A man sits at a dark wooden table in a bar in the old city of Montevideo, Uruguay.
The bar is old. Historic. It’s been around for more than a hundred years. And it looks it.
The decor hasn’t changed much since the 1870s.
Wooden walls. Wooden tables. Italian chairs.
The bar is called the Cafe Brasileiro.
And it was a favorite of more than a few Uruguayan poets and writers.
Mario Benedetti, Idea Vilariño, José Enrique Rodó.
They say Juan Carlos Onetti wrote the first words of his first novel here in the 1930s.
But of them all, one man is remembered in the menu…
Eduardo Galeano.
The ingredients of the Cafe Galeano are Amaretto, Cream and dulce de leche — caramel.
Galeano frequented the Cafe Brasileiro for decades. Chair leaned back against the wall. Sometimes a pencil or a pen in hand.
Titles cannot describe him.
He was writer, reader, journalist, editor.
But he was also historian.
Catching stories in the air.
Writing and retelling them anew.
But he did not write for the stuffy halls of the elites or academia.
He wrote for the people.
He was a truth-teller.
A myth-maker.
An essayist.
A poet.
Polishing his craft
Honing his art
Chiseling his sculptures with words
Until they were perfectly symmetrical
Beautifully balanced
The least common denominator of language and meaning.
Gorgeous bouquets of words.
He was a storyteller.
And his tales had morals
Points
Punchlines.
His vignettes — tiny packets of beauty
That remind us who we are
And where we come from.
The immense injustices carried out by the powerful
And the profound insight of the people.
His most famous book, Open Veins of Latin America, was published in 1971.
A hard-hitting examination of the gutting of the Americas by Europe and the United States since the arrival of Columbus.
But it reads like a novel.
They say the book was one of the few items writer Isabel Allende took with her when she fled Chile with her family following the brutal 1973 coup.
He too would have to flee in 1973, when the military took over Uruguay.
He went into exile first in Argentina, and then in Spain, when Argentina also fell into its own military dictatorship in 1976.
There, he wrote his Memories of Fire trilogy.
“I’m a writer obsessed with remembering,” he wrote once. “With remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
His were words of wisdom.
Upside-down words.
Words that celebrated the poor and working class.
Words that denounced the global injustices by stripping them of their fake façades and painting them anew… showing who they really were.
“What a paradox today’s world is,” he writes in his posthumous 2016 book, Hunter of Stories. “In the name of freedom, we are invited to choose between the same and the same, be it on the table or on television.”
Galeano passed away exactly 10 years ago — April 13, 2015.
His words live on.
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My wife and I interviewed Galeano once in the mid 2000s, at the Cafe Brasileiro in Montevideo.
It was for a documentary we were doing about democracy, called Beyond Elections.
We spoke for only a few minutes. But his insight, as always, was profound.
“Every country is in the United Nations,” he said. “But we only formulate recommendations. The decisions are made by the UN Security Council. And within the UN Security Council, those who decide are the countries that have the right of veto. Which are five… the five countries that watch over world peace: US, the UK, France, China, and Russia. They are also the five top producers of weapons. In other words, world peace is in the hands of the lords of war,” he said.
I’ll place a link for the interview and our documentary in the show notes.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. This is episode 20 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
You can also support my work and see exclusive pictures and background information in my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 20 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
April is poetry month in the United States. We are taking advantage to feature three stories about poetry and writing this week. This is the first of those three.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.
Here is a clip of Michael’s interview with Eduardo Galeano about the UN and international institutions:
You can watch Michael Fox and Silvia Leindecker’s full documentary, Beyond Elections, below.
In English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL4YYYiQIco&t=114s
En Español: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgdXksT92uU&t=1246s
En Portugues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5S_iKHjLBM&t=2111s
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.