I was reading this in Bolivia, shortly after the “water war” by which the people literally overthrew the transnational corporation that had a stranglehold over the privatized water supply for the landlocked nation. It was also during the time that Evo Morales was organizing the pan-indigenous base to support his socialist campaign to becoming the first indigenous president. I was studying with an anarchist women's group in La Paz, learning about the oppression of women by Bolivian institutions as well as by well-meaning foreign NGO's. It was also the time that the tragedy of September 11th took place, which sparked myriad spontaneous and planned debates, dialogues and discussions in public plazas, taxi rides, and universities. I, an American, suddenly became interesting to Bolivians, as someone who had an indigenous understanding of “the other side:” the superpower; the “global north,” the suppressor of democratic movements and regimes; the capitol of global capital... Needless to say, I was shook up. My world-view was shook up. I gained a broadened awareness benefited from a spectrum of experiences and perspectives.
What is perhaps the most amazing facet of Galeano's writing is its scale. Without ever falling into “master narratives,” he glides from pre-conquest indigenous myths and experiences to contemporary struggles of Latin American street children. He writes about his writing:
“son ventanas para una casa que cada lector construye a partir de la lectura; y hay tantas casas posibles como posibles lectores. Las ventanas, espacios abiertos al tiempo, ayudan a mirar. Eso, al menos, quisiera el autor: ayudar a mirar. Que el lector vea y descubra el tiempo que fue, como si el tiempo que fue estuviera siendo, pasado que se hace presente...” (5).
(“they are windows for a house that each reader constructs from the reading; and there are as many houses possible as there are readers. The windows, open spaces to time, help one to look out. That, at least, is what the author wants: to help one to look out. That the reader sees and discovers time that once was, as if that time were happening, the past made present...”)
Galeano's themes are all here: memory, imagination, desire, and the persistence of everyday and ordinary resistance. It is Howard Zinn, written from the land of magical realism. Reading Galeano allows you to transcend distances and time, as in a dream or surrealist narrative. But his insights are not ephemeral: he is just as analytical as Chomsky or Zinn, and he distills all of his energy into a plea to oppose neoliberalism and neocolonialism; to not “ser como ellos” (“be like them”). Because, as he demonstrates in the title essay, “they” (that would be us, the U.S.) and their way of being, is not sustainable, and because their way of life is predicated on the submission of others (who can the subordinated subordinate?). To be like them is not possible, nor is it desirable.