Thus Hollywood confirmed its ways. Twenty-five years earlier, its first blockbuster was Birth of a Nation, an anthem of praise to the Ku Klux Klan.
MARCH
March 1. WAS
Eliza Lynch was digging the grave. With her fingernails.
Slack-jawed, the victorious soldiers let her.
Her pawing raised clouds of red dust and shook the loose strands of red hair spilling across her face.
Francisco Solano López, the country’s president, lay at her side.
This woman, now mutilated, did not cry for him, did not even look at him. She threw dirt on him, useless handfuls wanting to bury him in this land that had been his land.
He was gone and Paraguay was gone.
Murdered, the only Latin American country that refused to bow down to the bankers and the merchants.
Five years the war had lasted.
And while Eliza continued hurling fistfuls of earth on the man who had been her man, the sun went down and with the sun went this cursed day in the year 1870.
From the foliage on Cerro Corá, a few birds bid it good-bye.
March 2. WHISTLING, I SPEAK
Whistling is the language of La Gomera.
And since 1999 the tongue preserved by this whistling people has been taught in the schools of the Canary Islands.
In ancient times, the shepherds of La Gomera learned to whistle to communicate from distant hilltops across gorges that multiplied the echoes. Their whistles related news of comings and goings, dangers and delights, work to be done and the days going by.
Though centuries have passed, on that island human whistles remain the envy of birds, as powerful as the voices of the wind and the sea.
March 3. THE FOUNDING MOTHERS OF BRAZIL
This day in 1770 brought an end to the queendom of Teresa de Benguela in Quariterê.
It was one of many sanctuaries of freedom for fugitive slaves in Brazil. For twenty years Teresa had thwarted the soldiers of Mato Grosso’s governor. They never did capture her alive.
In these densely wooded hiding places, women did much more than cook and give birth; a number of them were fighters and leaders, like Zacimba Gambá in Espírito Santo, Mariana Crioula in the hinterlands of Rio de Janeiro, Zeferina in Bahia and Felipa Maria Aranha in Tocantins.
In Pará, on the banks of the Trombetas River, no one questioned orders given by Mãe Domingas.
In the vast refuge of Palmares in Alagoas, the African princess Aqualtune governed a free town until it was torched by colonial troops in 1677.
In Pernambuco the community founded in 1802 by two fugitive black sisters, Francisca and Mendecha Ferreira, still exists. It is called Conceição das Crioulas.
Whenever the slavers’ troops drew near, the former slave women filled their frizzy African tresses with seeds. As elsewhere in the Americas, they turned their heads into granaries, in case they had to flee at a moment’s notice.
March 4. THE SAUDI MIRACLE
In 1938 a big story broke: Standard Oil Company had found a sea of oil under the immense sands of Saudi Arabia.
Today that country is the world’s top producer of high-profile terrorists and of human rights violations. But the Western powers that so often invoke the Arab threat when they want to sow panic or justify dropping bombs get along famously with this kingdom of five thousand princes. Could it be because Saudi Arabia sells the most oil and buys the most weapons?
March 5. DIVORCE AS GOOD HYGIENE
In 1953 a Luis Buñuel movie called Él opened in Mexico.
Buñuel, a Spanish exile, had filmed the novel of another Spanish exile, Mercedes Pinto, which told of the misery of married life.
It ran for a full three weeks on the marquee. Audiences laughed like it was a Cantinflas comedy.
The author of the novel had been booted out of Spain in 1923. She had committed the sacrilege of giving a talk at the University of Madrid with a title that made her intolerable: “Divorce as Good Hygiene.”
The dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera, had her hauled in. He spoke in the name of the Holy Mother Catholic Church, and in a few words he said it alclass="underline" “Shut up or leave.”
Mercedes Pinto left.
From that point on her creative stride, which awakened the earth wherever she tread, left footprints in Uruguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico.
March 6. THE FLORIST
Georgia O’Keeffe lived and painted for nearly a century and died still painting.
She raised a garden of paintings in the solitude of the desert.
Georgia’s flowers — clitoris, vulva, vagina, nipple, belly button — were chalices for a thanksgiving mass for the joy of having been born a woman.
March 7. THE WITCHES
In the year 1770, the English Parliament debated a law to punish wily women.
Perfidious females had been seducing His Majesty’s subjects and tricking them into matrimony using such evil arts as “scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes or bolstered hips.”
The authors of these frauds, the bill said, “shall incur the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft and the like misdemeanours and the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.”
Given the technological backwardness of the times, the bill failed to mention silicone, liposuction, Botox, plastic surgery and other medical and chemical innovations.
March 8. HOMAGES
Today is International Women’s Day.
Over the millennia, thinkers human and divine, all of them male, have taken up the woman question:
Regarding their anatomy:
Aristotle: “Woman is an incomplete man.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Woman is the misbegotten product of some defect in the male seed.”
Martin Luther: “Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly they possess intelligence. Women have narrow shoulders and wide hips, to keep house and bear and raise children.”
Regarding their nature:
Francisco de Quevedo: “Hens lay eggs and women lay men.”
Saint John of Damascus: “Woman is a sicked she-ass.”
Arthur Schopenhauer: “Woman is an animal with long hair and short sight.”
Regarding their fate:
Jehovah said to women, according to the Bible: “Thy husband shall rule over thee.”
Allah said to Mohammed, according to the Koran: “Righteous women are obedient.”
March 9. THE DAY MEXICO INVADED THE UNITED STATES
On this early morning in 1916, Pancho Villa crossed the border with his horsemen, set fire to the city of Columbus, killed several soldiers, nabbed a few horses and guns, and the following day was back in Mexico to tell the tale.
This lightning incursion is the only invasion the United States has suffered since its wars to break free from England.
In contrast, the United States has invaded practically every country in the entire world.
Since 1947 its Department of War has been called the Department of Defense, and its war budget the defense budget.