From that point on, his machine gave rise to other machines that turned peasants into workers, and suddenly, bewilderingly, today became tomorrow and packed yesterday off to prehistory.
January 20. SACRED SERPENT
In 1585, at their third episcopal conference, the bishops of Mexico forbade the painting or sculpting of serpents on church walls, retables or altars.
The exterminators of idolatry had by then noticed that those tools of the Devil failed to provoke repulsion or fear among the Indians.
The pagans worshipped snakes. In the Biblical tradition serpents had been scorned ever since that business about Adam’s temptation, but America was a loving serpentarium. The sinuous reptile was a sign of good harvests, the lightning bolt that brings on the rains, and every cloud was home to a water snake. A plumed serpent was the god Quetzalcóatl, who had departed on the winding waters.
January 21. THEY WALKED ON WATER
In the year 1779, English conquistador James Cook witnessed a strange spectacle in the islands of Hawaii.
A pastime as dangerous as it was inexplicable: the natives of Kealakekua Bay loved standing on the waves and riding them.
Was Cook the first spectator of the sport we now call surfing?
Maybe it was more than that. Maybe there was more to the rite of the waves. After all, those primitives believed that water, mother of all life, was sacred, but they did not kneel or bow before their divinity. They walked on the sea in communion with her energy.
Three weeks later, Cook was stabbed to death by the walkers on water. The magnanimous explorer, who had already given Australia to the British Crown, never could make a gift of Hawaii.
January 22. A KINGDOM MOVES
On this January day in 1808, the exhausted ships that had left Lisbon two months before arrived on the coast of Brazil without bread or water.
Napoleon was trampling the map of Europe and at the Portuguese border he unleashed the stampede: the Portuguese court, obliged to change address, marched off to the tropics.
Queen Maria led the way. Right behind her came the prince and the dukes, counts, viscounts, marquises and barons, all wearing the wigs and sumptuous attire inherited later on by the carnival of Rio de Janeiro. On their heels, butting up against each other in desperation, came priests and military officers, courtesans, dressmakers, doctors, judges, notaries, barbers, scribes, cobblers, gardeners.
Queen Maria was not quite in her right mind, which is a nice way to say she was off her rocker, but she pronounced the only reasonable phrase to be heard amid that bunch of lunatics: “Not so fast, it’s going to look like we’re running away!”
January 23. CIVILIZING MOTHER
In 1901, the day after Queen Victoria breathed her last, a solemn funeral ceremony began in London.
Organizing it was no easy task. A grand farewell was due the queen who gave her name to an epoch and set the standard for female abnegation by wearing black for forty years in memory of her dead husband.
Victoria, symbol of the British Empire, lady and mistress of the nineteenth century, imposed opium on China and virtue on her own country.
In the seat of her empire, works that taught good manners were required reading. Lady Gough’s Book of Etiquette, published in 1863, established some of the social commandments of the times: one must avoid, for example, the intolerable proximity of male and female authors on library shelves.
Books could only stand together if the authors were married, such as in the case of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
January 24. CIVILIZING FATHER
On this day in 1965 Winston Churchill passed away.
In 1919, when presiding over the British Air Council, he had offered one of his frequent lessons in the art of war:
“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be so good. and would spread a lively terror.”
And in 1937, speaking before the Palestine Royal Commission, he offered one of his frequent lessons on the history of humanity:
“I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race. has come in and taken their place.”
January 25. THE RIGHT TO ROGUERY
The people of Nicaragua celebrate the Güegüense and laugh right along with him.
During these days, the days of his fiesta, the streets become stages where this rogue spins yarns, sings ditties and reels off dance-steps, and by labor and grace of his mummery everyone becomes a storyteller, a singer, a dancer.
The Güegüense is the daddy of Latin American street theater.
Since the beginning of colonial times, he has been teaching the arts of the master trickster: “When you can’t beat ’em, tie ’em. When you can’t tie ’em, tie ’em up.”
Century after century, the Güegüense has never stopped playing the fool. He’s the font of fatuous gibberish, the master of devilries envied by the Devil himself, the de-humbler of the humble, a fucking fucked fucker.
January 26. THE SECOND FOUNDING OF BOLIVIA
On this day in the year 2009, a plebiscite said yes to a new constitution proposed by President Evo Morales.
Up to this day, Indians were not the sons and daughters of Bolivia: they were only its hired hands.
In 1825 the first constitution bestowed citizenship on three or four percent of the population. The rest, indigenous people, women, the poor, the illiterate, were not invited to the party.
For many foreign journalists, Bolivia is an ungovernable country, incompetent, incomprehensible, intractable, insane. They’ve got the wrong “in”: they should just admit that for them Bolivia is invisible. And that should come as no surprise, for until today Bolivia was blind to itself.
January 27. OPEN YOUR EARS
On this day in 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born.
Centuries later, even babies love the music he left us.
It has been proven time and again that newborns cry less and sleep better when they listen to Mozart.
His welcome to the world is the best way of telling them, “This is your new home. And this is how it sounds.”
January 28. OPEN YOUR MIND
Long before the printing press, Emperor Charlemagne set up in Aachen large teams of copyists who built the finest library in Europe.
Charlemagne, who did so much for reading, did not know how to read. He died an illiterate, at the beginning of the year 814.
January 29. HUMBLY I SPEAK
Today in 1860 Anton Chekhov was born.
He wrote as if he were saying nothing.
And he said everything.
January 30. THE CATAPULT
In 1933 Adolf Hitler was named Germany’s chancellor. Soon after, he presided over an immense rally, as befitted the new lord and master of the nation.
Modestly he screamed: “I am founding the new era of truth! Awaken, Germany! Awaken!” Rockets, fireworks, church bells, chants and cheers echoed his words.
Five years earlier, the Nazi Party had won less than three percent of the vote.