Voices of Time: A Life in Stories.

• Author: Martinez, Elizabeth Coonrod
• Position: Book review

Voices of Time: A Life in Stories, by Eduardo Galeano. Translated by Mark Fried. New York: Picador, 2006. (Bocas del tiempo, 2004).

Eduardo Galeano is distinguished for his eloquent alternative perspectives on history and society, expressed in tightly-worded, short narratives. He is not the only contemporary Latin American writer whose genre consists of short, thought-provoking narratives. But Galeano's notable accomplishment has been to disinter the "voices" of people whose concerns have been overlooked, ignored, or even erased by those in power.

His latest book is a compilation of observations that uncover and look at the past from the point of view of the present. Consisting of 333 selections or vignettes, Voices of Time, A Life in Stories, is structured in a manner similar to many of his other books, including the award-winning trilogy, Memory of Fire (English translation in 1973).

While his writing is documentary and historical, Galeano does not apologize for representing the non-official side rather than taking a neutral position. He has called his writing an approach that unites the passions of reason with the reasons of passion.

Voices of Time aptly illustrates this motivation. "The Closed Door" is an account of an indigenous man who travels, accompanied by his burro, from a far-flung village to the capital of Mexico City "where power resides," to ask for an audience. The man and burro are both "getting on in years," and so during the trek the man walks more often than he rides in order to give his burro's "tired back a break." When they arrive at Mexico City's Zocalo, or public square, they stand to wait outside the National Palace; he has asked to report on the drastic conditions in his home village. An official informs him that the Indians of his tribe are "extinct, officially, and [do] not even figure in the statistics." But the old man and his burro wait outside the presidential palace, for one year, two months, and two weeks. The last line of this vignette states: "Then they headed home."

Galeano has said that his testimonies are created to preserve a people who will soon die (in human memory and official history) if he does not put them into writing. There is not even a headstone to remember some. In "Absences," for example, Galeano writes about Chichicastenango, where during the entire period of 1982 to 1983, bodies were thrown into the sea or into the mouths of volcanoes. He says they "died for wanting life."

Not only are...