“Children of the Days” is a book interesting mainly for formal reasons. Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan writer and journalist, wanted not so much to tell a specific story as to present the fate of the whole of humanity, decided to shred long and winding stories into individual events. We will not find in this publication information that could be associated with the slogan “event for every day of the year”. (although such a division has been applied), because Galeano puts on things that are not obvious, often completely unspectacular, often more widely unnoticed, although their importance for many social groups is high. These are stories or reminders of the past of cultural and ethnic minorities, among other things, short notes pointing to an uneasy struggle for equal rights of those who have been denied respect for centuries. The formula adopted by the author of one day of the year – one event allows him to recall situations from different epochs and parts of the world, thanks to which it was possible to create a surprising, politically meaningful mirage of events.
What’s inside the book?
The strategies of reading “Children of the Days” may be different. Some may read this book at random, checking what happened on the day they are interested in (for example, May 6th or October 17th). Others, with the right conviction that the events are not randomly arranged, that a story, a narrative, will be read continuously, from beginning to end, also from their order. Still others, I believe, can read the content at random, by leafing through the book and stopping at individual pages. Each of these approaches seems good and effective because there is no one right way to read it. It is the recipient who sets the rules, although his position in relation to the book is strictly defined. The reader, expecting a “repetition” of history or a “calendar of human history”, expects a “story” of war heroes, great battles and the pursuit of the “end of history”, i.e. today’s times, will have to revise his approach. As it turns out, and as it makes us realize from reading the book, nothing is finished and brought to the simplest of things – those mechanisms that once pushed people to knock out whole communities still remain valid – only in a changed form. The author thus lies to our beliefs that everything that is bad is behind us – perhaps today entire continents are not on fire, but our planet is burning for it. There is no peaceful epoch, we are not chosen by fate, we do not live in completely better times – we simply do not see the evil that is happening around us. Historians, looking for generalizing, universalizing methods of expressing and presenting the past, must necessarily give up details, details and what does not fit into the wider context. Galeano in “Children of the Days” advocates precisely what is overlooked, unspoken or silent, which does not fit into the mainstream. Therefore, his attention is not directed towards rulers, politicians or famous wars, but, for example, towards a boy who on 13 February 2008, falling into the river Santiago, died of poisoning (the water contains, among others, arsenic, sulphuric acid and mercury, poured by large corporations).
Focusing on forgotten, silent or unnoticed events, the author tries to warn us, the readers, in a way – to say that history does not only happen on the state level and in parliamentary halls, but also – and perhaps most importantly – on the streets, in poorer places or at home. “The Children of the Days” are calling for the excluded, wronged, rejected or disrespected, which is why post-colonial themes and political commentaries are an important element of the book. However, this is not a publication that evaluates or even values. Rather, Galeano focuses on pointing out various events (such as the fall of Grenada, the suppression of the Indian uprising in the Battle of Caiboate, the birth of the military dictatorship in Argentina), on showing that all the centuries are linked to the same mechanism of oppression: the stronger attack the weaker, the majority destroy the minority. This relationship, however, turns out to be not so much a reflection on the past as it is the prism through which the present should be read – what used to be about colonialism and religious wars, among other things, is nowadays known in the form of taking away women’s rights (for example, abortion), postponing or even persecuting homosexuals (Galeano even writes that “the Holy Inquisition (…) constantly changes its names, but it has never run out of wood to put a stake in it) or racism. By citing events from different centuries, we can see that we are constantly revolving around the same emotions and thoughts – constantly, regardless of the era, someone is marked, harmed or excluded by society. If not Indians, then blacks; if not blacks, then sexual minorities; if not sexual minorities, then women. And so endlessly.
Summary
The “Children of the Days” is, however, not only a reflection on what is painful, but also a collection of many apt, ironic and funny anecdotes (the translation by Katarzyna Okrasko is to be commended), interesting socio-cultural observations, as well as the affirmation of culture and the achievements of our civilization. However, the book is mainly influenced by the awareness of the injustice of history (about the “master of the world, king of oil”, John D. Rockefeller, the author writes: “He lived almost a hundred years. During [his] autopsy of the corpse, no scruples were found”) and the wrongs that occur all the time. The author tries to encourage us to be critical in our perception of history (after all, it should be remembered that it is written by the victors), as well as to take a distance from reality – so that we can coolly, objectively assess and analyze what surrounds us.