A review by pturnbull
Days and Nights of Love and War, by Eduardo Galeano
4.0
So this is what it was like to live in the southern cone during its dirty little war against the young. At first the fragmented, sparse, understated narrative voice reminded me of Henri Michaux and Jean Rhys. Later, I realized that the narrator is numb most of the time, due to the war waged against love, against the poor, against joy, by the machine, which is power, and which represents a major player in Latin American history.
This book was first published in translation in 1983 and describes Galeano's experiences in the 1970s, when he lived in Argentina as an exile from his native Uruguay. He was the editor of Crisis, a political-cultural magazine published in Buenos Aires, and his work has him traveling throughout Latin America. Some of the people he meets and describes include Che, Salvador Allende, "the old man" (a disguised Borges, I think) as well as those who are not so famous, whose careers were abbreviated by their unfortunate citizenship in countries where thinking was punished by death. The book tells about Galeano visiting a cafe in Santiago, for example, and meeting a friend after months apart, and having a conversation in which that friend relays her kidnapping and mock execution. The bodies of writers he has edited are fished out of rivers. Danger is always there, but in a banal, quotidian way--it's just life, it's the way the machine works. Someone is kidnapped at night, tortured, returned after two days. Another is not returned, but killed, along with his young son.
Despite the horror and fear, there are nights of love with friends and strangers. Though many of these unions are brief affairs, the connections sustain him. Moments of tenderness, warmth, friendship and loyalty exist, even in this dirty war. Love is a rebellion against the machine, which views humans as slaves to be used and destroyed. The machine does what it can to annihilate the creative, caring community of humankind in the service of death and profit. Galeano remembers the heat of a woman's body and draws strength from the memory to pick up pen once more to write and share the stories of his time and place with the future. Recommended for all who are interested in 20th century Latin American history.
This book was first published in translation in 1983 and describes Galeano's experiences in the 1970s, when he lived in Argentina as an exile from his native Uruguay. He was the editor of Crisis, a political-cultural magazine published in Buenos Aires, and his work has him traveling throughout Latin America. Some of the people he meets and describes include Che, Salvador Allende, "the old man" (a disguised Borges, I think) as well as those who are not so famous, whose careers were abbreviated by their unfortunate citizenship in countries where thinking was punished by death. The book tells about Galeano visiting a cafe in Santiago, for example, and meeting a friend after months apart, and having a conversation in which that friend relays her kidnapping and mock execution. The bodies of writers he has edited are fished out of rivers. Danger is always there, but in a banal, quotidian way--it's just life, it's the way the machine works. Someone is kidnapped at night, tortured, returned after two days. Another is not returned, but killed, along with his young son.
Despite the horror and fear, there are nights of love with friends and strangers. Though many of these unions are brief affairs, the connections sustain him. Moments of tenderness, warmth, friendship and loyalty exist, even in this dirty war. Love is a rebellion against the machine, which views humans as slaves to be used and destroyed. The machine does what it can to annihilate the creative, caring community of humankind in the service of death and profit. Galeano remembers the heat of a woman's body and draws strength from the memory to pick up pen once more to write and share the stories of his time and place with the future. Recommended for all who are interested in 20th century Latin American history.