March 22. WORLD WATER DAY
We are made of water.
From water life bloomed. Rivers of water are the blood that nourishes the earth, and of water too are the cells that do our thinking, the tears that do our crying and the recollections that form our memory.
Memory tells us that today’s deserts were yesterday’s forests and that the dry world knew well enough to stay wet in those remote days when water and earth belonged to no one and to everyone.
Who took the water? The monkey that raised the club. If I remember correctly, that’s how the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey begins. The unarmed monkey, meanwhile, got clubbed to death.
Sometime later, in the year 2009, a space probe discovered water on the moon. The news sparked plans of conquest.
Sorry, moon.
March 23. WHY WE MASSACRED THE INDIANS
With a well-aimed swipe, General Efraín Ríos Montt overthrew another general in the year 1982 and proclaimed himself president of Guatemala.
A year and a half later, the president, a pastor of the California-based Church of the Word, claimed victory in the holy war that exterminated four hundred and forty indigenous communities.
He said the feat would not have been possible without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, who commanded his intelligence services. Another important collaborator, his spiritual advisor Francisco Bianchi, explained to a correspondent of the New York Times:
“The guerrillas have many collaborators among the Indians. Those Indians are subversives, aren’t they? And how do you put an end to subversion? Obviously, you have to kill those Indians. And then people will say, ‘You are massacring innocents.’ But they are not innocent.”
March 24. WHY WE DISAPPEARED THE DISAPPEARED
On this day in the year 1976, the military dictatorship that would disappear thousands of Argentines was born.
Twenty years later, General Jorge Rafael Videla explained to a journalist, Guido Braslavsky:
“No, they could not be shot. Let’s pick a number, say five thousand. Argentine society would not have put up with so many executions, two yesterday in Buenos Aires, six today in Córdoba, four tomorrow in Rosario, and on and on until we reached five thousand. No, that would not have worked. Should we reveal where the remains lie? But in the sea, in the River Plate, in the Riachuelo, what could we possibly show? At one point, consideration was given to making the list public. But then we realized that as soon as they are declared dead there will be questions to which we cannot reply: who killed them, when, where, how. ”
March 25. THE ANNUNCIATION
On a day like today, more or less, the archangel Gabriel came down from heaven and the Virgin Mary learned that the child of God was living in her womb.
Relics of the Virgin are now worshipped in churches all over the world:
the shoes and slippers she wore,
her nightgowns and her dresses,
hairnets, diadems, combs,
veils and locks of hair,
traces of the milk that Jesus sucked
and her four wedding rings, even though she married only once.
March 26. MAYA LIBERATORS
On this night in 1936, Felipa Poot, a Maya Indian, was stoned to death in the town of Kinchil.
Dying with her under the hail of stones were three other women, also Mayas, who had fought at her side against sadness and fear.
They were killed by “the divine caste,” which is what those who owned the land and people of the Yucatán called themselves.
March 27. WORLD THEATER DAY
In the year 2010, the public relations firm Murray Hill Inc. told the politicians who claim to govern to stop play-acting.
A short while before, the United States Supreme Court had removed all limits on corporate donations to electoral campaigns; for a much longer while, the bribes legislators received from lobbyists had been legal.
Applying the same logic, Murray Hill Inc. launched its own candidacy for US Congress in the state of Maryland. It was high time to do away with intermediaries:
“This is our democracy. We bought it. We paid for it. Now it’s time we got behind the wheel ourselves. Vote Murray Hill Incorporated for the best democracy money can buy.”
Many people thought this was a joke.
March 28. MANUFACTURING AFRICA
When it opened in 1932, Tarzan of the Apes drew long lines at the movie houses.
Tarzan’s howl from Hollywood has been the language of Africa everywhere ever since, even though the actor, Johnny Weissmuller, was born in Romania and never set foot in Africa.
Tarzan’s vocabulary had its limits. He only knew how to say, “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” but he swam like no one else, winning five gold medals at the Olympics, and he yelled like no one had ever yelled.
That king-of-the-jungle howl was the work of Douglas Shearer, a soundman who mixed voices for gorillas, hyenas, camels, violins, sopranos and tenors.
Female fans besieged Johnny to the end of his days, begging him to howl.
March 29. THE JUNGLE WAS HERE
Miracle in the Amazon: in the year 1967 a huge gusher of oil erupted in Lago Agrio.
From that moment, and for a quarter of a century, Texaco Petroleum Company sat at the table, napkin at throat, knife and fork in hand, stuffing itself with oil and gas, and shitting eighteen billion gallons of poison on the Ecuadorian jungle.
The Indians had never heard the word “pollution.” They learned its meaning when fish went belly up in the rivers, lakes turned to brine, trees withered on the banks, animals fled, nothing grew in the soil and people were born sick.
Several presidents of Ecuador, all of them above suspicion, collaborated in this undertaking, which earned a chorus of selfless applause from the publicists who praised it, the journalists who celebrated it, the lawyers who defended it, the experts who justified it and the scientists who absolved it.
March 30. INTERNATIONAL DOMESTIC WORKERS DAY IN LATIN AMERICA
Maruja had no idea how old she was.
Of her years before, she said nothing. Of her years after, she expected nothing.
She was neither pretty nor ugly nor indifferent.
She walked with a shuffle, a duster, a broom or a spoon in her fist.
Awake, she buried her head below her shoulders.
Asleep, she buried her head between her knees.
When she spoke, she kept her eyes on the ground, as if she were counting ants.
She had worked in the homes of others for as long as she could remember.
She had never been outside the city of Lima.
Many times she changed houses and she felt at home in none.
At last she found a place where she was treated as a person.
Within a few days, she left.
She was starting to like it.
March 31. THIS FLEA
Today in 1631 John Donne died in London.
This contemporary of Shakespeare’s published almost nothing during his lifetime.
Centuries later, we are lucky to have a few of the verses he left behind.
Like this:
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,