Read Online Children of the Days by Eduardo Galeano - Free Book Online

calling you, you entered my chicken farm without asking permission, you told me something I already knew and then you charged me for it.”

September 8
I NTERNATIONAL L ITERACY D AY
    The state of Sergipe, in Brazil’s Northeast: Paulo Freire begins a new workday with a group of very poor peasant farmers he is teaching to read and write.
    â€œHow are you, João?”
    João does not reply. He tugs on the brim of his hat. A long silence. Finally, he says, “I couldn’t sleep. All night long I couldn’t close my eyes.”
    No more words come, until he murmurs, “Yesterday, for the first time ever, I wrote my name.”

September 9
S TATUES
    José Artigas lived his life fighting astride a native pony and sleeping under the stars. When he governed the lands he freed, his throne was a cow’s skull and his only uniform a poncho.
    He went into exile with nothing but the clothes on his back, and he died in poverty.
    Now, in Uruguay’s most important square, an enormous bronze founding father mounted on a charging steed contemplates us from on high.
    This triumphant champion decked out for glory is identical to every other statue of a venerable military hero the world over.
    He claims to be José Artigas.

September 10
T HE F IRST L AND R EFORM IN A MERICA
    It happened in 1815 when Uruguay was not yet a country, not yet called Uruguay.
    In the name of the people’s rebellion, José Artigas expropriated “the lands of the bad Europeans and the worse Creole Americans,” and ordered the land shared out among all.
    It was the first land reform in America, half a century before Lincoln’s Homestead Act and a century before Emiliano Zapata broke up Mexico’s haciendas.
    â€œA criminal act,” the offended parties cried. Then to add insult to injury, Artigas informed them, “The least fortunate shall benefit most.”
    Five years later, a defeated Artigas marched into exile and in exile he died.
    The lands were taken back from the least fortunate, but inexplicably the voices of the vanquished still say, “Nobody is better than anybody else.”

September 11
A D AY A GAINST T ERRORISM
    Wanted: for kidnapping countries.
    Wanted: for strangling wages and slashing jobs.
    Wanted: for raping the land, poisoning the water and stealing the air.
    Wanted: for trafficking in fear.

September 12
L IVING W ORDS
    On this day in 1921 Amilcar Cabral was born in the Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa.
    He led the war of independence for both Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
    His words:
    â€œWatch out for militarism. We are armed militants, not the military. None of this is incompatible with the joy of living.”
    â€œIdeas don’t live in the head alone. They live also in the soul and the heart and the stomach and everywhere else.”
    â€œLearn from life, learn from our people. Hide nothing from our people. Tell no lies, expose them. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”
    In 1973 Amilcar Cabral was assassinated.
    He wasn’t around to celebrate the independence of the countries he had worked so hard to bring about.

September 13
T HE A RMCHAIR T RAVELER
    If I remember correctly, Sandokan, prince and pirate, the Tiger of Malaysia, was born in 1883.
    Sandokan, like the other characters that kept me company as a child, materialized from the hand of Emilio Salgari.
    Salgari was born in Verona and never sailed farther than the Italian coast. He never visited the Gulf of Maracaibo or the Yucatán jungle or the slave ports of the Ivory Coast. He never met the pearl fishermen of the Philippines or the sultans of the Orient or the pirates of the high seas or the giraffes of Africa or the buffaloes of the Wild West.
    But thanks to him I was there, I met them.
    When my mother wouldn’t let me cross the street, Salgari’s novels carried me across the seven seas and several seas more.
    Salgari introduced me to