Fables.

• Author: Galeano, Eduardo
• Position: The Upside-Down World

An old biblical proverb says that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.

Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga, who was not born in America but knows the country inside out, asks what happens when they poison the river?

Or if someone buys the river, which used to belong to everyone, and bans fishing?

Or what happens when what is happening now happens?

Teaching is not enough.

Arms of a woman

Juan Antonio Medina was sitting watching television in his house one day.

He had never thought very highly of advertisements, but this one featured a line that wasn't bad at all: "A charmed woman is a safe woman."

The images that followed were of small revolvers and pistols, switchblades, pepper sprays that stop men dead in their tracks, and other diminutive devices that seem perfect for a lady's purse in troubled times.

And then Juan Antonio Medina realized he had heard the expression wrong: "An armed woman is a safe woman."

The International Community

A chicken, a duck, a turkey, a pheasant, a quail, and a partridge were summoned and traveled together to the summit.

The king's chef welcomed them:

"I called you here," he explained, "so you can tell me what sauce you would like to be eaten with."

One of the birds dared to speak:

"I don't want to be eaten at all."

The chef quickly set it straight:

"That is out of the question," he barked.

The International Expert

I have heard this story in a number of places attributed to different people, and because of this any resemblance to reality must be sheer coincidence.

Here is the version I heard in the Dominican Republic:

One day the children were running circles around Dona Maria de las Mercedes, clucking and throwing kernels of corn to her chickens. She sat where she sat every day, when a car appeared, dazzling, out of a cloud of dust on the road from Santo Domingo.

A man in a jacket and tie, briefcase in hand, asked her:

"If I guess exactly how many chicks you have, will you give me one?"

The woman made a face.

The man promptly fired up the global positioning system on his 60-gigabyte Pentium 4 laptop, linked up to the satellite photography program, and activated his pixel counter.

"You have 132 chicks," he said.

And he bent down and scooped up a chick.

Maria de las Mercedes then asked the man:

"If I guess what line of work you're in, will you give me the chick back?"

The man made a face. The woman guessed:

"You are an expert at an international organization."

She took her chick back and then said...