21

TO BE LIKE THEM

Eduardo Galeano

The following text was translated from the French by v·leton

.
. Ie entitled ,Etre comme eux', which was
artie a •awtree from an
published in Le Mande D" I .
.

in October 199 I in a translation by Pierre Guillaumin from the

°S::����
origin':'
a s mM t
;h� �:e���w�A;!;� .OM:;��� �: ::� to ;: �v::e��i�r
� n
.
Sparn, dunng the military dictatorship (197]--85) H·IS best- �!U��g�n��n: :�j:� ��
.
open 'Viems of Latm America (Monthly Revie
known book .IS The
w Press
•

subsequently published works is a passionate re iew, New York' 1973)" mang

-

of 'h . A
h"Istory, Memo y Of Fi'fe (trans. v eon e contment s tragic
Cedric 8elfrage Panth
Methuen, london, 1985--88; originally published " 982-86 Books New '\'i rk a d
r

by Siglo XXI M � 'd) �

��nU�: �:92 M'sS�dor pu�lished a collection of his essays unde
e s "y 0r ,olin Amenca. r the titie ;o::e�p�

t W�It�e promise of the politicians, the justification of the

I the l llSlOn of the Outcast. The Third World will becon'" '·k technocrats
. '
l e the Fmt
World - ' �h cuItlva' ted and happy if it beha
ves and does what it is told
.
WIt .
h OUt saying anything or com
n ,

piJining. A prosperous future ill c p n '

s te for the good behaviour of those who died
c� a?ter ?f :he tdevised serial of history. WE CAN of hunger d:ing :;: � �
a gigantic lIluminated board along the highwa IJE LIKE THEM, procI;I.l'm� e
Y t0 deve,oplllent of the Ull­
derdevei,oped and the modernization of the htec
ome
Hut, what can,t be, can't be, and more th", 'h" rs.
e, G-,w" o, the bullfighter s0 .gIt ,., impossible', as Pedro
I Iy sal'd. If the poor COuntries
1 0f p�oductlO' reached the
n and wasre of the rich countrie�. our planet would die.
n

.
��::dy i t IS III
1

a coma, seflously Contanuna by the industrial . .

and emptIed of its last drop of sub�tance byted I IT atlOn
;
the consumer socie V l Z

IMP OSS IBLE HOP ES

During the last twenh , year
OJ . s, WilI '1e the human race
.
SlOn ha.'i destroyed the equivalent of the whole cultivableincreased threeli Id
area
��ates. Tl e world, which has become a mark of the Un�ed
I et for merchandise, loses 1 5
,I<
 EDU ARD O GAL EAN O

million hecures of forest a year, of which 6 million become desert. Humili­

ated nature has been made over to the service of capital accumulation. Soil,
water and air are being poisoned so that money produces ever more money,
without a fall in the rate of profit. He who makes the most money in the
shortest time is the efficient one.
Acid rain from industrial fumes is killing the woods and lakes of the
world, while toxic wastes poisoning the rivers md seas. In the South,
imported agro-business prospers, uprooting trees and human bein�. In the
arc

North and the South, the East and the West, man is sawing off the branch
on which he is sitting with feverish enthusiasm.
From woodland to desert: modernization, devasution. The continuous
Amazonian bonfire burns an area half the size of Belgium each year on
behalf of the civilization of greed, and all over Latin America land is being
cleared and becoming arid. Each minI/Ie, in Latin America, 23 hectares of
wood are being sacrificed, most of them by companies who produce meat or
wood on a large scale for foreign consumption. The cows of Costa Rica
become MacDonald hamburgers in the USA. Half a century ago, trees cov­
ered three-quarters of this little country; there are very few left now and, at
the end of this century, at the current rate of deforestation, Costa lUca will
be completely bare. This country exports meat to the United States md
imports from it pesticides that the US bans on its own soil.
A small number of countries are squandering the resources that belong to
everyone. The crime and madness of the wasteful society: 6 per cent of the
richest popuhtions are devouring one-third of the total energy available and
one-third of all the world's natural resources in use. According to the statistics,
one average North American consumes as much as fifty Haitians. Obviously
these averages do not apply to someone from Harlem or to Baby Doc
Duvalier, but it is important to ask: what would happen if the fifty Haitians
suddenly consumed as much as fifty North Americans? What would happen
if the huge populations of the South could devour the world with the un­
punished voracity of the North? What would happen if the luxury articles,
cars, refrigerators, television sets, nuclear and electric power st.ltions increased
at this crazy pace? All the world's oil would be burnt up in ten years.
And what would happen to the climate which, with the warming of the
atmosphere, is already close to catastrophe? What would happen to the soil -
the little that erosion spared us? And to the \vatcr which, contaminated by
nitrates, pesticides and industrial wastes of mercury and lead, is being drunk
by one-quarter of humanity? What would happen? Nothing would be left.
We would have to change planets. Our own, already so exploited, could no
longer stand it.
The precarious equilibrium of the world, which is poised on the brink of
an abyss, depends on the perpetuation of injustice. The deprivation of the
majority is necessary so that the waste of a few is possible. In order that a
few may consume still more, many must continue to consume still less. And
 216
THE POST_DEVELOPMENT READER

so that everyone stays in their place. the system increases its military weap_
ons. Incllpable of fighting poverty, it fights the poor, while the dominant
Culture, a militarized culture, worships the violence of power.
The American way of life. based on the privilege of waste, can only be
practised by the dominant minorities of the domin<lung countries. If it were
gener.ilized, it would me;m the coUeerive suicide of hum:uuty. It is therefore
impossible - but is it even desinble?
In a weU-organized ant colony, there <lre a few queen ants and irulUmerable
worker ants. The queens are born with wings and can procre.ate. The workers,
who do not Ay or procreate, work for the queens; the police :lilts watch over
the workers, but :Uso the queens.
'Life is something tholt happens when one is busy doing something else',
remarked John Lennon. In our era, in which ways and means are so often
confused, we do not work to live: we live to work. Some work all the time
so that they can satisfy their needs. And others work more and more in order
to waste.
An eight-hour work day in Latin America s
i pure fiction. Though it is
seldom acknowledged by the official statistics, two jobs are the reality for a
mass of people who have no other way of keeping hunger at bay. But, where
devdopment is at its apogee, s
i it normal that people work liKe ants? Does
wealth lead to liberty, or does it increase the fear of freedom?

T H E ABERRATIONS O F M O D E R N I T Y

To be i s to have, says the system. And the problem is that those who have
the most �Ilt still more; and that, when all is said and done, people end up
.
by belongUlg to thlllgs and work.ing under their orders. The"lnodel of life in
the consulller society, which these days is imposed as a modd at the universal
level, c �llver� tin:ae into an economic resource which is increasingly rare and
expensIVe. Time IS sold and hired. But who is the master of time? The car
the television set, the video, the personal computer, the portable telephon �
and other pan-cards to happiness, which were developed to 'save time' or to
'pass t he rime', have actually taken time over. The car, for example, not only
o�cuples. urban space, but also human rime. In theory the car servC1 to econo_

l�lIze time, but in practice it devours it. A considerable proportion of work

rune goes to pay the transport for getting to work, which takes more and
mOre time because of the traffi c jams in thC1e modern Babylons.
There is no need to be an economic expert. Good common sense is
etlou�h to see that technological progress, by increasing productivity, reduces
work.ing time. Good common sense, however, did not foresee the fear that
�
'free time' coul bring, or the trap of consumption, or the manipulating
.
power of publiCity. In Japanese cities they have been working forty-seven
hours a week for the laSt twenty years, while in Europe the number of work
hours has been reduced, but very slowly, at a rhythm that has nothing to do
 EOUAI\OO GALEANO '"

with the accelerated development of productivity. In the automated factory

there are ten workers where there used to be a thousand. But technological
ress leads to unemployment instead of increasing the spaces of freedom.
�=dom to squander one's time: the consumer society does not allow such
waste. One's very holicbys, org:mized by agenciC1 which n
i dustrialize tourism,
have become an exhausting activity. Killing time: modern beachC1 reproduce
the dizziness of everyday life in the urban am coloniC1.
Anthropologists teach us tnat our palaeolithic ancC1tors did not work more
than (Wenty hours a week. Newspapers inform us that at the end of 1988 a
referendum was organized in Switzerland proposing to reduce the working
week to forty hours - a reduction of hours without loss of sabry. The Swiss
voted against it.
Ants communicate among themselves by touching their antennae. The
television antennae communicate with the power centres of the contemporary
world. The small screen encourages the thirst for possession n
i us, the frenzy
to consume, the exacerbation of competition and avidity for success, in the
same way that Christopher Columbus offered glass to the Indians. What the
publicity does not say, however, is that the USA COnsUillC1, according �o the
World Health Organization, 'almOSt half the tranquillizers that are sold III the
world'. During the last twenty years, the work day has increased n
i the USA.
During this same period, the number of people affected by stress has doubled.
'A peasant is worth less than a cow and more than a chicken', I heard in
Caaguazu, in Paraguay. And in north-east Brazil: 'He who plants has no land
and he who has no land, plants.'

TOWNS A S GAS C H A M B E R S

The countryside i s being dC1erted; the Latin American towns are becoming
hells the size of countries. Mexico City is growing at the rate of half a
million people and 30 square kilometres a yt'ar. It already has a population
five timC1 that of Norway. Soon, at the end of the century, the capital of
Mexico and the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo will be the biggest cities in the
world.
The great cities of the South of the planet are like the great citiC1 of the
North, but seen through a distorting mirror. The Latin American capitals
have no bicycle alleys, or filters for toxic gasC1. Pure air and silence arc such
rare and expensive commodities that there is no one left who is rich enough
to buy them.
The Brazilian plants of Volkswagen and Ford make cars with filters and
export them to Europe and to the USA and cars without filters to sell in
Brazil. Argentina produces JeadJess petrol for export. For its internal market,
though, it produces poisoned petrol. [n all Latin America cars are allowe to�
.
spit out lead copiously from their exhaust pipes. From the car pomt of VIew,
lead raises the octane level and increases the rate of profit. From the human
 THE POST-DEV ELOP MENT R.EAD
ER.

The Shame of a Nation

In thl!! year nineteen nund d and .
sixty-four, In the nch . est nation
six hundred Pl!!ople in .
of the world'
NY and ,our
r hundred in Washington DC
nat.ion's capital, unable to find a low ,..._. tenements; a fam'" 0r twe."",
re
under tl!!n were bitten by rats In . ",um - naif of them
,_ in the
_

nI house u......t would accepI nine

I

'
-

..._sement furnace
....
Ilved and Spent Christma
- . a ""
. �
ch'Iidren,
s In _
room.
Philip M. Stern and Georg_ de V
,
incent. The Shame ofA Nation,
Ivan Obolensky. New York, 1965,

point of view, lead dan12ge

s the brain and the
masten of the CI.(res, d0 not nervous system. The
listen to the troub!eIll can,
Year 2000, pic aken.
' ture 0( U le future' people W it
'
.L .
h oxygen m�ks, birds
s th'l rt:fiuse to grow In
cough instead of sing tree that
MexlCO e-Ity today
, .

.om;- ,Ione' and reques

can see appeals to 'Leave ' you
the w�"
pIease ' . One can't yet read ts 'Don'l bang the
'l'ioo are adVise ' . door
' d IlOt to come Ill , . How soon will
..1_ cars genero
there be advice on
public health-. Each uay
tonnes 0( poisonous petrol . uslY spew I I ,000
fun les Into tIIe atmospher
and children are born wit e. Th '
IC k fI�g fI lIls the air
\V"a ' �
h lead in their bl od. .
S t e place tha
the city which, only fifty D ead birds fall ilke rain on to
years ag0
Now the cocktail of carb ' t had the cleanest air'.
on monoXJde sulphur ' oge
h:lS reached three times the d"IOXlde and nitr

eI fcor h uman beings. Wh

tolerance Iov ' n oxide
threshold of tolerance be ' . at will the
. . . foo' urban mhabHants?
FIve lI Ul/lon cars: the city of sao .
Paulo has been hke ned to an old man
suffering from l hean atta
ck. A cIaud 0( gaseous fum
t es sp �cis over It. .
he surrounding countrysid
e you can an1y se the mo � st developed city ofBrazil
From
. Jt
on Sundays. Each day alo .
"g Ih, avenues m U!C L centre, Iighte
Inhabitants informed ' d panels keep the
of the Situatio . n' In 1 986 the meteo I
showed that the air was ro ogl'cal stations
poll�ted, or ery pollute
d, 323
WIIh OUt wmd or
In June 1989, on days : for days in the year.
rain, antJ ago
.• e a( the world'
peting with Sao I�ulo S ' , Ch ' , was COtn-
ile
, for the Clu
s
'v
JJ
} centre 0( town cou
San Cristobal, in the ver m ost po ute d city. Mount
h'dd
I en by smog. The hn. '
ld not be seen at a II . II
' W:l.S so
nd new denlOcrauc . gav ernU ien t 0f Ch rle
' took sOllle
c-' t the 800 tonnes of g� (0mes
h:df-Ilcarted measu
res a""ins
.
expcIIcd Illt o the city, 'Imosphere . that were bel'llg
that these restrictions vio ' Car dnvers nd bUSll ' lesses thell howled
lated freedom 0( ellterp � .
on human rights. Th, nse and constit uted an attack
sufe f red no restrictions dur
fi
reedam 0( mone�' whIC O 1I d'IStrusts all other
freedoms,
ing the di" tor hlp ' of
General Pinochet and COI
tribuled considerabl . y to the generaI po'IIUH� 1-
baSlc . on The righl 10 contam
attraction for foreign i · st as !. inat e is a
IlVtstmem, ....�.I mo mportant as the right
pay minuscule wages to
. General P'mochet, III
Chilcans to breathe shit. ' fact' never delu.ed the '
fight of
 EDUARDO GALEANO 219

The consumer society which consumes everyone obliges people to con­

sume, while tdevision gives courses in violence both to the educated and to
the illiterate. Those who hlve nothing may live far away from those who
have everything, but every day they can spy on them on the box. Television
provides the obscene spectacle of an orgy of consumption and, at the same
time, teaches people the art of shooting their way out.
Reality copies television: violence on the streets s i another way of extend­
ing what is pro jected on the screens. Street children take the initiative with­
out criminal intent: it is the only place where they can express themselves.
Their only human rights are the rights to steal and to die, Little animals, left
{Q their fate, go hunting. At the first bend in the street, they sharpen their
claws and run. Life is soon over for them, worn out by glue-sniffing and
other drugs to forget hunger, cold and loneliness. Life can also end suddenly,
with a bullet.

T H E TOWN AS P R I S O N

To walk in the streets in the big Latin American cities becomes a high-risk
activity, To stay at home, too. The town as prison: those who are not prison­
ers of need are prisoners of fear. Those who have something, however little,
feel threatened, in constant fear of the next attack. Those who have a lot ive
l
shut up in security fortresses. The big buildings, the residential estates, are
the feudal castles of the electronic age, They only lack moats full of croco­
diles. Although they do not have the majestic beauty of the castles of the
Middle Ages, they do have the huge dn.wbridges, high walis, the keeps and
armed guards.
The state, which is no longer paternalistic but a police state, does not
practise charity. That happened in a past that is over and done with: the age
of rhetoric, in which those who had gone astray were domesticated by the
vinues of study and work. Now that the market economy has become domj­
nant, [he army of the outcaSt are eliminated through starvation and bullets.
The children on the street, children of the marginal workforce, are not and
cannot be useful to society. Education belongs to those who can pay: repres­
sion is used against those who cannot buy it.
According to the Nell' York Thurs, the police have killed more than forty
children in the streets of Guatemala City. They are beggar children, petty
thieves, rubbish picken, whose bodies have been found without tongues,
without eyes, without ears, and thrown into the garbage. In t 989, according
to AllUlesty International, 457 children and adolescents were executed in the
cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife. These crimes, committed by
the death squads and other paramilitary forces, were not perpetrated in back�
ward rural areas but in the largest cities of Brazil. They have not been com�
mitted where capitalism is lacking, but where there is too much of it. Social
injustice and contempt for life increase with economic development.
"' ---- --
T H E POST.DEV ELOP MENT IIEAD ER

Earning Cel'tificate8 of Inferiority

Indians in Oaxaca ,o rm e ly had no access o schools are now dr,ft-d
0 � r t 0
Into school to 'earn. eertl"fiIcates that measure precisely their inferiOrity relative
wh
,
.

to. th� urban population. Furthermore _ and is is again the rub _ .""
th U,out
.:.'-
thiS' p ie. ce of p�" longer enter even the building trades.
..... ef" ttley can no Mod·
.

emlzatlon of 'needs' always adds new discrimination to poverty.

l¥lIn lIIich, Toward A History of Needs, Pantheon Books

New York, r 977, p. 12:

In countries where the death penalty does not exist it is r d e e ;. �

day to �
efend property rights, while every day the ;pinion
. .
a en n �: �
excuses or crime. In mid-t 990 in the city 0f Buenos Aires, an engineer
. '
shot and killed tw young th
� ieves who were escaping afier having stolen the
. ' .
cassette payer
I i S caT. Bernardo Neustadt' the rn"""
In h � ,'oftUe tl '�
-�1 A
ill mfoenomann
Journ 1St, rnade the following statement on television'. 'I would have done
,
,,
�'
.
h sam th"n . Af:anaslO Jazadji won a seat as deputy for the state of Sao
Pa� � �:
t
? e a one of the most comfortable nujorities in the hist
o of
B and has become immensely popular on the radio. His progra %me
lo :� defended the death squads, advocating torture and the elimination of
deli
nquents.
Y
.
In the civilization of unrestrained capitalism the right erty m
important than the right to life. People aTe �rth less :�a��tngs. J�n :
context, the laws of immunity are revealing: t -, absolve the state terronsm
hnr
�

'
exercised by he military dICtatorships in the three Countries.-of the SOuthern
e ,
t
. one, and pardon crune and terrorism, but do not pardon attacks on �roperty
rights (Chile: Decree No. 2191 in 1978'' Urnguay.. Law N0. 15,848 In 1986;
Argentina: Law No. 23,521 in 1987).

A N D HOW'S T H E D O l l A R D O I N G �

February 1989
. .
' Caracas. The prtce of transport suddenly goes up the price
of b d Ies and '
he wrath of the population explodes. Thre� hundred'
five ��nd:� - who knows how many dead peop1e are Iylng " In the streets'.
February 199 1, Lima. The choler:! epidemic hits th Peru la ' coast ges
.
'
I� �he port of Chimbote and in the wretched sha ntyt:� roun , �
V � the capita!,
s
killing a hundred peopIe In ' a f, days. In the hospitals there is neither
.
serum n;; sal�li R �go�uS ec�nomic policy has dismantled the little that re­
ew

mained c eah t seTVlCes and has doubled in no time the number of

.
Peruvians :;ng In acute poverty, who earn less than the minimun' ' wage,
.
wh
I' Ch IS S45 a month.
The wu's of today, the electronic wa-,
u k-,. p1ace on the screens of the
<o
 LE AN O
ED UA RD O GA

d. The laboratory economy

her seen nor hear
video games. The victims are neit n
or the earth that has bee
rs those who are hungry
neither sees nor he..
orse . The intern�t ional
rem
weapons kill without
devastated. Telecomm:mded es and its structural
tamm
oses its development prog
technocracy, which imp
rd Wo rld, also from the outside and from
far
Thi
adjusnnent plans on the
kil ls

away. ed to dismantle the

ury ago Larin America start
Over a quarter of a cent
oppose the aU-powerful influ­
had been constructed to
fr.lgile barriers that ex­
e barr:tges with infallible
creditors bombarded thes
ence of money. Dank s in pow er helped to
tician
le the military or the poli
tortion measures, whi
s fell, one by one, the pro­
ing them from within. Thu
destroy them, dynamit
periods. And today the state
by the state in previous
tection barriers put up as
ing or less than nothing,
enterprises for next to noth
is selling its public them .
ng
up by those who are seUi
they afe being bought
Our coun tries
l mon opo lies, kno wn as
the rest to the internationa
deliver the keys and all
into free markets. The
prices' and turn themselves
'factors that determine the
injections in wooden
ch teaches us how to make
international technocracy, whi
lth. But why, then, is it
ket is the talisman of wea
legs, says that the free mar
recommending it? The
countries, those who ace
not practised by the rich
essful export prod­
s the weak, is the most succ
free market, which humiliate
of the poor countries:
been constructed for the use
uct of the powerful. It has
practised it.
no rich country has ever stics from Uru­
many? Here are official stati
Talisman of wealth, for how
flict used to be less
tries where once social con
guay and Costa Rica, coun
poverry, while twO
six lives in a state of extreme
violent: one Uruguayan in
are poor.
l
famiies out of five in Cosu Rica
market which hits
supp and demand, in a free
ly
The dubious marriage of
s rise to a speculative
otism of the powerful, give
the poor and serves the desp
, consumption deified.
ouraged, work is despised
economy. Production is disc and people
gazed at as f i they were cinema screens
Stock-exchange boards are
it were a human being.
talk about the dollar as though

F PRO GRE SS
T H E ' S O C I A L CO ST' O
her Columbus, the
farce. In the era o f Christop
Tragedy repeats itself a s
n America as its own
tal was experienced by Lati
development of foreign capi
is the caricarure of
started again - as farce. It
tragedy. Now everything has
ending to be a child.
development: a dwarf pret
the statistics that it
not people. But it only sees
Technocracy sees statistics,
successes of
this qu.arter of a century, some
long
wants to see. At the end of . for example,
celebrated The 'Boivia l n miracle',
'modernization' have been and. with it,
ended
ey: the exploitation of tin
achieved thanks to drug mon in the coun try.
ive
that were the most combat
the mining centres and unions nna with a
i an ante
has no water, but there s
Now the village of Llallagua
 T H E POST_DEVELOPMENT READER.

television dish on the summit of Mount Calvario. Or the 'Chilean miracle',

created by the magic wand of General Pinochet, a successful product that is
sold as a potion to the countries of Eastern Europe. But what is the price of
the Chilean miracle? Who are the Chileans who have paid for it - and are

still paying? Who are the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians who are going to
pay for it? In Chile, the statistics proclaim the abundance of bread and, at the
same time, admit the increase in the numbers of the hungry. The cock is
crowing victory, but the rooster is suspect. Has failure not gone to his head?
In 1970, 25 per cent of Chileans were poor; now the poor constitute 45 per
cent of the population.
S atistics
t admit, but do not repent. In the last resort, human dignity
depends on cost-beneftt analysis, and the sacrifice of the poor is nothing but
the 'social cost' of Progress.
What would be the value of this 'social cost' if it could be measured? At
the end of 1990 the magazine Stern made a meticulous calculation of the
damage created by the development of present-day Germany. The magazine
evaluates, in economic terms, the human and material costs resulting from
car accidents, traffic jams, air and water pollution, the contamination of food,
the deterioration of the green belts and other factors. It arrived at the
conclusion that the value of all this damage was equivalent to a quarter of
the German national product. The increase in poverty, obviously, was not
included in these estimates of damage as, for many centuries, Europe has
been nourishing its wealth with foreign' poverty. But it would be interesting
to know what the figure would be if a similar estimate were to be made of
the dramatic consequences of 'modernization' in Latin America. Furthermore,
the German state docs control and limit, to a certain extent, the system's
negative effects on people and the environment. What woulr;i be the damage
estimate in COuntries like ours, which believe in the free market fable and
allow money to roam about freely, like an uncaged wild beast? The damage
that this causes us and will continue to cause us; this system that bombards
us with artificial needs so that we forget our real ones - how can we possibly
measure it? Can we measure the mutilation of the human soul, the escalation
of violence, the degradation of everyday life?

O N THE ALTAR OF PRODUCTIVITY

The West i s living in a triumphant euphoria. The collapse of the East provides
it with a perfect alibi: in the East it was worse. One should, instead, wonder
whether it was fundamentally different. In the West, justice is sacrificed on
the altar of the goddess Productivity in the name of liberty. In '-the East,
liberty \vas sacrificed on the ait.lr of the goddess Productivity in the name of
justice. In the South we can still ask ourselves if this goddess is worth our
lives.