>>> Time Thieves: Eduardo Galeano on “Bureaucracy”
The Bureaucracy/3 Sixto Martinez completed his military service at a Seville garrison. In the middle of the patio was a bench. Next to the bench, a soldier stood guard. No one knew why the bench needed guarding. They guarded it because they guarded it. Day and night, all nights and all days. And generation after generation of officers transmitted the order and the soldiers obeyed. No one doubted, no one questioned. If as such it is done, and as such always have been done, a reason there had to be. And like this it continued until one person, I don’t know which general or colonel, wanted to see the original order. He had to forage the archives. And after much digging, he knew. Thirty-one years, two months and four days ago, an official ordered a guard to be placed by the bench that had recently been painted so that no one happened to sit on the fresh paint. –Eduardo Galeano, El Libro de los Abrazos, Trans. Nathalie Alyon As a little girl, I loved listening to my …
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