Book review: "Mirrors" (Eduardo Galeano)

Galeano's snippets of history in 'Mirrors' entertains, saddens

By Jim Higgins of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: July 4, 2009

Earlier this year at the Summit of the Americas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America," a history of the region from European contact through the present, that is critical of the U.S. The pointed gift provoked a brief spike in book sales here.

But the Uruguayan writer Galeano deserves a better fate in the States than that of a talking point in a political stunt. To call him a leftist is accurate but reductive. Galeano is no yammering American-style pundit. He's a learned historian, a brilliant synthesizer and elegant stylist with a preferential option for the poor, to use the Catholic phrase, though Galeano parts way with the church on many points.

He's also a feminist, and a man who loves beauty, pleasure and the beautiful game: his lyrical "Soccer in Sun and Shadow" is one of the peaks of soccer literature.

"Mirrors," recently published here in Mark Fried's translation, should increase Galeano's stature in the English-speaking world and enhance his reputation as unclassifiably brilliant. This anthology of lyrically written vignettes runs from prehistoric origin tales through the present, with a focus on the dreams, accomplishments and suffering of the forgotten, the underdogs, the downtrodden and the persecuted of history.

With its blend of legends and careful history, it feels like an anatomy, the word Northrop Frye used to describe a work that blends satire with an encyclopedic impulse. It's filled with punch lines, but ones just as likely to be poignant or harrowing as amusing:

"The results of civilization were surprising: our lives became more secure but less free, and we worked a lot harder."

"In the Greek Olympics, women, slaves, and foreigners never took part. Not in Greek democracy either."

"Official history has it that Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, two oceans at once. Were the natives blind?"

"Then England invented the fairy tale of free trade: nowadays, when poor countries cannot sleep at night, rich countries still tell them that story to put them to sleep."

While Galeano can be playful, parts of "Mirrors" are almost unbearably sad, particularly the section of stories about the slave trade in the Americas. For all its short paragraphs and pithy tales, "Mirrors" is a dense book, a reduction sauce of human history best consumed in small portions, so the potent flavors don't overwhelm that taster.