Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

So much oppression, can’t keep track of it no more

Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) was a Uruguayan journalist and one of his nation’s most prominent literary figures. He often wrote about the history, politics, and culture of Latin America, particularly how that region’s history of subjection to imperialist conquest has influenced its modern condition. Galeano’s literary works often blur the line between fiction and nonfiction. His 2009 book Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, is written in much the same style and format as his earlier Memory of Fire trilogy: a rapid-fire string of brief vignettes depicting famous or lesser-known personages from history. Though the events depicted are real, Galeano’s scenes often contain fictionalized details, dialogue, and interior reflections, in much the same manner as historical novels. Whereas Galeano focused exclusively on the history of Latin America in his Memory of Fire series, in Mirrors he sets his sights on the entire world. Both works, however, are similarly concerned with depicting instances of oppression, intolerance, imperialism, and violence.

The worldwide broadening of scope allows Galeano to tackle the oppression of various marginalized groups, among them Latinos, Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Gypsies, women, homosexuals, the poor, and even nature itself. Though the vignettes are seemingly unrelated, a certain thread pertaining to one of these topics will continue for several episodes before flowing seamlessly into the next string of horror stories of slavery and other atrocities. Despite the horrendous and tragic subject matter, Galeano often approaches each vignette with a sort of gallows humor, along the lines of “Isn’t it ridiculous the justifications that [the oppressor] came up with for torturing [the oppressed]?” Throughout the book, the Catholic Church frequently fills in the oppressor blank, as does the U.S. government and various Latin American dictators. Perhaps no one in this book, however, is charged with as many sins as the British, toward whom Galeano apparently harbors a great deal of resentment.

Mirrors is essentially a people’s history of the world that views events through a welcome leftist lens but is written in a more creative-nonfiction style than the works of academic historians like Howard Zinn. The global scope of Mirrors is less effective than the Latin American focus of the Memory of Fire books, and the reader simply learns less as a result. Often Mirrors simply reads like a catalog of atrocities, many of which are common knowledge. Though coverage of each incident is necessarily brief, Galeano sometimes reveals little-known facts and figures. This book’s most important accomplishment, however, is making the reader aware of unfamiliar individuals and events that might be worthy of further investigation in other sources. Naturally, given Galeano’s area of expertise, many of those lesser-known figures come from Spanish and Latin American history.

In many of the myriad scenes that comprise Mirrors, Galeano’s unique perspective on history is enlightening, thought-provoking, and even amusing. At other times, however, the book is just a bummer that challenges one’s faith in humanity and one’s hope for the future. A run of several pages in which Galeano ponders mankind’s destruction of the environment, for example, doesn’t teach you much and doesn’t offer any solutions. It’s just depressing. Still, the benefits of Mirrors outweigh its faults. Galeano keeps the reader interested throughout, and one can’t help looking at the world in a new way after reading his insightful take on the frequently shameful history of mankind.
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