By Eduardo Galeano
Apartheid: System original to South Africa, designed to prevent the blacks from invading their own country. The New World Order applies this democratically to all the world's poor, regardless of their skin colour.
Cold War: Already over. New enemies are now needed. Those interested should contact the Pentagon, Washington D.C., or their local police station.
Consumer society: A flashy container filled with nothing. Invention of great scientific value, which allows real needs to be suppressed through the timely imposition of artificial needs. However, the consumer society generates a certain resistance in the most backward regions. (Statement made by Pampero Conde, native of Cardona, Uruguay: "Why should I want it to be cold, since I don't have an overcoat?")
Creativity: A crime which is becoming more and more infrequent.
Development: In the hills of Guatemala: "It's not necessary to kill everyone. Since 1982, we have been giving development to 70% of the population, while we have been killing 30% ." — General Héctor Alejandro Gramajo, Guatemala's former minister of defence, who recently graduated in international relations at Harvard University. Published in the spring edition of Harvard International Review, 1991.
Flag: Has so many stars that there is no longer any room for the stripes. Japan and Germany are studying alternative designs.
Foreign Debt: A commitment into which every Latin American is born, for the modest sum of $2000, to finance the club that he or she will be beaten with.
Government: In the South, an institution which specialises in spreading poverty, which periodically meets with its parents in order to celebrate the results of its actions. The last Regional Conference on Poverty, with the Latin American governments meeting in Ecuador, revealed that so far they have managed to condemn 63.3% of the Latin American population to poverty. The conference celebrated the effectiveness of the new Integral Method for the Measurement of Poverty.
History: On October 12, 1992, the New World Order will celebrate its 500th birthday.
Ideologies, death of: A statement which establishes the definite extinction of bothersome ideas, and of ideas in general.
Life, the American way of: Characteristic way of life in the United States, where it is practised very little.
Market: Place where the prices of people and other merchandise are set.
Money, freedom of: This is said of King Herod let loose at a children's party.
Nature: Archaeologists have found some traces of this.
Order: Worldwide, six times the amonunt of public funds are spent on military research as on medical research. (World Health Organisation, 1991 data.)
Poison: Substance which currently predominates in the air, the water, the land and the soul.
Poverty: In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote his Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and Making Them beneficial to their Publick. In that essay, the author recommended fattening children up to make them suitable for eating. In view of the problem's dangerous development in our days, international experts are studying the possibility of putting this interesting initiative into practice.
Power: The relationship between the North and the South. Also said of the activities of people in the South who live and spend and think as if they were in the North.
Privatisation: A transaction through which the Argentine state becomes the property of the Spanish state.
Television: Universal culture. The dictatorship of the single image, which rules in all countries.
Trade: A mechanism which allows the poor countries to pay when they sell and also when they buy. Today a computer costs three times as much coffee and four times as much cacao as it did five years ago. (World Bank, 1991 figures.)
Universal culture: Television.
War: Punishment which is applied to poor countries when they try to raise the prices of the products they export. The most recent such exemplary punishment was successfully used against Iraq. In order to correct the price of petroleum, it was necessary to effect 150,000 collateral damages, colloquially known as "human victims", at the beginning of 1991.
Wealth: According to the wealthy, this does not bring happiness. According to the poor, it brings something rather close to happiness.
World: A dangerous place. "Despite the disappearance of the Soviet threat, the world continues to be a dangerous place." (George Bush, annual message to Congress, 1991.)
World, map of: An ocean with two shores. To the north, small numbers of people with lots of resources. To the south, large numbers of people with few resources. The east, which has managed to stop being the east, wants to be the North, but a notice on the entrance to paradise says "No Vacancies".
[From Granma International.]