll fall to pieces.
Fierro’s tragic rebellion has been polished and turned into restrained advice for his sons and for Cruz’s son. He recognizes that gauchos have unenviable lives, and, at the end, he says:
The eagle has its nest;
for the tiger, a jungle waits;
the fox has cave and mates.
Only gauchos have no home
and, to live, must roam
with most uncertain fates.
And he recommends:
The poor man is what’s left
when bad luck fortune blights,
and no one really fights
to defend him and his spouse.
A gaucho should have house,
and school and church and rights.
In the last verse of the poem, he apologizes to anyone whom his attacks may have offended:
The memory’s a virtue,
a skill among the first.
All those who think I’ve cursed
them here should think again:
though painting living men,
I’ve left out all the worst.
In any case, Hernández achieves his objective of describing the gauchos’ way of life in the feudal society that tyrannized them and of depicting the desert, its courageous Indians and the struggle for survival.
Perhaps, if Sarmiento had governed in the second period, that change wouldn’t have occurred.
(first part)
I know the chiefs protect
the Christians over there
and terms of “brother” share
when they do pleasing things.
Take what the future brings.
Why should we dwell on care?
(second part)
Charitable Indians?
Go find some, if you will.
Their prisoners fare ill
from treatment most unjust.
They’re sly; filled with distrust;
though brave, revengeful still.
However, it should not be forgotten that Fierro’s original exclamation, calling his friend Cruz to the desert, was the fruit of anguish over past misfortunes, while the second was after he had had his experiences in the desert. In any case, Roca’s barbarous campaign was fast approaching, and preparations had to be made.
Fierro gave a sad but colorful account of the desert and his life there, filled with urbane observations about the king of the desert, man and his resources...
The birds and beasts and fish
survive in a thousand ways;
but man, who on the others preys
and eats them all just to supply
his wants, can cry—
and, thus, true sentiment betrays.
Martín Fierro blunders through this second verse and winds up his song in the improvisation competition against the black man with some advice to his children. With the advice, he throws in the towel. Man should be honest, good, a hard worker, etc.—not rebellious. Fierro is old and resigned, but one wonders: in their day-to-day lives, didn’t the gauchos aspire to the same goals as Fierro? If so, the part of the poem that is most open to criticism is redeemed, and, in addition to the argument for poems about gauchos, Martín Fierro would be an artistic instrument of protest in the deliberate defense of a defeated class.
1. José Hernández (1834-86) was an Argentine politician, journalist and poet, best known for his epic poem, Martin Fierro, about the life of the Argentine gaucho.
Professor Edelberto Torres has made an excellent selection. Above all, the first article, “Evocación de Guatemala” [Evocation of Guatemala], is like a portrait of the future. Its pages exude an exhausted charm, such as arose from the stagnant atmosphere of his old aunt’s living room, and this is the impression left by Gómez Carrillo’s prose.
It is a great lesson. Only the cries of the people’s souls went down in posterity—the vigorous cries of Rubén Darío and Pablo Neruda. The harmonious, rhythmic, light voice of the great chronicler enchanted the readers of his time and probably made him more famous than the powerful men of his generation. But then came death and with it oblivion.
The lyrical aspect of his prose now seems to be summed up in the too glossy portrait of his aunt when she was young, in the aforementioned living room.
A subtle dust rises from his prose that, when stirred, contains miracles of time cushioned in a gentle, drowsy boredom.
This work should be read when one is feeling nostalgic—if possible, while sitting by the fireside warmed by a good blaze while the rain beats down outside, just before going to bed...
1. Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1873–1927) was a Guatemalan writer, literary critic and diplomat, best known for his chronicles, which were characterized by modernist prose.
This is a small portrait of the liberator, with heavy quotations, giving an idea of the clear and elegant thought of the revolutionary poet.
One could not say it is a masterpiece, but that is not its function either. Simply, the author is overwhelmed by Martí’s words, which are sufficient in themselves to clarify the concepts discussed. The author limits himself to ordering them more or less chronologically, up to the time of Martí’s death.
If the booklet has something to offer, it is the final comparison with certain run-of-the-mill contemporary politicians.
To describe Rómulo Betancourt or Haya de la Torre as equals of Martí is an insult to the man who lived in the belly of the beast and knew its entrails, though they were not nearly as black and pestilent then as they are now. The book would be much better without this final invocation.
1. Costa Rican Vicente Saenz’s biography of Cuban independence leader José Martí was published in 1953.
Seldom has an internationally renowned man so deeply and hypocritically betrayed everything he had said he was fighting for at one time in his career.
The Breve historia... is anything but history. Rather, it is an avalanche of insults against everything indigenous. It assumes an all-encompassing attitude that conceals its meek submission to foreigners in supposed hatred of them.
The author sets out from the supposition that the Aztecs were a nation of idolatrous barbarians and that God did well in punishing them but, merciful in the end, sent them the finest, bravest, best and wisest conquistadors in the world—the Spaniards—whose chief, Cortés, was the archetype of those qualities.
All the problems that arose later on stemmed from two basic sins: the betrayal of mother Spain (by becoming independent of her) and the persecution of Catholicism (the only true religion).
Vasconcelos chooses concepts of Spengler’s (and not that philosopher’s most original ones) to apply his concepts of the superior man to the Spanish model.
The work is anti-historical because it is polemical and does not always tell the truth. Most especially, it contains such nonsense as that of supporting Maximiliano against Juárez (who Vasconcelos considered a representative of foreigners). Moreover, it is nasty and antinationalistic. It is the product of a narcissistic, resentful mentality that disguises its personal failure in a hatred of the growing greatness of isolated individuals. Its underlying theses are many years out of date, and they are presented in a ridiculous way.
In short, it is a work that defines its author as a traitor, a resentful person in love with himself and a shallow philosopher in what must be recognized as his civic bravery in denouncing the economic abuses of the hierarchs of the Mexican revolution.
1. José Vasconcelos was a major figure in the Mexican revolution of 1910 and Mexico’s first minister of education.
Here, one of the purest Latin American souls approaches the work of one of the greatest talents of humankind. And the approach, though not irreverent, is not made on his knees. Reyes looks back coolly at his Germanic model over the century and a half that has passed since Goethe’s time and points out the defects in his character—defects that were particularly lamentable in his indulgence of the powerful, to whom Goethe the adviser always submitted his apparently enlightening opinion.
The book guides us through several emotional stages, ending with “the last peaks,” after which, following his long and serene life, the poet entered immortality. The work is a good beginning for learning, with intelligent guidance, about Goethe, the teacher of teachers, the poet, painter, scientist and statesman, whose many-sided genius was crystallized in Faust.
1. Alfonso Reyes (1889–1959) was a leading Mexican humanist. His book on Goethe was first published in 1954.
Bruno Traven is a strange character about whom not even his editors know much. It seems that he writes in English and is a foreigner. I’m commenting on him because of the contribution that his books of adventures have made to Latin American popular novels.
[The Rebellion of the Hanged] is a bit of historical and social reality placed in the framework of unreal characters—unreal because their language and psychology are strange for Indians.
It is obvious that the author is either alien to Mexico or alien to the social class he is describing, but his sympathy for the oppressed is clear, and he does not bother to hide it. The final chapters are more of a revolutionary statement (with many anarchistic details) than a novel.
The action takes place on a ranch in southern Mexico in the period just before the revolution of 1910. The workers were terribly oppressed, and each of the three brothers who owned the ranch tried to outdo the others in terms of brutality. Finally, the workers rebelled and used their machetes to kill first one of the brothers and then the other two and all of the overseers. The book’s title comes from the owners’ custom of hanging the workers who didn’t fulfill their daily quota by their hands, feet and even testicles.
At the beginning of the rebellion, the lives of the less important employees were respected, but at one point, after workers who had deserted and lived for months hiding out in the wilderness returned and were assigned guard duty, these workers quickly killed men, women and children.
Then the column set out for more heavily populated areas, and that is where the book ends.
It can hardly be called a novel, since the portrayal of individual characters is very weak, but the general actions of the rebellious masses are depicted brilliantly, and the general picture of the arbitrary actions of the owners, which are well known by anyone who has explored Latin America, is precise.
1. B. Traven (1882-1969) was the pen name of a writer who lived most of his life in Mexico.
The Caribbean is a neuralgic area in Latin America today and has also been one in the past. It was the place where the most powerful bands of pirates— both Drake’s freebooters and those of the United Fruit Company—had their headquarters.
This is a historical parallel, the essence of which the author does not try to explain. For him, the entire Caribbean is developing in accordance with inexplicable laws and passing from one set of hands to another in interminable wars in response to the greed of various monarchs.
Economics, the leitmotiv on which the history of the Caribbean countries turns, is diluted with unimportant ironies, with anecdotal demonstrations of a very profound culture and with lively, well-handled Spanish.
The historical sequence is shown by the appearance of a naval power that replaces another naval or land power that is in decline, and, though the catastrophe of the period—the terrible threat posed by US imperialism— is mentioned on occasion, this is done with affected, tangential phrases, referring only to things that are already almost part of history, such as the seizure of the Panama Canal.
The author has phrases of courteous compliance for the adventurer who, acting as a plenipotentiary, forced the government of Panama at pistol-point to sign a contemptible agreement, and, though he emphasizes Theodore Roosevelt’s gangster-like acts, his fine, contemptuous and gentlemanly sarcasm disappears when it comes to those who chopped up his homeland.
Arciniegas had the intelligence and, above all, the culture for writing a great work on the subject, but he failed to do so because he placed his knowledge only at the service of himself.
1. Germán Arciniegas (1900–99) was a Colombian essayist and historian.
This book was written by a worker as his entry in the competition for best Latin American novel of 1940. The Costa Rican jury, “considering that this account could not be considered as a novel, disqualified it.” This appears in the note ending the book as a kind of colophon, and from a technical point of view maybe the jury was right, because this story is not a true novel. But it is a vital account written in the depths of the forest, and it basks in the warmth of “welcoming” Mamita Yunai, the United Fruit Company, whose tentacles drain the vitality of the people of Central America and others in South America.
The story is clear, dry and simply written. The first part describes the narrator’s vicissitudes overseeing some elections, with all the dirty tricks that were played, until he returns to Limón and meets an old friend along the way. This meeting leads into the flashback of the second part: his adventures on a banana plantation and the injustice and robbery of the company until one of his coworkers tries to kills a tútile [guard], an Italian in the pay of La Yunai, and goes to prison.
The third part, a kind of epilogue in the form of a dialogue between the two, describes their lives in the intervening period, ending with the two men going their separate ways: the author who narrates in first person the struggles for political demands, and his friend who goes to the “Yunai” banana plantations.
There is no doubt that the main character is the author, and he is right not to mix himself up with the people he’s writing about. He sees them suffering, he understands and sympathizes, but he does not identify with them. He is witness rather than actor. He knows the places he is writing about and it is clear he has considerable experience of them. The psychology of his coworkers and the anecdotes he includes fit well with the text, though there are times when the latter seem a little out of place in the story.
As always with this kind of novel, there is no psychological complexity in the characters, in particular in the “machos” (gringos), who are like “bad guy” cardboard cutouts.
When his recriminations become howls just for effect, he falls into the commonplace of Latin American novels, but the book is, above all, a notable and vivid document describing the outrages of the company and the “authorities,” and the wretched lives of the railway workers (on the railroad lines), to whom the book is dedicated.
1. Carlos Luis Fallas Sibaja (1909-66) was a Costa Rican author and political activist, who led the 1934 banana workers strike. His most famous work, Mamita Yunai [Little Mother “United”] denounces the exploitation of their workers by the United Fruit Company.
When time has smoothed over these political events a little and has equally, ineluctably, given the people their definitive victory, this book of Neruda’s will appear as the greatest symphonic poem of the Americas.
It is poetry constituting a milestone and possibly a summit. Everything in it, even the few (inferior) verses at the end breathe its extraordinary significance. In it, the poet crystallizes the about-face he made when he stopped talking to himself and came down (or up) to speak with us, ordinary mortals, members of the mass of people.
It is the universal hymn of the Americas that retraces everything, from the geographic giants to the shameful little playthings of Mr. Monopoly.
The first chapter is called “A Lamp on Earth” and one hears in it, among other things, his greeting to the immense Amazon:
Amazon
Capital of the water’s syllables
patriarchal father...
A fitting metaphor unites with the precise tones of Neruda’s portrait, giving us the atmosphere, revealing to us its impact on him, so that he no longer sings as a subtle wanderer but as a man. It is this first chapter of his description, which we could call pre-Columbian, that closes with “Men,” our distant ancestors.
like a cup of clay, man
made of stone and atmosphere,
clean as earthen jugs, sonorous.
The poet then finds the synthesis of what this Latin America of ours was, its greatest symbol, and he sings then to the “Heights of Machu-Picchu.” Machu-Picchu is the work of indigenous engineering that speaks most to us, with its elegant simplicity, its graying sadness, the marvelous landscape that surrounds it and the Urubamba River howling below. His synthesis of Machu-Picchu is achieved in three lines that are descriptions almost in the class of Goethe:
Mother of stone, seaspray of the condors.
Towering reef of the human dawn.
Spade lost in the primal sand.
He is not content merely with defining it and narrating its history so, in an episode of poetic madness, he pulls out of the hat all his dazzling and sometimes hermetic metaphors for the symbol-city, occasionally calling to it for help:
Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
What happened? We all know the sequence of the story. “The conquistadors” appear on the horizon:
The butchers razed the islands.
Guanahaní was first
in this story of martyrdom.
Then come Cortés, Alvarado, Balboa, Ximénez de Queseda, Pizarro and Valdivia. All of them are pitilessly savaged by his song, which explodes like pistol fire. The only one for whom the poet has any kindly words is Ercilla, singer of the epic “Araucana”:
Worthy man, sonorous Ercilla, I hear the pulsing
water of your first dawn, a frenzy of birds
and a thunderclap in the foliage.
Leave, oh, leave your blond
eagle’s imprint, crush
your cheek against the wild corn,
everything will be devoured in the dust.
Yet the conquest will continue and will mark its own stamp on the Americas, so that Neruda says in “Despite the Fury”:
But through fire and horseshoe,
as from a fountain illuminated
by the somber blood,
with the metal engulfed by the tempest,
a light was cast over the earth:
number, name, line and structure.
[...] So with the cruel
titan of stone,
the death-dealing falcon,
not only blood but wheat arrived.
The light came despite the daggers.
But the long night of Spain comes to an end and the night of the monopolies looms. All the greats of the Americas have their place in this hymn, from the early liberators to the new, the priests who struggle side-by-side with the people. Now the sound of gunshot disappears and a great song immerses the reader in its joy and hope. In particular it dreams of the epic of the land, of Lautaro and his guerrilla fighters and Caupolicán, who was impaled. “Lautaro Against the Centaur (1554)” gives a clear idea:
Fatigue and death led
Valdivia’s troops through the foliage.
Lautaro’s spears drew near.
Amid corpses and leaves Pedro de Valdivia
advanced, as in a tunnel.
He thought about stony Extremadura,
about golden olive oil in the kitchen,
the jasmine left beyond the seas.
He recognized Lautaro’s war cry.
[...] Valdivia saw the light coming, the dawn,
perhaps life, the sea.
It was Lautaro.
The mysterious meeting of Guayaquil had to be included in the hymn, and in the lines of their political discussion, the spirits of the two great generals are palpitating. But the story was not all the heroic and honorable struggle of these two generals. There were also betrayers, executioners, jailers and murderers. “The Sand Betrayed” opens with “The Hangmen.”
Saurian, scaly America coiled
around vegetable growth, around the flagpole
erected in the swamp:
you nursed terrible children
with poisonous serpent’s milk,
torrid cradles incubated
and covered a bloodthirsty
progeny with yellow clay.
The cat and the scorpion fornicated
in the savage land.
And the Rosas, the Francias, the García Morenos, etc., appear and parade by, and not just names but institutions, castes and groups. Neruda asks his colleagues in “Celestial Poets”:
What did you do, Gidists,
intellectualists, Rilkists,
mistificators, false existentialist
sorcerers, surrealist
butterflies burning
cadavers of fashion,
pale worms of capitalist
cheese…
And when he comes to the North American companies, his powerful voice exudes sympathy for the victims and disgust and loathing for the octopuses and for all those who fragment and gobble up Our America.
When the trumpet blared everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehovah distributed the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors and other entities:
United Fruit Inc.
reserved for itself the juiciest,
the central seaboard of my land,
America’s sweet waist.
To González Videla, the [Chilean] president who sent him into exile, Neruda shouts:
Wretched clown, miserable
mixture of monkey and rat, whose tail
is combed with gold pomade on Wall Street.
But neither has everything died, and his cry bursts forth from hope.
America, I do not invoke your name in vain.
He concentrates on his own country with the “Canto General of Chile” in which, after describing it and singing to it, he offers his “Winter Ode to the Mapocho River”:
O, yes, imprecise snow,
O, yes, trembling in full snowy blossom,
boreal eyelid, little frozen ray,
who, who called you to the ashen valley,
who, who dragged you from the eagle’s beak
down to where your pure waters touch
my country’s terrible tatters?
Then comes the land in “The Earth’s Name is Juan,” and through the awkward singing of each worker, the song of Margarita Naranjo is heard, heartbreaking in its naked pathos.
I am dead. I am from María Elena.
The poet unleashes all his rage against the main guilty parties, against the monopolies, and he addresses his poem “Let the Woodcutter Awaken” to a Yankee soldier:
West of the Colorado River
there’s a place that I love.
He warns:
The world will be implacable for you.
Not only will the islands be deserted but the air
that now knows the words that it loves.
[…] And from the laboratory covered with vines
the unleashed atom will also set forth
toward your proud cities.
González Videla begins the persecution of Neruda, making of him “The Fugitive,” and here his hymn loses a little, for it is as if improvisation has found its pastures in his poetry so that the Canto’s lofty metaphor loses height and abandons its delicate rhythms. Then comes “The Flowers of Punitaqui,” after which he greets his Spanish-speaking colleagues. In “New Year’s Chorale for the Country in Darkness” he takes on the Chilean government, and then recalls “The Great Ocean with his Rapa Nui”:
Tepito-te-henua, navel of the great sea,
workshop of the sea, extinguished diadem.
The book closes with “I Am,” in which he leaves his last testament, after looking once again at himself:
I leave my house by the seaside
in Isla Negra to the labor unions
of copper, coal and nitrate.
Let them rest here, those abused children
of my country, plundered by axes and traitors,
dispersed in its sacred blood,
consumed in volcanic tatters.
[...] I leave my old books, collected
in corners of the globe, venerated
in their majestic typography,
to the new poets of America,
to those who’ll
one day weave tomorrow’s meanings
on the raucous interrupted loom.
Finally, he shouts:
This book ends here.
[...] And this word will rise again,
perhaps in another time free of sorrow,
without the impure fibers that adhered,
black vegetation in my song,
and my burning and starry heart
will flame again in the heights.
And so this book ends, here I leave
my Canto general written
on the run, singing beneath
the clandestine wings of my country.
Today, February 5, in this year
of 1949, in Chile, in “Godemar
de Chena,” a few months before
I turned forty-five.
With this conclusion from François Villon, he ends the greatest volume in Latin American poetry. It is the epic of our time, brushing with its curious wings all that is good and evil in the great land of our birth. There is room for nothing but struggle. As with Arauncana, his brilliant forebear, it is a continuous fight, and its caress is the clumsy caress of the soldier, which is no less loving for being awkward, charged as it is with the power of the earth.
1. Pablo Neruda (1904-73) was a Chilean poet and among the most outstanding communist intellectuals of his time. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and his epic poem Canto General is considered one of the greatest works of Latin American literature.
Twenty years have passed since his last book, La pedagogía de la personalidad [Pedagogy of the Personality], La Plata: 1937.
Arévalo was president of this small country for six years and, with its backing, stood firm against the arrogant and voracious US monopolies that constantly launched themselves on Guatemala’s wealth. After his six years as president, he turned it over to Árbenz; halfway through Árbenz’s term, Guatemala was openly attacked. Arévalo recalls memories of his time in the presidency and the offers the United States made to buy him, to get him to accept its rules of the game.
He analyzes the complex panorama of world politics and points with serious irony to the stupidities of US propaganda concerning the “Guatemalan threat.” He analyzes the actions that the Árbenz administration took concerning UFCO [United Fruit Company], IRCA [International Railways] and [Electric] Bond and Share and comes to the conclusion that those actions were indirectly responsible for the plundering of Guatemala.
Naturally, no thinking person could believe otherwise, for it was extremely clear, but it takes courage to speak out and say so at this special moment in Latin America’s history.
This is not a book that will survive its period; it will die with it because its 100 impassioned pages contain no lasting value. But it is interesting to note the difference 20 years has made between the pedantic work of a young doctor of philosophy and the virile address of a patriot who was the president of his homeland and who, as such, should always do his utmost to protect his country against efforts to belittle it.
1. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo (1904–90) was president of Guatemala (1945-51), who instituted a number of reforms in education, land reform and labor laws.
A small drama well done. Of philosophical depth, though not very original. When all is said and done, the story of an alchemist enamored by an idea is as old as alchemy itself. The important thing is that the author found a social topic and echoes the cries of the poor.
The topic and its development are classical: Shakespeare (Hamlet and Macbeth) covered them to a great extent, and O’Neill also contributed to the work.
The witch doctor is killed by his brother, who is egged on by his (the brother’s) wife. The couple gains nothing, because the witch doctor had nothing more than illusions—not a formula for making gold. The witch doctor’s daughter takes revenge in a way whose psychological complexity is reminiscent of the US playwright.
All of this takes place against the backdrop of a subjugated nation of the hungry, who seek a savior wherever he may be.
1. Carlos Solórzano Fernández (1919–2011) was born in Guatemala, but became one of Mexico’s most important playwrights. El Hechicero was first published in 1954.