They don't live in the city where they live. They're not allowed to set foot in the vast hell that threatens their tiny private heaven. Beyond the walls lie regions of terror filled with ugly, dirty, envious people. They grow up rootless, stripped of cultural identity, aware of society only as a threat. Their homeland lies in the designer names on their clothes, and their language is a modern Morse code. In the cities around the globe, children of privilege are alike in their habits and beliefs, like shopping malls and airports, which lie outside the realms of time and space. Educated in virtual reality, they know nothing of real reality, which exists only to be feared or bought.
From the point of view of statistics, if a person earns a thousand dollars and another earns nothing, each of them appears to earn five hundred dollars when one calculates per capita income. From the point of view of the struggle against inflation, adjustment policies are a good remedy. From the point of view of those who suffer such policies, they spread cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, and other damnations.
In a world that prefers security to justice, there is loud applause whenever justice is sacrificed on the altar of security. The rite takes place in the streets. Every time a criminal falls in a hail of bullets society feels some relief from the disease that makes it tremble. The death of each lowlife has a pharmaceutical effect on those living the high life. The word 'pharmacy' comes from pharmakos, the Greek name for humans sacrificed to the gods in times of crisis.
But God, being rather scatterbrained, forgot to make the first woman and man, and they had no choice but to make themselves. Way down there in God's garbage dump, at the bottom of that abyss, the first woman and the first man made themselves out of God's leftovers. We human beings were born from garbage, and that's why we all have a bit of day and a bit of night, and we're all time and earth and water and wind.
Galeano lays out an incriminating vision of the modern world. It's incriminating because if you're reading this, you speak English and you have access to the Internet and probably live in the developed world. This is incriminating because Galeano alleges that the developed world is responsible for a lot of evil everywhere else.
If the things he says are true, I come close to thinking that enjoying the pleasant life we lead here is a mortal sin, because it is afforded us by the suffering of so many people. So I take refuge in the lovely qualification, if the things he says are true. And you get the sense that the things he says are true by perception, just as so many things North Americans believe about the innocence of their society are true by perception. After all, it's a complex world, isn't it? And how can we really know if cheap mangoes arranged pleasingly on a shelf in a grocery store actually cause someone somewhere else misery. And how can we tell if trade agreements aren't fair? We can't even figure out if taxation within our own borders is fair.
So you read Galeano and if it's true, dammit. Which means you probably won't finish the book. Because half way through you are already feeling like there is just too much to deal with. Wow it sucks, yeah, in fact, you don't even make any excuses, you just say yeah wow it sucks. Besides, the copy of Upside Down I got from the library reeks of pot smoke, so despise the probably snooty granola hater who lives in this first world and hates it and read this book before you and probably felt all superior to the rest of us who are just trying to get by. At least that way you won't have to feel badly about the woman in Bolivia who has to pay extortionate rates for her water because a US company purchased it all.
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