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358 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
"Desde los tiempos de la conquista y de la esclavitud, a los indios y a los negros les han robado los brazos y las tierras, la fuerza de trabajo y la riqueza; y también la palabra y la memoria."
"Dios, distraído, se olvidó de crear a la mujer y al hombre, y la mujer y el hombre no tuvieron más remedio que hacerse a sí mismos. Y allí, en el fondo del abismo, en el basural, la mujer y el hombre se crearon con las sobras de Dios. Los seres humanos hemos nacido de la basura, y por eso todos tenemos algo de día y algo de noche, y somos todos tiempo y tierra y agua y viento."
"Más que en los museos, donde la pobre se aburre, la memoria está en el aire que respiramos; y ella, desde el aire, nos respira."
"En lengua castellana decimos, cuando se nos ocurre decir que tenemos esperanza: abrigamos esperanza. Linda expresión, lindo desafío: abrigarla, para que ella no se nos muera de frío en estas implacables intemperies de los tiempos que corren."
The "killer instinct" is an essential ingredient for getting ahead, a human virtue when it helps large companies digest small and strong countries devour weak but proof of bestiality when some jobless guy goes around with a knife in his fist. (6)
The world economy is the most efficient expression of organized crime. The international bodies that control currency, trade, and credit practice international terrorism against poor countries, and against the poor of all countries, with a cold-blooded professionalism that would make the best of the bomb throwers blush. (6)
The looking-glass school teaches us to suffer reality, not to change it; to forget the past, not learn from it; to accept the future, not invent it. In its halls of learning, impotence, amnesia, and resignation are required courses. (8)
What schools and media teach as the only possible way of remembering the past simply passes on the voices that repeat the boring litany of power's self-sacralization. Exoneration requires unremembering. (34)
No judge can send a global system to jail for killing by hunger, but a crime is a crime even when it's carried out as the most normal thing in the world. (154)
Just as "smart bombs" killed Iraqis in the Gulf war without anyone except the dead finding out, 'smart money' earns 40 percent profits without anyone finding out how. (157)
The development of technology leads not to more free time or freedom, only to more unemployment and fear. (164)
Saving the environment is turning out to be the most brilliant enterprise of the very companies that are destroying it. (191)
Inequality before the law lies at the root of real history, but official history is written by oblivion, not memory. We know all about this in Latin America, where exterminators of Indians and traffickers in slaves have their statues in city plazas, while streets and avenues tend to bear the names of those who stole the land and looted the public purse. (201)
Impunity is crime's reward, openly promoting and encouraging more of the same. And when the criminal who has raped, robbed, tortured, and murdered without answering to anyone happens to be the state, a green light is flashed to all of society to rape, rob, torture, and kill. The same society that uses punishment like a scarecrow to frighten criminals at the bottom rewards them at the top with a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. (207)
No matter how much they burn it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is. The right to remember does not figure among the human rights consecrated by the United Nations, but now more than ever we must insist on it and act on it....When it's truly alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it. (210)
Impunity is the child of bad memory. (211)
If we behave ourselves, it will come to pass. We will all see the same images and hear the same sounds and wear the same clothes and eat the same hamburgers and enjoy the same solitude in our houses all alike in neighborhoods all alike in cities all alike where we will all breathe the same garbage and serve our cars with the same devotion and carry out the orders of the same machines in a world that will be marvelous for all who have no legs or wings or roots. (233)
Like so many other symbols of consumer society, cars belong to a minority whose habits are parlayed into universal truths, obliging the rest of us to see cars as the only possible extension of the human body. (241)
Modernization, motorization: the roar of traffic drowns out the chorus of voices denouncing civilization's sleight of hand that steals our freedom, then sells it back to us, that cuts off our legs to make us buy running machines. (243)
The consuming masses take orders in a language that is universal; advertising has achieved what Esperanto could not. (257)
Free time, time imprisoned: the homes of the very poor have no beds, but they have TVs and the TV has the floor. Bought on credit, this little beast is proof of the democratic nature of progress. It listens to no one but speaks for all. Poor and rich alike thus learn the virtues of the latest car, and poor and rich alike discover the favorable interest rates offered by one bank or another. (257)
I've always heard that money can't buy happiness, but every poor TV viewer has ample grounds for believing money can buy something so close to happiness that the difference can be left to specialists. (259)
The global mass media have set the price of freedom of expression in the clouds; the opinionated, who have the right to listen, are ever more numerous, while the opinionators, who have the right to make themselves heard, are ever fewer. (276)
Technological diversity is said to be democratic diversity. Technology places images, words, and music within the reach of all, as never before. But this marvel becomes a dirty trick if private monopoly ends up imposing a one-image, one-word, one-tune dictatorship. (278)
In their speeches politicians are prepared to die for education, and in their acts they proceed to kill it... (293)
In the name of justice, so-called socialism had sacrificed freedom. The symmetry is revealing: in the name of freedom, capitalism sacrifices justice day in, day out. Are we obliged to kneel before one of these two altars? Those of us who believe that injustice is not our immutable fate have no reason to identify with the despotism of a minority that denied freedom, was accountable to no one, treated people as children, and saw unity as unanimity and diversity as treason. (318)
In the language of Castile, when we want to say we have hope, we say we shelter hope. A lovely expression, a challenge: to shelter her so she won't die of the cold in the bitter climate of these times. (320)
Truth lies in the voyage, not the port....Living wherever, living however, living whenever, each person contains many possible persons. Every day, the ruling system places our worst characteristics at center stage, condemning our best to languish behind the backdrop. The system of power is not in the least eternal. We may be badly made, but we're not finished, and it's the adventure of changing reality and changing ourselves that makes our blip in the history of the universe worthwhile, this fleeting warmth between two glaciers that is us. (329)
If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn't we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight? (337)
Μια γέφυρα δίχως ποτάμι.
Ψηλές προσόψεις κτιρίων δίχως τίποτε από πίσω.
Ο κηπουρός ποτίζει το πλαστικό γρασίδι.
Κυλιόμενες σκάλες που δεν οδηγούν πουθενά.
Ο αυτοκινητόδρομς που μας δίνει τη δυνατότητα να γνωρίσουμε τόπους, που εξαιτίας του έχουν καταστραφεί.
Η οθόνη της τηλέορασης δείχνει μια τηλεοπτική συσκεύη που περιέχει μιαν άλλη τηλεοπτική συσκευή μέσα στην οποία υπάρχει μια τηλεοπτική συσκευή.
Είναι δηλητηριασμένο το χώμα που θα μας σκεπάσει ή θα μας εξορίσει.
Δεν υπάρχει πια αέρας, παρα μόνο δυσαρέσκεια.
Δεν υπάρχει πια βροχή, παρα μόνο όξινη βροχή.
Δεν υπάρχουν πια πάρκα, παρα μόνο parkings (εκτός από το πάρκο στη Ναυαρίνου).
Δεν υπάρχουν πια κοινωνίες, παρα μόνο ανώνυμες εταιρίες.
Εταιρίες στη θέση των εθνών.
Καταναλωτές στη θέση των πολιτών.
Πολεοδομικές περιοχές αντί για πόλεις.
Δεν υπάρχουν άνθρωποι, παρα μόνο κοινό.
Δεν υπάρχει πραγματικότητα, παρα μόνο διαφήμιση.
Δεν υπάρχουν οράματα, παρα μόνο τηλεοράσεις.
Όταν θαυμάζουμε ένα λουλούδι συνήθως λέμε: «Τι ωραίο, είναι σαν πλαστικό».
Η γραμμή του ισημερινού δεν περνάει από τη μέση του χάρτη της υδρογείου που μας μάθαιναν στο σχολείο. Περισσότερο από μισό αιώνα πριν, ο Γερμανός εξερευνητής Άρνο Πέτερς παραδέχτηκε αυτό που όλοι έβλεπαν αλλά κανείς δεν έλεγε: ο βασιλιάς της γεωγραφίας ήταν γυμνός.
Ο χά��της της υδρογείου που μας δίδασκαν έδειχνε να είναι τα δύο τρίτα του κόσμου στο Βορρά και το ένα τρίτο στο Νότο. Στο χάρτη εκείνο, η Ευρώπη είναι μεγαλύτερη από τη Λατινική Αμερική, παρότι στην πραγματικότητα η Λατινική Αμερική έχει τη διπλάσια επιφάνεια από την Ευρώπη. Η Ινδία φαίνεται πιο μικρή από τη Σκανδιναβία, παρότι είναι τρεις φορές μεγαλύτερη. Οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες και ο Καναδάς καταλαμβάνουν στο χάρτη περισσότερο χώρο από την Αφρική, ενώ στην πραγματικότητα μόλις και μετά βίας φτάνουν τα δύο τρίτα της αφρικανικής ηπείρου.
Ο χάρτης ψεύδεται. Η παραδοσιακή γεωγραφία κλέβει το χώρο, όπως η ιμπεριαλιστική οικονομία κλέβει τον πλούτο, όπως η επίσημη ιστορία κλέβει τη μνήμη και η τυπική κουλτούρα κλέβει το λόγο.
Paradise
If we behave ourselves, it will come to pass. We will all see the same images and hear the same sounds and wear the same clothes and eat the same hamburgers and enjoy the same solitude in our houses all alike in neighborhoods all alike in cities all alike where we will breathe the same garbage and serve our cars with the same devotion and carry out the orders of the same machines in a world that will be marvelous for all who have no legs or wings or roots.
"La aptitud más útil para abrirse paso y sobrevivir, el killing instinct, el instinto asesino, es virtud humana cuando sirve para que las empresas grandes hagan la digestión de las empresas chicas y para que los países fuertes devoren a los países débiles, pero es prueba de bestialidad cuando cualquier pobre tipo sin trabajo sale a buscar comida con un cuchillo en la mano. "
"Mucha magia y mucha suerte tienen los niños que consiguen ser niños"
"Este mundo, que ofrece el banquete a todos y cierra la puerta en las narices de tantos es, al mismo tiempo, igualador y desigual: igualador en las ideas y en las costumbres que impone, y desigual en las oportunidades que brinda. "
"En estos tiempos neoliberales, los derechos públicos se reducen a favores del poder, y el poder
se ocupa de la salud pública y de la educación pública, como si fueran formas de la caridad pública, en vísperas de elecciones. "
"La memoria rota nos hace creer que la riqueza es inocente de la pobreza, que la riqueza y la pobreza vienen de la eternidad y hacia la eternidad caminan, y que así son las cosas porque Dios, o la costumbre, quieren que así sean"
"Se sataniza al drogadicto y, sobre todo, al drogadicto pobre, como se sataniza al pobre que roba, para absolver a la sociedad que los genera"
"El olvido, dice el poder, es el precio de la paz, mientras nos impone una paz fundada en la aceptación de la injusticia como normalidad cotidiana."