The congratulations do not mention the executioners, torturers, inquisitors, jailers, and informers who are the functionaries of the Fund in these developing countries.
A Circular Symphony for Poor Countries, in Six Successive Movements
So that labor may be increasingly obedient and cheap, the poor countries need legions of executioners, torturers, inquisitors, jailers, and informers.
To feed and arm these legions, the poor countries need loans from the rich countries.
To pay the interest on these loans, the poor countries need more loans.
To pay the interest on the loans on top of loans, the poor countries need to increase their exports.
To increase their exports, products condemned to perpetually collapsing prices, the poor countries need to lower production costs.
To lower production costs, the poor countries need increasingly obedient and cheap labor.
To make labor increasingly obedient and cheap, the poor countries need legions of executioners, torturers, inquisitors …
1984: Washington
1984
The U.S. State Department decides to suppress the word murder in its reports on violations of human rights in Latin America and other regions. Instead of murder, one must say: illegal or arbitrary deprivation of life.
For some time now, the CIA has avoided the word murder in its manuals on practical terrorism. When the CIA murders an enemy or has him murdered, it neutralizes him.
The State Department calls any war forces it lands south of its borders peace-keeping forces; and the killers who fight to restore its business interests in Nicaragua freedom fighters.
(94)
1984: Washington
We Are All Hostages
Nicaragua and other insolent countries still act as if unaware that history has been ordered not to budge, under pain of total destruction of the world.
“We will not tolerate …” warns President Reagan.
Above the clouds hover the nuclear bombers. Farther up, the military satellites. Beneath the earth and beneath the sea, the missiles. The Earth still rotates because the great powers permit it to do so. A plutonium bomb the size of an orange would suffice to explode the entire planet, and a good-size discharge of radiation could turn it into a desert populated by cockroaches.
President Reagan says Saint Luke (14:31) advises increasing military funding to confront the Communist hordes. The economy is militarized; weapons shoot money to buy weapons to shoot money. They manufacture arms, hamburgers, and fear. There is no better business than the sale of fear. The president announces, jubilantly, the militarization of the stars.
(430)
1984: São Paulo
Twenty Years after the Reconquest of Brazil
The last president of the military dictatorship, General Figueiredo, leaves the government to civilians.
When they ask him what he would do if he were a worker earning the minimum wage, General Figueiredo replies: “I would put a bullet through my head.”
Brazil suffers a famished prosperity. Among countries selling food to the world, it stands in fourth place; among countries suffering hunger in the world, sixth place. Now Brazil exports arms and automobiles as well as coffee, and produces more steel than France; but Brazilians are shorter and weigh less than they did twenty years ago.
Millions of homeless children wander the streets of cities like São Paulo, hunting for food. Buildings are turning into fortresses, doormen into armed guards. Every citizen is either an assailant or assailed.
(371)
1984: Guatemala City
Thirty Years after the Reconquest of Guatemala,
the Bank of the Army is the country’s most important, after the Bank of America. Generals take turns in power, overthrowing each other, transforming dictatorship into dictatorship; but all apply the same policy of land seizure against the Indians guilty of inhabiting areas rich in oil, nickel, or whatever else turns out to be of value.
These are no longer the days of United Fruit, but rather of Getty Oil, Texaco, and the International Nickel Company. The generals wipe out many Indian communities wholesale and expel even more from their lands. Multitudes of hungry Indians, stripped of everything, wander the mountains. They come from horror, but they are not going to horror. They walk slowly, guided by the ancient certainty that someday greed and arrogance will be punished. That’s what the old people of corn assure the children of corn in the stories they tell them when night falls.
(367 and 450)
1984: Rio de Janeiro
Mishaps of Collective Memory in Latin America
Public accountant João David dos Santos jumped for joy when he managed to collect his many overdue accounts. Only payment in kind, but something. For lack of funds, a social science research center paid him its whole library of nine thousand books and over five thousand magazines and pamphlets devoted to contemporary Brazilian history. It contained very valuable material on the peasant leagues of the Northeast and the Getulio Vargas administration, among other subjects.
Then accountant dos Santos put the library up for sale. He offered it to cultural organizations, historical institutes, and various ministries. No one had the money. He tried universities, state and private, one after another. No takers. He left the library on loan at one university for a few months, until they started demanding rent. Then he tried private citizens. No one showed the slightest interest. The nation’s history is an enigma, a lie, or a yawn.
The unhappy accountant dos Santos feels great relief when he finally succeeds in selling his library to the Tijuca Paper Factory, which turns all these books, magazines, and pamphlets into tinted toilet paper.
(371)
1984: Mexico City
Against Forgetting,
the only death that really kills, Carlos Quijano wrote what he wrote. This grouch and troublemaker was born in Montevideo as the century was born, and dies in exile, as Uruguay’s military dictatorship is falling. He dies at work, preparing a new Mexican edition of his magazine Marcha.
Quijano celebrated contradictions. Heresy for others to him was a sign of life. He condemned imperialism, humiliator of nations and multitudes, and proclaimed that Latin America is destined to create a socialism worthy of the hopes of its prophets.
(356)
1984: Mexico City
The Resurrection of the Living
The Mexicans make a custom of eating death, a sugar or chocolate skeleton dripping with colored caramel. In addition to eating it, they sing it, dance it, drink it, and sleep it. Sometimes, to mock power and money, the people dress death in a monocle and frock coat, epaulettes and medals, but they prefer it stripped naked, racy, a bit drunk, their companion on festive outings.