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Overview
Eduardo Galeano’s monumental three-volume retelling of the history of the New World begins with Genesis, a vast chain of legends sweeping from the birth of creation to the era of savage colonialism. Through lyrical prose and deep understanding, Galeano (author of the celebrated Open Veins of Latin America) recounts creation myths, pre-Columbian societies, and the brutality of conquest, from the Andes to the Great Plains.
Galeano’s project to restore to history “breath, liberty, and the word” unfolds as a unique, powerful work of literature. This daring masterpiece sets the past free, weaving a new kind of history from mythology, silenced voices, and the clash of worlds. Genesis is the first book of the Memory of Fire trilogy, which continues with Faces and Masks and Century of the Wind.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480481381 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 04/29/2014 |
| Series: | Memory of Fire , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Sales rank: | 75,746 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Genesis
Memory of Fire, Volume One
By Eduardo Galeano, Cedric Belfrage
Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Copyright © 1982 Eduardo GaleanoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8138-1
CHAPTER 1
FIRST VOICES
The Creation
The woman and the man dreamed that God was dreaming about them.
God was singing and clacking his maracas as he dreamed his dream in a cloud of tobacco smoke, feeling happy but shaken by doubt and mystery.
The Makiritare Indians know that if God dreams about eating, he gives fertility and food. If God dreams about life, he is born and gives birth.
In their dream about God's dream, the woman and the man were inside a great shining egg, singing and dancing and kicking up a fuss because they were crazy to be born. In God's dream happiness was stronger than doubt and mystery. So dreaming, God created them with a song:
"I break this egg and the woman is born and the man is born. And together they will live and die. But they will be born again. They will be born and die again and be born again. They will never stop being born, because death is a lie." (51)
Time
For the Maya, time was born and had a name when the sky didn't exist and the earth had not yet awakened.
The days set out from the east and started walking.
The first day produced from its entrails the sky and the earth.
The second day made the stairway for the rain to run down.
The cycles of the sea and the land, and the multitude of things, were the work of the third day.
The fourth day willed the earth and the sky to tilt so that they could meet.
The fifth day decided that everyone had to work.
The first light emanated from the sixth day.
In places where there was nothing, the seventh day put soil; the eighth plunged its hands and feet in the soil.
The ninth day created the nether worlds; the tenth earmarked for them those who had poison in their souls.
Inside the sun, the eleventh day modeled stone and tree.
It was the twelfth that made the wind. Wind blew, and it was called spirit because there was no death in it.
The thirteenth day moistened the earth and kneaded the mud into a body like ours.
Thus it is remembered in Yucatán.
(208)
The Sun and the Moon
The first sun, the watery sun, was carried off by the flood. All that lived in the world became fish.
The second sun was devoured by tigers.
The third was demolished by a fiery rain that set people ablaze.
The fourth sun, the wind sun, was wiped out by storm. People turned into monkeys and spread throughout the hills.
The gods became thoughtful and got together in Teotihuacán.
"Who will take on the job of dawning?"
The Lord of the Shells, famous for his strength and beauty, stepped forward.
"I'll be the sun," he said.
"Who else?"
Silence.
Everybody looked at the Small Syphilitic God, the ugliest and wretchedest of all gods, and said, "You."
The Lord of the Shells and the Small Syphilitic God withdrew to the hills that are now the pyramids of the sun and the moon. There they fasted and meditated.
Afterward the gods piled up firewood, made a bonfire, and called to them.
The Small Syphilitic God ran up and threw himself into the flames. He immediately emerged, incandescent, in the sky.
The Lord of the Shells looked at the bonfire with a frown, moved forward, backward, hesitated, made a couple of turns. As he could not decide, they had to push him. After a long delay he rose into the sky. The gods were furious and beat him about the face with a rabbit, again and again, until they extinguished his glow. Thus, the arrogant Lord of the Shells became the moon. The stains on the moon are the scars from that beating.
But the resplendent sun didn't move. The obsidian hawk flew toward the Small Syphilitic God. "Why don't you get going?"
The despised, purulent, humpbacked, crippled one answered, "Because I need blood and power."
This fifth sun, the sun that moves, gave light to the Toltecs and gives it to the Aztecs. He has claws and feeds on human hearts.
(108)
The Clouds
Cloud let fall a drop of rain on the body of a woman. After nine months, she had twins.
When they grew up, they wanted to know who their father was.
"Tomorrow morning early," she said, "look toward the east. You'll see him there, up in the sky like a tower."
Across earth and sky, the twins went in search of their father.
Cloud was incredulous and demanded, "Show me that you are my children."
One of the twins sent a flash of lightning to the earth. The other, a thunderclap. As Cloud was still doubtful, they crossed a flood and came out safe.
Then Cloud made a place for them by his side, among his many brothers and nephews.
(174)
The Wind
When God made the first of the Wawenock Indians, some bits of clay remained on the earth. With these bits Gluskabe made himself.
From on high, God asked in astonishment, "Well, where did you come from?"
"I'm miraculous," said Gluskabe. "Nobody made me."
God stood beside him and reached out his hand toward the universe. "Look at my work," he challenged. "If you're miraculous, show me things you have invented."
"I can make wind, if you like." And Gluskabe blew at the top of his lungs.
The wind was born and immediately died.
"I can make wind," Gluskabe admitted shamefacedly, "but I can't make it stay."
Then God blew, so powerfully that Gluskabe fell down and lost all his hair.
(174)
The Rain
In the region of the great northern lakes, a little girl suddenly discovered she was alive. The wonders of the world opened her eyes and she took off at random.
Following the trail of the Menomenee nation's hunters and woodcutters, she came to a big log cabin. There lived ten brothers, birds of the thunder, who offered her shelter and food.
One bad morning, when she was fetching water from the creek, a hairy snake caught her and carried her into the depths of a rocky mountain. The snakes were about to eat her up when the little girl sang.
From far away, the thunder birds heard the call. They attacked the rocky mountain with lightning, rescued the prisoner, and killed the snakes.
The thunder birds left the little girl in the fork of a tree.
"You'll live here," they told her. "We'll come every time you sing."
Whenever the little green tree frog sings from his tree, the thunderclaps gather and it rains upon the world.
(113)
The Rainbow
The forest dwarfs had caught Yobuënahuaboshka in an ambush and cut off his head.
The head bumped its way back to the land of the Cashinahuas.
Although it had learned to jump and balance gracefully, nobody wanted a head without a body.
"Mother, brothers, countrymen," it said with a sigh, "Why do you reject me? Why are you ashamed of me?"
To stop the complaints and get rid of the head, the mother proposed that it should change itself into something, but the head refused to change into what already existed. The head thought, dreamed, figured. The moon didn't exist. The rainbow didn't exist.
It asked for seven little balls of thread of all colors.
It took aim and threw the balls into the sky one after the other. The balls got hooked up beyond the clouds; the threads gently unraveled toward the earth.
Before going up, the head warned: "Whoever doesn't recognize me will be punished. When you see me up there, say: 'There's the high and handsome Yobuënahuaboshka!'"
Then it plaited the seven hanging threads together and climbed up the rope to the sky.
That night a white gash appeared for the first time among the stars. A girl raised her eyes and asked in astonishment: "What's that?"
Immediately a red parrot swooped upon her, gave a sudden twirl, and pricked her between the legs with his sharp-pointed tail. The girl bled. From that moment, women bleed when the moon says so.
Next morning the cord of seven colors blazed in the sky.
A man pointed his finger at it. "Look, look! How extraordinary!" He said it and fell down.
And that was the first time that someone died.
(59)
Day
The crow, which now dominates the totem of the Haida nation, was the grandson of that great divine chief who made the world.
When the crow wept asking for the moon, which hung from the wall of tree trunks, his grandfather gave it to him. The crow threw it into the sky through the chimney opening and started crying again, wishing for the stars. When he got them he spread them around the moon.
Then he wept and hopped about and screamed until his grandfather gave him the carved wooden box in which he kept daylight. The great divine chief forbade him to take the box out of the house. He had decided that the world should live in the dark.
The crow played with the box, pretending to be satisfied, but out of the corner of his eye he watched the guards who were watching him.
When they weren't looking, he fled with the box in his claw. The point of the claw split passing through the chimney, and his feathers were burned and stayed black from then on.
The crow arrived at some islands off the northern coast. He heard human voices and asked for food. They wouldn't give him any. He threatened to break the wooden box.
"I've got daylight in here," he warned, "and if it escapes, the sky will never put out its light. No one will be able to sleep, nor to keep secrets, and everybody will know who is people, who is bird, and who is beast of the forest."
They laughed. The crow broke open the box, and light burst forth in the universe.
(87)
Night
The sun never stopped shining and the Cashinahua Indians didn't know the sweetness of rest.
Badly in need of peace, exhausted by so much light, they borrowed night from the mouse.
It got dark, but the mouse's night was hardly long enough for a bite of food and a smoke in front of the fire. The people had just settled down in their hammocks when morning came.
So then they tried out the tapir's night. With the tapir's night they could sleep soundly and they enjoyed the long and much-deserved rest. But when they awoke, so much time had passed that undergrowth from the hills had invaded their lands and destroyed their houses.
After a big search they settled for the night of the armadillo. They borrowed it from him and never gave it back.
Deprived of night, the armadillo sleeps during the daytime.
(59)
The Stars
By playing the flute love is declared, or the return of the hunters announced. With the strains of the flute, the Waiwai Indians summon their guests. For the Tukanos, the flute weeps; for the Kalinas it talks, because it's the trumpet that shouts.
On the banks of the Negro River, the flute confirms the power of the men. Flutes are sacred and hidden, and any woman who approaches deserves death.
In very remote times, when the women had the sacred flutes, men toted firewood and water and prepared the cassava bread. As the men tell it, the sun got indignant at the sight of women running the world, so he dropped into the forest and fertilized a virgin by slipping leaf juices between her legs. Thus was born Jurupari.
Jurupari stole the sacred flutes and gave them to the men. He taught the men to hide them and defend them and to celebrate ritual feasts without women. He also told them the secrets they were to transmit to their male children.
When Jurupari's mother found where the sacred flutes were hidden, he condemned her to death; and with the bits that remained of her he made the stars of the sky.
(91 and 112)
The Milky Way
No bigger than a worm, he ate the hearts of birds. His father was the best hunter of the Moseten people.
Soon he was a serpent as big as an arm. He kept asking for more hearts. The hunter spent the whole day in the forest killing for his son.
When the serpent got too big for the shack, the forest had been emptied of birds. The father, an expert bowman, brought him jaguars' hearts.
The serpent devoured them and grew. Then there were no more jaguars in the forest.
"I want human hearts," said the serpent.
The hunter emptied his village and its vicinity of people, until one day in a far-off village he was spotted on a tree branch and killed.
Driven by hunger and nostalgia, the serpent went to look for him.
He coiled his body around the guilty village so that no one could escape. While the men let fly all their arrows against this giant ring that had laid siege to them, the serpent rescued his father's body and grew upward. There he can still be seen undulating, bristling with luminous arrows, across the night sky.
(174)
The Evening Star
The moon, stooping mother, asked her son, "I don't know where your father is. Find him and give him word of me."
The son took off in search of the brightest of all lights. He didn't find him at noontime, when the sun of the Tarascan people drinks his wine and dances with his women to the beat of drums. He didn't find him on the horizons and in the regions of the dead. The sun wasn't in any of his four houses.
The evening star is still hunting his father across the sky. He always arrives too early or too late.
(55)
Language
The First Father of the Guaranís rose in darkness lit by reflections from his own heart and created flames and thin mist. He created love and had nobody to give it to. He created language and had no one to listen to him.
Then he recommended to the gods that they should construct the world and take charge of fire, mist, rain, and wind. And he turned over to them the music and words of the sacred hymn so that they would give life to women and to men.
So love became communion, language took on life, and the First Father redeemed his solitude. Now he accompanies men and women who sing as they go:
We're walking this earth,
We're walking this shining earth.
(40 and 192)
Fire
The nights were icy because the gods had taken away fire. The cold cut into the flesh and words of men. Shivering, they implored with broken voices; the gods turned a deaf ear.
Once, they gave fire back and the men danced for joy, chanting hymns of gratitude. But soon the gods sent rain and hail and put out the bonfires.
The gods spoke and demanded: to deserve fire, men must cut open their chests with obsidian daggers and surrender their hearts.
The Quiché Indians offered the blood of their prisoners and saved themselves from the cold.
The Cakchiquels didn't accept the bargain. The Cakchiquels, cousins of the Quichés and likewise descended from the Mayas, slipped away on feathered feet through the smoke, stole the fire, and hid it in their mountain caves.
(188)
The Forest
In a dream, the Father of the Uitoto Indians glimpsed a shining mist. The mist was alive with mosses and lichens and resonant with winds, birds, and snakes. The Father could catch the mist, and he held it with the thread of his breath. He pulled it out of the dream and mixed it with earth.
Several times he spat on the misty earth. In the foamy mash the forest rose up, trees unfolded their enormous crowns, fruit and flowers erupted. On the moistened earth the grasshopper, the monkey, the tapir, the wild boar, the armadillo, the deer, the jaguar, and the anteater took shape and voice. Into the air soared the golden eagle, the macaw, the vulture, the hummingbird, the white heron, the duck, and the bat.
The wasp arrived in a great hurry. He left toads and men without tails and then rested.
(174)
The Cedar
The First Father conjured the world to birth with the tip of his wand and covered it with down.
Out of the down rose the cedar, the sacred tree from which flows the word. Then the First Father told the Mby'a- guaranís to hollow out the trunk and listen to what it had in it. He said that whoever could listen to the cedar, the casket of words, would know where to establish his hearth. Whoever couldn't would return to despised dust.
(192)
The Guaiacum Tree
A young woman of the Nivakle people was going in search of water when she came upon a leafy tree, Nasuk, the guaiacum, and felt its call. She embraced its firm trunk, pressing her whole body against it, and dug her nails into its bark. The tree bled.
Leaving it, she said, "How I wish, Nasuk, that you were a man!"
And the guaiacum turned into a man and ran after her. When he found her, he showed her his scratched shoulder and stretched out by her side.
(192)
Colors
White were once the feathers of birds, and white the skin of animals.
Blue now are those that bathed in a lake into which no river emptied and from which none was born. Red, those that dipped in the lake of blood shed by a child of the Kadiueu tribe. Earth-color, those that rolled in the mud, and ashen those that sought warmth in extinguished campfires. Green, those that rubbed their bodies in the foliage, white those that stayed still.
(174)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Genesis by Eduardo Galeano, Cedric Belfrage. Copyright © 1982 Eduardo Galeano. Excerpted by permission of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Epigraph
- First Voices
- The Creation
- Time
- The Sun and the Moon
- The Clouds
- The Wind
- The Rain
- The Rainbow
- Day
- Night
- The Stars
- The Milky Way
- The Evening Star
- Language
- Fire
- The Forest
- The Cedar
- The Guaiacum Tree
- Colors
- Love
- The Rivers and the Sea
- The Tides
- Snow
- The Flood
- The Tortoise
- The Parrot
- The Hummingbird
- The Night Bird (Urutaú)
- The Ovenbird
- The Crow
- The Condor
- The Jaguar
- The Bear
- The Crocodile
- The Armadillo
- The Rabbit
- The Snake
- The Frog
- The Bat
- Mosquitos
- Honey
- Seeds
- Corn
- Tobacco
- Maté
- Cassava
- The Potato
- The Kitchen
- Music
- Death
- Resurrection
- Magic
- Laughter
- Fear
- Authority
- Power
- War
- Parties
- Conscience
- The Sacred City
- Pilgrims
- The Promised Land
- Dangers
- The Spider Web
- The Prophet
- Old New World
- 1492: The Ocean Sea The Sun Route to the Indies
- 1492: Guanahaní Columbus
- 1493: Barcelona Day of Glory
- 1493: Rome The Testament of Adam
- 1493: Huexotzingo Where Is the Truth? Where Are the Roots?
- 1493: Pasto Everybody Pays Taxes
- 1493: Santa Cruz Island An Experience of Miquele de Cuneo from Savona
- 1495: Salamanca The First Word from America
- 1495: La Isabela Caonabó
- 1496: La Concepción Sacrilege
- 1498: Santo Domingo Earthly Paradise
- The Language of Paradise
- 1499: Granada Who Are Spaniards?
- 1500: Florence Leonardo
- 1506: Valladolid The Fifth Voyage
- 1506: Tenochtitlán The Universal God
- 1511: Guauravo River Agüeynaba
- 1511: Aymaco Becerrillo
- 1511: Yara Hatuey
- 1511: Santo Domingo The First Protest
- 1513: Cuareca Leoncico
- 1513: Gulf of San Miguel Balboa
- 1514: Sinú River The Summons
- 1514: Santa María del Darién For Love of Fruit
- 1515: Antwerp Utopia
- 1519: Frankfurt Charles V
- 1519: Acla Pedrarias
- 1519: Tenochtitlán Portents of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air
- 1519: Cempoala Cortés
- 1519: Tenochtitlán Moctezuma
- 1519: Tenochtitlán The Capital of the Aztecs
- Aztec Song of the Shield
- 1520: Teocalhueyacan “Night of Sorrow”
- 1520: Segura de la Frontera The Distribution of Wealth
- 1520: Brussels Dürer
- 1520: Tlaxcala Toward the Reconquest of Tenochtitlán
- 1521: Tlatelolco Sword of Fire
- 1521: Tenochtitlán The World Is Silenced in the Rain
- 1521: Florida Ponce de León
- 1522: Highways of Santo Domingo Feet
- 1522: Seville The Longest Voyage Ever Made
- 1523: Cuzco Huaina Cápac
- 1523: Cuauhcapolca The Chief’s Questions
- 1523: Painala Malinche
- 1524: Quetzaltenango The Poet Will Tell Children the Story of This Battle
- 1524: Utatlán The Vengeance of the Vanquished
- 1524: Scorpion Islands Communion Ceremony
- 1525: Tuxkahá Cuauhtémoc
- 1526: Toledo The American Tiger
- 1528: Madrid To Loosen the Purse Strings
- 1528: Tumbes Day of Surprises
- 1528: Bad Luck Island “People Very Generous with What They Have …”
- 1531: Orinoco River Diego de Ordaz
- Piaroa People’s Song About the White Man
- 1531: Mexico City The Virgin of Guadelupe
- 1531: Santo Domingo A Letter
- 1531: Serrana Island The Castaway and the Other
- 1532: Cajamarca Pizarro
- 1533: Cajamarca The Ransom
- 1533: Cajamarca Atahualpa
- 1533: Xaquixaguana The Secret
- 1533: Cuzco The Conquerors Enter the Sacred City
- 1533: Riobamba Alvarado
- 1533: Quito This City Kills Itself
- 1533: Barcelona The Holy Wars
- 1533: Seville The Treasure of the Incas
- 1534: Riobamba Inflation
- 1535: Cuzco The Brass Throne
- 1536: Mexico City Motolinía
- 1536: Machu Picchu Manco Inca
- 1536: Valley of Ulúa Gonzalo Guerrero
- 1536: Culiacán Cabeza de Vaca
- 1537: Rome The Pope Says They Are Like Us
- 1538: Santo Domingo The Mirror
- 1538: Valley of Bogota Blackbeard, Redbeard, Whitebeard
- 1538: Masaya Volcano Vulcan, God of Money
- 1541: Santiago de Chile Inés Suárez
- 1541: Rock of Nochistlán Never
- 1541: Old Guatemala City Beatriz
- 1541: Cabo Frío At Dawn, the Cricket Sang
- 1542: Quito El Dorado
- 1542: Conlapayara The Amazons
- 1542: Iguazú River In Broad Daylight
- 1543: Cubagua The Pearl Fishers
- 1544: Machu Picchu The Stone Throne
- War Song of the Incas
- 1544: Campeche Las Casas
- 1544: Lima Carvajal
- 1545: Royal City of Chiapas The Bad News Comes from Valladolid
- 1546: Potosí The Silver of Potosí
- 1547: Valparaíso The Parting
- Song of Nostalgia, from the Spanish Songbook
- 1548: Xaquixaguana The Battle of Xaquixaguana Is Over
- 1548: Xaquixaguana The Executioner
- 1548: Xaquixaguana On Cannibalism in America
- 1548: Guanajuato Birth of the Guanajuato Mines
- 1549; La Serena The Return
- The Last Time
- 1552: Valladolid He Who Always Took the Orders Now Gives Them
- 1553: The Banks of the San Pedro River Miguel
- A Dream of Pedro de Valdivia
- 1553: Tucapel Lautaro
- 1553: Tucapel Valdivia
- 1553: Potosí Beauty and the Mayor
- To the Strains of the Barrel Organ a Blind Man Sings to Her Who Sleeps Alone
- 1553: Potosí The Mayor and the Gallant
- 1554: Cuzco The Mayor and the Ears
- 1554: Lima The Mayor and the Bill Collector
- 1554: Mexico City Sepúlveda
- 1556: Asunción, Paraguay Conquistadoras
- 1556: Asunción, Paraguay “The Paradise of Mahomet”
- Womanizer Song, from the Spanish Songbook
- 1556: La Imperial Mariño de Lobera
- 1558: Cañete The War Goes On
- Araucanian Song of the Phantom Horseman
- 1558: Michmaloyan The Tzitzimes
- 1558: Yuste Who Am I? What Have I Been?
- 1559: Mexico City The Mourners
- Advice of the Old Aztec Wise Men
- 1560: Huexotzingo The Reward
- 1560: Michoacán Vasco de Quiroga
- 1561: Villa de los Bergantines The First Independence of America
- 1561: Nueva Valencia del Rey Aguirre
- 1561: Neuva Valencia del Rey From Lope de Aguirre’s Letter to King Philip II
- 1561. Barquisimeto Order Restored
- 1562: Maní The Fire Blunders
- 1563: Arauco Fortress The History That Will Be
- 1564: Plymouth Hawkins
- 1564: Bogotá Vicissitudes of Married Life
- 1565. Road to Lima The Spy
- 1565: Yauyoa That Stone Is Me
- Prayer of the Incas, Seeking God
- 1565: Mexico City Ceremony
- 1566: Madrid The Fanatic of Human Dignity
- 1566: Madrid Even If You Lose, It’s Still Worthwhile
- 1568: Los Teques Guaicaipuro
- 1568; Mexico City The Sons of Cortés
- 1569: Havana St. Simon Against the Ants
- 1571: Mexico City Thou Shalt Inform On Thy Neighbor
- 1571: Madrid Who Is Guilty, Criminal or Witness?
- 1572: Cuzco Túpac Amaru I
- The Vanquished Believe:
- 1574: Mexico City The First Auto-da-Fé in Mexico
- 1576: Guanajuato The Monks Say:
- 1576: Xochimilco The Apostle Santiago versus the Plague
- 1577: Xochimilco St. Sebastian versus the Plague
- 1579: Quito Son of Atahualpa
- 1580: Buenos Aires The Founders
- 1580: London Drake
- 1582: Mexico City What Color Is a Leper’s Skin?
- 1583: Copacabana God’s Aymara Mother
- 1583: Santiago de Chile He Was Free for a While
- 1583: Tlatelolco Sahagiún
- 1583: Ácoma The Stony Kingdom of Cíbola
- Night Chant, a Navajo Poem
- 1586: Cauri The Pestilence
- 1588: Quito Grandson of Atahualpa
- 1588: Havana St. Martial versus the Ants
- 1589: Cuzco He Says He Had the Sun
- 1592: Lima An Auto-da-Fé in Lima
- 1593: Guarapari Anchieta
- 1596: London Raleigh
- 1597: Seville A Scene in Jail
- 1598: Potosí History of Floriana Rosales, Virtuous Woman of Potosí (Abbreviated Version of the Chronicle by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela)
- Spanish Couplets to Be Sung and Danced
- 1598: Panama City Times of Sleep and Fate
- 1599: Quito The Afro-Indians of Esmeraldas
- 1599: Chagres River The Wise Don’t Talk
- 1599: La Imperial Flaming Arrows
- 1599: Santa Maria They Make War to Make Love
- 1600: Santa Marta They Had a Country
- Techniques of Hunting and Fishing
- 1600: Potosí The Eighth Wonder of the World
- Prophecies
- Ballad of Cuzco
- 1600: Mexico City Carriages
- 1601: Valladolid Quevedo
- 1602: Recife First Expedition Against Palmares
- 1603: Rome The Four Parts of the World
- 1603: Santiago de Chile The Pack
- 1605: Lima The Night of the Last Judgment
- 1607: Seville The Strawberry
- 1608: Puerto Príncipe Silvestre de Balboa
- 1608: Seville Mateo Alemán
- 1608: Córdoba The Inca Garcilaso
- 1609: Santiago de Chile How to Behave at the Table
- 1611: Yarutini The Idol-Exterminator
- 1612: San Pedro de Omapacha The Beaten Beats
- 1613: London Shakespeare
- 1614: Lima Minutes of the Lima Town Council: Theater Censorship Is Born
- 1614: Lima Indian Dances Banned in Peru
- 1615: Lima Guamán Poma
- 1616: Madrid Cervantes
- 1616: Potosí Portraits of a Procession
- 1616: Santiago Papasquiaro Is the Masters’ God the Slaves’ God?
- 1617: London Whiffs of Virginia in the London Fog
- 1618: Lima Small World
- 1618: Luanda Embarcation
- 1618: Lima Too Dark
- 1620: Madrid The Devil’s Dances Come from America
- 1622: Seville Rats
- 1624: Lima People for Sale
- 1624: Lima Black Flogs Black
- 1624: Lima The Devil at Work
- 1624: Seville Last Chapter of the “Life of the Scoundrel”
- 1624: Mexico City A River of Anger
- 1625: Mexico City How Do You Like Our City?
- 1625: Samayac Indian Dances Banned in Guatemala
- 1626: Potosí A Wrathful God
- 1628: Chiapas Chocolate and the Bishop
- 1628: Madrid Blue Blood for Sale
- Song About the Indies Hand, Sung in Spain
- 1629: Las Cangrejeras Bascuñán
- 1629: Banks of the Bío-Bío River Putapichun
- 1629: Banks of River Imperial Maulicán
- 1629: Repocura Region To Say Good-Bye
- 1630: Motocintle They Won’t Betray Their Dead
- 1630: Lima María, Queen of the Boards
- 1631: Old Guatemala A Musical Evening at the Concepción Convent
- Popular Couplets of the Bashful Lover
- 1633: Pinola Gloria in Excelsis Deo
- 1634: Madrid Who Was Hiding Under Your Wife’s Cradle?
- 1636: Quito The Third Half
- 1637: Mouth of the River Sucre Dieguillo
- 1637: Massachusetts Bay “God is an Englishman,”
- 1637: Mystic Fort From the Will of John Underhill, Puritan of Connecticut, Concerning a Massacre of Pequot Indians
- 1639: Lima Martín de Porres
- 1639: San Miguel de Tucumán From a Denunciation of the Bishop of Tucumán, Sent to the Inquisition Tribunal in Lima
- 1639: Potosí Testament of a Businessman
- The Indians Say:
- 1640: Sao Salvador de Bahia Vieira
- 1641: Lima Avila
- 1641: Mbororé The Missions
- 1641: Madrid Eternity Against History
- 1644: Jamestown Opechancanough
- 1645: Quito Mariana de Jesús
- 1645: Potosí Story of Estefanía, Sinful Woman of Potosí (Abbreviation of Chronicle by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela)
- 1647: Santiago de Chile Chilean Indians’ Game Banned
- 1648: Olinda Prime Cannon Fodder
- 1649: Ste. Marie des Hurons The Language of Dreams
- An Iroquois Story
- Song About the Song of the Iroquois
- 1650: Mexico City The Conquerors and the Conquered
- From the Náhuatl Song on the Transience of Life
- 1654: Oaxaca Medicine and Witchcraft
- 1655: San Miguel de Nepantla Juana at Four
- 1656: Santiago de la Vega Gage
- 1658: San Miguel de Nepantla Juana at Seven
- Juana Dreams
- 1663: Old Guatemala Enter the Printing Press
- 1663: The Banks of the Paraíba River Freedom
- Song of Palmares
- 1663: Serra da Barriga Palmares
- 1665: Madrid Charles II
- 1666: New Amsterdam New York
- 1666: London The White Servants
- 1666: Tortuga Island The Pirates’ Devotions
- 1667: Mexico City Juana at Sixteen
- 1668: Tortuga Island The Dogs
- 1669: Town of Gibraltar All the Wealth of the World
- 1669: Maracaibo The Broken Padlock
- 1670: Lima “Mourn for us,”
- 1670: San Juan Atitlán An Intruder on the Altar
- 1670: Masaya “The Idiot”
- 1670: Cuzco Old Moley
- 1671: Panama City On Punctuality in Appointments
- 1672: London The White Man’s Burden
- Mandingo People’s Song of the Bird of Love
- 1674: Port Royal Morgan
- 1674: Potosí Claudia the Witch
- 1674: Yorktown The Olympian Steeds
- 1676: Valley of Connecticut The Ax of Battle
- 1676: Plymouth Metacom
- 1677: Old Road Town Death Here, Rebirth There
- 1677: Pôrto Calvo The Captain Promises Lands, Slaves, and Honors
- 1678: Recife Ganga Zumba
- Yoruba Spell Against the Enemy
- 1680: Santa Fe, New Mexico Red Cross and White Cross
- 1681: Mexico City Juana at Thirty
- 1681: Mexico City Sigüenza y Góngora
- 1682: Accra All Europe Is Selling Human Flesh
- 1682: Remedios By Order of Satan
- 1682: Remedios But They Stay On
- 1682: Remedios By Order of God
- 1688: Havana By Order of the King
- 1691: Remedios Still They Don’t Move
- 1691: Mexico City Juana at Forty
- 1691: Placentia Adario, Chief of the Huron Indians, Speaks to Baron de Lahontan, French Colonizer in Newfoundland
- 1692: Salem Village The Witches of Salem
- 1692: Cuápulo Nationalization of Colonial Art
- 1693: Mexico City Juana at Forty-Two
- 1693: Santa Fe, New Mexico Thirteen Years of Independence
- Song of the New Mexican Indians to the Portrait That Escapes from the Sand
- 1694: Macacos The Last Expedition Against Palmares
- Lament of the Azande People
- 1695: Serra Dois Irmaos Zumbí
- 1695: São Salvador de Bahia The Capital of Brazil
- 1696: Regla Black Virgin, Black Goddess
- 1697: Cap Français Ducasse
- 1699: Madrid Bewitched
- 1699: Macouba A Practical Demonstration
- 1700: Ouro Prêto All Brazil to the South
- 1700: St. Thomas Island The Man Who Makes Things Talk
- Bantu People’s Song of the Fire
- 1700: Madrid Penumbra of Autumn
- The Sources
- Index
- Preview: Faces and Masks
- About the Author
- About the Translator