Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano

THE OTHER

    Emperor Chin was the founder of China, and from him China got its name. Emperor Philip II was lord and master of half the world, stretching from America to the Philippines, and from him the Philippines got its name. Both of them lived for their deaths.
    The Spanish monarch spent his weekends at El Escorial cemetery, built for his eternal rest, and he slept his finest siestas in his coffin: a rehearsal.
    Everything else mattered but little. His Invincible Armada had been minced, and cobwebs had invaded the coffers of the Royal Treasury, but the promenades to his funerary temple sheltered him from the world’s ingratitude.
    On his final journey from throne to grave, King Philip had sixty thousand masses celebrated in homage to his own glory.

LAST SPARK OF THE TURBANS

    Moorish rage exploded. Against the prohibitions, the remaining children of Mohammed in the lands of Andalusia rose up.
    For over a year the soldiers of Christ were unable to stamp out the flames. Then, just as in the times of the Crusades, a decisive favor came their way: they were given exclusive rights to all booty, tax-free, as well as the right to enslave all prisoners.
    The forces of order then seized the wheat and the millet, the almonds, cows, sheep, silks, gold, clothing, necklaces, girls, and women. And any men they hunted down, they auctioned off.

THE DEVIL IS MUSLIM

    Dante knew Mohammed was a terrorist. Not for nothing did he locate him in one of the circles of hell, condemned to be disemboweled in perpetuity. “One whom I saw ripped,” the poet rejoiced in The Divine Comedy , “right from his chin to where we fart . . . ”
    More than one pope found proof that the hordes of Muslims tormenting Christians were not beings of flesh and blood, rather a great army of demons that grew larger with every blow of the lance, sword, and harquebus.
    Back in the year 1564, demonologist Johannes Wier counted the number of plainclothes devils working full time for the perdition of Christian souls. There were 7,409,027, organized in seventy-nine legions.
    A lot of boiling water has flowed under hell’s bridge since that census was taken. How many envoys from the kingdom of darkness would there be today? Their flair for the theater makes a precise tally difficult. Those sneaks still wear turbans to hide their horns, and long tunics to cover their tails and bat’s wings, not to mention the bombs they carry under their arms.

THE DEVIL IS JEWISH

    Hitler did not invent a thing. For two thousand years, the Jews, the unpardonable assassins of Jesus, have been the ones guilty of all sins.
    What do you mean, Jesus was Jewish? And the twelve apostles and four evangelists too? Impossible. Revealed truths live outside the realm of doubt: in synagogues the devil teaches Jews to defile the host, poison holy waters, cause bankruptcies, and spread plagues.
    England expelled them in 1290, leaving not a one, but that did not stop Marlowe and Shakespeare, who probably never met a Jew in their lives, from inventing characters who fit the caricature of a blood-sucking parasitic moneylender.
    Accused of serving the evil one, this accursed people wandered for centuries, from expulsion to expulsion, from massacre to massacre. After England, they were tossed in succession from France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and from several Swiss, German, and Italian cities. They had lived in Spain for thirteen centuries. When they left, they took the keys to their homes with them. Some have them still.
    The colossal butchery organized by Hitler was the culmination of a long history.
    Hunting Jews has always been a European sport.
    Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill.

THE DEVIL IS BLACK

    Like the night, like sin, black is the enemy of innocence and light.
    In his renowned book of travels, Marco Polo described the inhabitants of Zanzibar: “They are quite black and go entirely naked. . . . They have big mouths, and their noses are so flattened and their