Dear Editor,
Eduardo Galeano is a brilliant writer who captures the spirit − blood, tears, joy, struggles, hopes − of the peoples of the Americas. His scapel-like words reveal the dark side of exploitation and continuing undermining of the rights of the peoples of the Americas. Let’s hope that President Obama reads the Galeano book presented by President Chávez. It will certainly give him a different perspective.
Here is a short piece from Galeano’s book, Voices of Time:
“The Portuguese went all out to celebrate the fifth hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Bartholomeu Dias on the Southern coast of Africa. The country became a vast theatre of imperial nostalgia, and centre stage was the intrepid navigator who reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, a time of supreme glory, when God bestowed on Portugal half the world.
Actors dressed in period costumes of silk and velvets with fine swords and many-feathered caps, filled an exact replica of the ship in which Bartholomeu Dias put to sea and set sail for Africa.
On a South African beach, according to the script, a crowd of blacks was to jump for grateful joy for the explorers who five centuries earlier had done them the favour of discovering them. But in 1987 the beach was reserved for whites only. Under apartheid, blacks were not allowed.
A euphoric throng of whites, painted black, welcomed the Portuguese.”
Yours faithfully,
P. Khan
