On Assignment; 2030; White Sands Missile Range: The Early Years; Eduardo Galeano

Broadcast of on assignment is locally funded by KNME viewer contributions and by a grant from American home furnishings at American Square in Albuquerque and at American Plaza in Farmington, locally owned and operated since 1936. And the Mountain Bell Foundation. The German V2 rocket, Hitler's revenge weapon, captured V2 components and surrendered scientists including Werner von Braun were sent to America's first center for rocket research and testing. The white sand's missile range. I recall once again being in Locos when shortly after the fire got a call, a lady who said she was calling the corner drugstore that parts of our missile had just landed in her back yard.

Took the V2 just with the thing hit right at the guard gate. Wow, blew all the windows out of postage near it, it was fun, great fun. What? His name is Eduardo Goliano, one of the world's great literary figures, a Latin American who has known the brutality of military dictators. I think and I feel and I ask myself in which super market did they buy Latin America. These stories next, on assignment with Hal Rhodes. Hello, one of the most significant events of the 20th century must be man's escape from

the confines of this planet. What was throughout the ages but a dream, man space flights had their early origins right here in this remote desert region of the American Southwest. The story is best told by those who know it best, those who were there. The pioneers of the White Thands missile range. Had some real excitement some of the rockets, I'd say we had some spectacular blow-ups. I found pieces of rocket metal, a quarter of a mile from impact, just like Shrapner. And I said, get light down there, it's better for you to go over there than in Thuria. You may, if you have a close hit, you might get carried out the foot of dirt, but at least you can survive. Right. Well, some of the work was dangerous, so we've got some close calls. My generation of the boys that I knew, they liked tinkering with cars. And these boys were a generation ahead, they liked tinkering with outer space. They saw it coming, they wanted to be part of it, and they worked their hearts out for it.

They had done it for free if somebody would have just fed them. That's how much they loved it. In 1944, as war raged on, the army decided at last to upgrade its artillery system with a new technology, the guided missile. And in a proving ground, large enough to test long-range missiles would not be easy. But by acquiring the relatively small area of lands, which separated the Fort Bliss from the Alamagordo bombing ranges, the combined area would provide a test range of some 140 miles. And the white sand's proving ground was born. Of course, the field was new, the technology was new, no one really knew what the problem was. The early few days there at the missile range, the proving ground or other, was pretty exciting because I didn't know from nothing and no one else did either. And we had everybody running around there and trying to figure out what we were doing.

They used to say, well, you're out in the two of these, you know, Charlie and I would go back to Ohio when they thought that we were in Old Mexico, they asked if we had a visa, you know. Even before the white sand's chapter, the story of space rocketry has begun. Germany, 1944. World War II enters its final phase as Allied air power heaps destruction upon Germany itself. In the dark of night, tons of British bombs fall on the fatherland. From daylight, American bombers wreck their hand. And the once invincible German Luftwaffe was by now impotent to turn the tide. In the face of the onslaught, Adolf Hitler unleashed two powerful new weapons here to

fore unknown to the Allied powers. First, there was the gasoline driven V1 rocket, buzz bombs they were called, and they fell by the thousands upon Great Britain. Then came the V1's even more deadly successor, the supersonic V2 rocket. Bigger and more powerful than its cousin, the V2 pounded Allied targets. But the world's first true ballistic missile came too late to save the Third Reich. See, they saw that they were losing the war. And of course, they were really scared of Russia, and so they deliberately placed themselves in a position where the American troops could capture them rather than the Russians. They did that deliberately, because they feared the Russians. Germany's loss would be America's gain.

At war's end, the German scientists who had fashioned these icons in Hitler's arsenal of destruction, including the 30-year-old Werner von Braun, would be covertly spirited out of Germany to the United States. Their destination, Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, just 45 miles south of what was then the White Sands Proving Grounds. Their assignment, to resurrect for the United States, what they had earlier created for Germany, the V2 rocket. There is a sensation when a rocket goes that you can't describe, it just fell like the momentum of it just pulled your inside out, and like you were going up with it, it was just really strong, and it was something that I'll never forget. They turned on the seven-ton stage, which is the preliminary for testing the burning. And it was deafening, even that. We had caught in our ears and opened our mouths, and it was just deafening.

And then they turned on the 28-ton stage, and it was unimaginable, like 50 freight trains concentrated in one spot, and then the vibration of the noise, okay, just shook our bodies like a cat shaking a mouse. And that was some experience, I'll tell you. Werner Von Braun, who became known as the father of the American Space Rocket Program, was in World War II chief engineer of the German V2 missile plant at Pina Munde. Upon his capture at War's End, he was recruited to serve in the same capacity for the United States at White Sands. Werner Von Braun was a man who was very courteous at all times. They would come in in the morning, and they would click their heels and baffin the waist and say, good morning for a hawk home. It made me feel good, because they were always so very courteous. Werner Von Braun was obviously a very intelligent person, and egotistical, and the leader. And of course, part of that goes back to that pressure or German society that he was raised

in. But I'm told that many times they brought their lunches and their briefcases, and no one opened their briefcase until Werner opened his. He had a very rigid cast idea in his head. He would determine who was worthy of his attention and who was not, and if you didn't fit, it's tough. He was obviously excellent public relations individual for selling his ideas, his program, his people, and you not only did that in Nazi Germany, you did that in this nation. Ironically, the scientific foundations upon which the V2 rocket was based had been pioneered 15 years earlier, near Roswell, New Mexico, by the famed American scientists Robert Goddard. Even more ironic, American officials had ignored, indeed ridiculed Goddard's theories.

Germany had not. Did it the treaty for a side in World War I, and the Germans were prohibited from having any equipment, a powerful artillery? Well, there was nothing said about rockery, so this was a way out of their predicament. And that's why it's fighting to the nearest in it. There was no international regulation for betting it. Well, I think the German interest was in space travel. And I think that that was their real impetus, almost the entire von Braun crew, was space travel, not weapons. And there apparently just wasn't a group of Americans that were that interested in space travel. Now we had the same thing happen near a plane after Wright brothers who developed in the fighting machine Germany, not the United States. We are slow appreciating these inventions. I don't know why that isn't America, but it's happened again and again. What's wrong with us?

I don't know, not enough imagination, I guess. Although disinterested in Goddard's work prior to World War II, the United States changed his tune after the war. Rumor was the German rocket team had been at work on a transatlantic ballistic missile capable of delivering a warhead on New York City. They had to know how already and a lot of the plans I don't think they really had gotten very far in building that particular missile. The White Sands missile range is vastly different today from the White Sands, which had courted von Braun and his fellow German scientist, located in the Tula Rosa Basin near Alamogordo, and named for the nearby national monument. At two million acres it is the largest military reservation in the United States, employing more than 8,500 military and civilian personnel. In 1982 the landing site for the third Columbia Space Shuttle mission.

Okay Columbia, welcome home, that was a beautiful job. White Sands of course has a history of dramatic events. Just one week before Trinity, White Sands proving grounds had opened its doors, and already generally electric under contract to the United States Army, was at work on a long range guided missile program, the Hermes. Ultimately, however, it was the knowledge and experience of the Germans which would prove critical. The United States contracted with general electric to actually fire the captured V2s. From 1947, and for 30 years thereafter Frank Hemingway managed the White Sands range as its technical director. But the Germans were given the job in the first three firings at least of putting them together

and showing general electric really how the system worked. Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, in 1930 at the age of 24, discovered the planet Pluto. And beginning in 1946, the famed American scientist headed the optical tracking ballistics laboratory at the White Sands proving grounds. And tell me about these people, these German scientists, who were they? Why were they so important in the world of rocketry? Well, they were very gifted men, start with, they were very well educated. And of course, the war was an impetus to try to excel in development of effective rocketry. And they were just top notch capable people who understood this problem. And so the United States was fortunate that they placed themselves in a position where

they could be captured by the American troops. That was greatly to our benefit. And so that's how they got here. And of course, they helped us a great deal. The hesitate to guess how much to save us in dollar development and time by their presence here. We the Americans had a lot of trouble with our precision instruments. And we hated to ask the Germans for advice and anything, but they never seemed to have any trouble. And so finally, Papi went to him and said, how come you don't have trouble and we do? And they said, that's easy. We wrap them in condoms in the evening. And he said he didn't know why he never thought of it. He sent somebody to Las Cruces and somebody to Al Paso to buy all they could find. And the solution was great, worked fine. But when they got the bell back at GE, they sent it right back and said, if you think with you clowns down the border, we're belling Uncle Sam for whatever the quantity was you're wrong. And so he said, this is where American ingenuity came to the fore because they put their heads

together. And they resummitted the bell as rubber tubing six inches long, closed in one end that went right through and Uncle Sam paid it without a question. Call it ingenuity, call it end running the system. But cutting through the red tape was not uncommon in getting America's missile program off the ground. One person would have too many electronic engineers. Another person would not have enough mathematicians. And so we would trade back and forth. And when we got to a point where we couldn't decide who would take which, we'd flip coins. Now the potentially employees never knew this, but the general never knew it either. Bucking the bureaucracy was the easy part. But even the most enterprising could not buck the laws of gravity. The local people weren't at all happy about this proven ground coming here.

The local priestly was editor of the Sun News and boy he'd lambast the missile range of proven ground then. And so this one time they decided to reassure them by inviting them out to watch a shoot. That's the day that the V2 fell off the launcher and they all hit the brides and some of the women were still complaining they tore their nylons which was still very precious in 1947. And they went back to town and freshly wrote the worst editorial about, let's get rid of this, this thing that's a danger to our community. The first missile designed by Von Braun's group out of Fort Bliss, somehow or other the gyros were hooked up backwards and it flew exactly its trajectory but it went south. I was in the blockhouse at the time and listened and saw the consternation that occurred when the flight director asked the safety people what was going on and got nothing back but German over the telephone line which he couldn't understand.

I saw something, I was living in El Paso at this particular time and we saw something go over and I said, I don't know what that was and my husband said I think that's the rocket and I said no way they'll never let those rockets get away like that they'll keep them from going there and he said no, I think that's what he was sure enough when we looked in the paper next morning that's what it was. And we could see the impact flash from the launcher, I remember it very well. They assured me that it was perfectly safe because it fell in the cemetery and everybody was already dead. Much to the dismay of many, Warris was not the only missile mishap. Rather than the Hermes they fired a low trajectory on purpose for a certain test and then somehow a sudden happened on one of the veins that he got turned around and came right square towards us doing this you see. And at one of the places, the right square to our state where I was you see and I was pretty worried there for a while.

Fortunately, it plunged in the earth about a half mile for it got to us but it could have been a disaster. So it was a dangerous work? Yeah, we were thinking about getting behind some boondocks there hoping to go over not land right where we were. If you would hear the range controllers say we now have reported impact and everybody was always elated when it was in the area where it was supposed to be. When that siren blew the three minute whistle, four minutes went, every office, every place there evacuated, you went out to watch and if you were lucky, the thing actually took off. Didn't fall off the launcher. It didn't blow up. It went straight up into the atmosphere and came right straight down. They fired it from the Army Black House and according to all of the radar from sea station, they came that was supposed to have come right down on top of the station which I was operating. But to my benefit, it missed.

If you've seen a V2 launch, you know they very slowly climbed straight up in the air. This one did just as it was supposed to for a while and then it started marching right back down the path it had just gone. It came down on the launcher, burst of tanks, mixed all that fuel and oxidizer and one big explosion again. And it was watching the missile, it got up and came swinging down. It was watching through the binoculars and I thought, boy that looks big. These binoculars are great, took the binoculars down just with the thing hit right at the guard gate. Wow. Blue all the way to the side of the post engineer. It was fun. Great fun. I might add to these failures that there was one V2 that scattered parts just about where we're sitting right now. It was two weeks after the Hermes II went to Juarez and a V2 came headed for Almagardo

and actually over food and landed between Almagardo and Tuorosa. I recall once again being in the blockhouse, one shortly after the firing, we got a call. Well, a lady who said she was calling from the corner drugstore that parts of our missile had just landed in her backyard. This was a two-man tracking instrument. One guy would track asthma with one in the elevation and we stayed on this object for quite a while, several seconds. And the other tracker says, are you tracking? Are you moving? I says, no. Are you moving? He says, no. He says, well, what do you think we got? I says, I don't know. You can see it. Can you? He says, yeah, I can see it. Well, it turned out to be Venus. None of us were really ever afraid of getting hit. It was just, you knew it could happen. You saw him land right there at the gate, but we just weren't afraid. Maybe I think people here in this area don't worry as much about nuclear bombs as they

do say back ease because we live with this kind of thing where it could blow you up any minute. And this was always the problem with the V2s. As old as they were, as poorly as they had been treated environmentally in their transport from Europe to the United States, they weren't very reliable. We had a Navy commander at that time that every time they get ready to fire the lacrosse, I had a Betty Mamartini one go, and they get down to under 10, they go 9, 8, 7, and somebody say, hold, hold, and then finally they just threw me on a rage control completely when lacrosse fired. But when the Navy commander left, he owed me about a bucket of Martinez. One particular missile, I believe, went to the launch of five times over a total of

a little better than a year before it finally got launched. When a missile did what it was supposed to do, we all cheered everybody, as secretaries, all of us, because we really felt a part of it. Every failure was celebrated by a number of beers, and every success was celebrated by a number of beers. The little old officer's club, that was a gym down there, oh, that was a small place. Everybody went there, civilians and military alike, and as soon as the whistle blew, we hit the steps of the officer's club, it was a little fun place. I think it was an exciting time. I was down to White Sands with the first party in March of 45 while I was still in the

Army, and I did not intend to come back after I got out of the Army. Four years near me, and I had a job in the broadcasting business waiting for me. And the lawyer of the job brought me back. First I agreed to come back for a year, and I stayed for 30 some. So I think that tells you that there was a lot of challenge. The excitement of what you were doing was you're applying new ground, doing something that was unusual, new, and technology, and on the periphery of the leading edge, and it was really exciting time. In the early days, everyone that was anyone wanted to say they had been at White Sands, leading edge, a new frontier, and I find in reading the old newspapers and things for Harry James and Betty Grable entertained at the Oscars Club as near as I can tell free, just to say they had been there.

Over the period within the first three years, they had progressed to where one missile could boost a second missile, and the day that the missile went, 153 miles up was the day of the most hysterical joy I ever remember. They nobody really waited till 415 when we were officially closed. The men came into the office's club walk and two feet off the floor, hugging one another, singing and shouting, we did it, we did it. You know fine is when you work at an insurance office, this was just great. The post was fun in those days, we would go to work, our annual leave, and our sickly we had moku of it because no one wanted to stay home for fear they'd miss something. See all these lights up there at night, they invariably would have one about two in the morning. So we'd be working on this beautiful, and then this is in the days when you were dreaming about the moon or something, it was terribly exciting to me to a college kid who was 19, 20 years old at that time, having the opportunity to be thrown into the middle of something exciting

like this. And believe you me, this was fun, this was the most satisfying tour I ever had anywhere. We watched the space age come in, and it's a great feeling to have been part of this. Maybe it's nothing much to leave to your grandchildren, but it's very satisfying to me. The German scientists are all gone now, and the young American pioneers of this nation's early space program are in their golden years, at least those who remain. But the one silent and always desolate landscape which became the white sand's missile range, echo still to the vitality of those earlier times. I don't know, I'm very enjoyable period of my life, I would like to live part of those days over again. He is a journalist but the idiom and cadence with which he expresses himself as poetry.

The publication this month of the third volume of his history of the Americas, Memory of Fire, the Century of the Wind, has resulted in an almost unprecedented flood of critical acclaim for its author. But the story of Eduardo Galeano is more than the tale of a journalist's story. It is the story of courage and compassion, of anger and humor, and always the story of the grim truth of oppression and cruelty. The 48-year-old Galeano was born in Uruguay, and at the age of 33 was driven into exile by the military dictatorship which ruled that Latin American nation. For the next three years Galeano lived in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. But history was to repeat itself when the grotesque military dictatorship of the Argentinian generals came to power.

It was a desperate time for advocates of human rights like Eduardo Galeano. Thousands upon thousands of Argentinians simply disappeared in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again. The atrocities are by now legendary. And Galeano himself was beaten and tortured by authorities who sought to eradicate all traces of freedom of the press in Argentina. Ultimately, his life in danger, Galeano sought refuge in Spain. Today Galeano lives and writes again in Uruguay where some semblance of freedom has been restored. Recently, at the end of a long tour throughout the United States following the publication of his new book, Eduardo Galeano, a man many believed likely to win the Nobel Prize for Literature someday, was in Albuquerque. Behind them, an abyss, a head into either side, an armed people on the attack.

La Polvo de Barracks and the city of Granada last stronghold of the dictatorship is falling. Soon, the iron gate of the barracks opens and the colonel appears waving a white rag. Don't fire! The colonel crosses the street. I want to talk to the commander. A curcif covering one of the faces drops. I am the commander, says Monica Valtodano, one of the Sandinista women who led lead troops. What? Through the mouth of the colonel, this hot imager speaks the military institution defeated but dignified, virility of the pants, honor of the uniform. I don't surrender to a woman, rose the colonel, and he surrenders.

A visit with Galeano is a visit with a great writer and a passionate advocate of justice. But what I am fascinated with the idea of which animates the trilogy, the idea of looking at history as though through a keyhole. Yes, it's a way of trying to get inside the big real history of people in America, all the Americas, from North to South. And to get into the big history through the small, little stories about little people, the so-called ordinary people. Because this is history seen from the viewpoint of the have-not, I mean, it's not a neutral

history of America. And so it tries to recover the almost lost memory of those who may be considered a good object of study, but not true subjects of history, all who are useful as human resources, not as human beings and who may have superstitions, but not religions, may speak dialects, but not languages, may have folklore, but not culture. And may perhaps do fine crafts, but not really art, from the view point of what we make all the dominant culture.

And real history is not done by big heroes built in Marmolo Bronson, or Marble, Marble. And by little people like me, for instance, or you, I mean, human beings. The heart of America being right, Eduardo Galeano was a little person today, I mean, the literary success, which you are enjoying now, I mean, the critics are going crazy, people admire greatly your work. After all the years of hardship and oppression, I must feel pretty good. Yes, it is. I don't believe in success, I don't believe in success, but I believe in friendship and love and in communication, and it's really very, as you say, very, very good for me, very important to confirm that I may be really communicating certain feelings and ideas and emotions to others, to be able to be free to do that now.

Yes. Even if, you know, there are some limitations anyway, you know, for instance, in your way in my country and now maybe living and working and I'm free and nobody's threatening me anymore has happened in all times. But we have some limitations. Yes. Let's talk about your country, Uruguay, throughout so much of modern history, it was characterized as the Switzerland of Latin America because of its long and deep democratic tradition, as well as because of its beauty, but by the 1970s, it had become one of the most oppressive dictatorships in South America. Yes. How could a nation with so generous a tradition become a nation gripped with such hatred and fear and oppression?

We enjoy political freedom, really, but our economic and social structures are, I would say, not only and democratic, but anti-democratic, they are deeply anti-democratic. Like in most of Latin American countries, you have terribly unjust structures of privilege and therefore most of the work that was done by the police or the army during the dark years of the military dictatorship is now being done by the economy. For instance, books, I'm a writer and I enjoy writing in my own country and having, as you said before, this certitude that you are really getting in touch with people that you are reaching people.

But prices, for instance. These are doing, making some sort of censorship. The three volumes of memory fire in my country in Uruguay would cost as much as almost half the minimum wage of a worker. And you make a year? No, for a month, yes, the monthly minimum wage. Does that make you fee? I mean, these are the people of whom you speak and to a very considerable extent, to whom you speak and yet you know, for them to hear your voice, they would have to spend one half of their monthly wage. How does that make you feel? Angry. In advance, I feel a certain feeling of impotence and frustration, but at once I am absolutely sure that human words are so powerful and magical and they fly, I don't know. But they fly.

They fly. I'm sure. I have seen so many different ways of circulation of the different stories I wrote, sometimes through photocopies or I don't know, so many ways. People telling each other or reading in loud voice because memory fire is trilogy then to be read in loud voice, as in all times, you know. It pains me at war, to say this, but I think it is true that so many people in the United States, even those of compassion, they read about the death squads, they read about torture, they read about oppression, but they are abstractions, you understand that. They are hard to relate to unless you endure them. Is there a way you can help those who are eavesdropping on our conversation better to understand the reality of that kind of circumstance?

I don't know, I tried to write, for instance, in such a form that past may become present and that some stories that really happened, real, true experiences from the old past may exist again as soon as I tell them. I mean, it's like if you be able to act like these famous shamans from some so-called primitive cultures who would sing the old songs about collective memory and all myths and all those stories with people around, in such a way that if they speak about horses,

you would hear the sound of horses coming, then the prince of horses would appear in the sand. I mean, this is a way of recovering history and to free her poor history, being as she's prisoner in the museums, in all the boring speeches and the academy, the official war, which is so boring and terrible, I was the worst student of history in my classroom. Helping those in this country who may have read about desquads and mysterious disappearances of people who never again are seen or heard from and the nature of life in a circumstance like that, can you help us understand from your own experience that kind, that kind of world?

Perhaps there is not a clear conscience in the States, perhaps you're right, that in this world no richness is innocent and that the prosperity of certain nations and the country, like Altenewil de Vida, like a standard of living, like a standard of living of some countries or some social classes at least inside some country, implies poverty, and implies violence for millions and millions and millions of people living in the so-called sub-war countries, which are really the outskirts of the others, of the central centers. But it isn't just poverty, it's fear, the nature of fear, it seems to me in memory of fire, it's so clear to live and never know what that knock at the door means.

I mean, for instance, in Uruguay during the dictatorship there was a computer, sort of computer, central computer, labeling all citizens, we were all classified. In A, B, and C, A were the not dangerous, B the potentially dangerous, and C the dangerous, of course from the viewpoint of a system of privilege and power, and so it depended on your classification if you were an A or a B or a C, if you could or not get the job or keep the job you had, and if you could or not live in your own country. You left your own country in 1973 and what Argentina has left Uruguay because I didn't want to, I didn't like to be a prisoner and I was in jail several times, so I left Uruguay

and later I left Argentina also, in Uruguay also they did around merits, you know, I mean in the development of a technology of terror. And I really cannot understand why if you are a war criminal born in Germany or in New Crania then you deserve a good rope around your neck, but if you are a war criminal in Argentina or Uruguay you may deserve a medal on your breast. In Uruguay we had a law of impunity, it was approved by the newly born democracy, oblige in everybody to forget the crimes of the state terrorism during those years, 12 years of military dictatorship in which one Uruguayan of each 50 or perhaps 80 was tortured, which is quite a proportion.

And then we had this law, it was something like a law of amnesia oblige in everybody to forget, and we formed a commission beyond all the organizations and political parties and spontaneous commission of people who began to collect signatures against the law. And at the beginning everybody was saying, well this is a country poisoned by fear, so you want to get the signatures, and we got the equivalent of 55 million signatures in the United States, I mean in proportion to our population, we got as many signatures as 55 million signatures here. To abolish amnesia, to the law of amnesia, which is not bad, not bad at all, not bad at all. Yes, because it proves that the energies of dignity are always stronger than the energies of fear.

I mean that you are not condemned to accept impotence as the only possible human destiny on earth. Well, perhaps from this point of departure you can help us understand the prospects, the future of President Elfonseen and Argentina, who has replaced the Argentinian dictatorship of the generals. He approved. He approved. I mean, he made some things that I think are quite positive, but on the other hand he approved the worst law in the whole history of humanity, which is the law of obedience here, the vida. Well, what does it do? It's a law that briefly says that during the military dictatorship, if you killed or torture obeying orders, it was okay. And this, not even Adolf Hitler there to do, I mean it was the first time in history.

How could you get to swallow that? I mean, not even in the name of the democracy, because you cannot build a democracy over a swamp. Pantano, no? Swamp is Pantano. You can't build a democracy over a swamp. To build a democracy you need a solid ground of justice. Chile? I was there, generally. I felt that Chile is quite alive, and that dictatorship is not Chilean destiny, that it's just Chilean penitence, that the Chilean people will get rid of, you know, Chilean dictatorship there in Chile. You know, it was a result of a long war against the constitutional regime of Salvador Argentina. I remember that sentence by Henry Kissinger saying we will make Chilean economy scream. As a Latin American, when you hear an American secretary of state, foreign adviser to a president

of the United States say something like that, what do you think? I think and I feel and I ask myself, in which super market did they buy Latin America? That's why I ask myself. Very well. Brazil. Brazil? I love Brazil, you know. I speak Portuguese and I even write in Portuguese. It's a country I really love. It's suffering a long, long economic dictatorship in the last figures are between 15 and 20 million of homeless children in Brazil. Then nowadays there is a very interesting process of opening democratic institutions and also after a long, long military rule there.

But I guess that for all this 15 or 20 million of abandoned children, democracy really doesn't mean too much. All right, Nicaragua. I'm very happy now because Enicaragua won the war. It's very important. Of course, the Nicaragua and government cannot say we won the war because they are still in the process of getting the last agreement signed by the Congress and the Congress are now trying to swallow the grow frog of the feet, which is not easy, but they won the war. And it's great. It's great. The end won the war against the elephant. It's great.

It's a victory of human dignity. It's great. Absolutely great. The victory of human dignity is Miguel Marlmore, who is a friend of yours. And an integrating figure in every foreign, the third volume. I found in his life the most perfect metaphor for Latin America because he was killed so many times, eleven, twelve times, and each time he was born again. And Latin America is also a region of the war, who has been killed so many times. He's like Miguelito, an artist in the art of resurrection. That's why I choose Miguelito's life as a sort of metaphor of everything else. Perhaps you could explain what you mean when he has died and been reborn eleven times very briefly. That's it. I mean, it's not something I'm inventing. He was, for instance, shot to death by the dictator Martinez in El Salvador in 1932.

The dictator Martinez killed thousands and thousands of peasants and workers at that time. And in the shootings, or shootings, shootings, Miguelito was one of the condemned to death who was killed. And he, I don't know how, he doesn't survive, who is bullet inside and wounds and so on. He survived. And he went on surviving. Eduardo Galliano, I can't tell you what an honor it is to visit with you. I thank you so much for giving us this time. No. No. Thank you. For me, I'm at the end now with a hard tool, and then I'm a little tired, but I'm very happy now because when I included some chapters about the United States in memory of fire, a lot of different characters and experiences from the United States, I did not know that they

would be useful to reveal the hidden history of the United States for a lot of people here. And I really feel that I'm the brother of all people, they invite the will of justice and the will of beauty. We all have an appointment, perhaps, for north to south, an appointment with justice and with beauty and with true democracy. I'm not neutral at all. I'm on the side of justice and on the side of beauty. We began our program tonight with the story of space, now to the center of the universe,

that controversial new sculpture on the campus of the University of New Mexico. So controversial, some people want it torn down, about that on tonight's post script. When you go to the center, that's where there's nothing, that's where you can see through it, and you can see through it from all sides and up and down, and even though it appears to be a large object, it's about enclosing a space that you can see through and around. They're going to have to clean it all the time, I think they should just knock it down and not worry what other people say. Because I think right now nobody likes it, and since nobody likes it, they should just knock it down, but they're afraid of the reactions of the people who built it.

Looking as a sculptural piece, it's profound in that it gets beyond even just three dimensions, although certainly when you enter in the center of this piece, you feel you're standing on a great, you're experiencing a space below you, you're experiencing space above you, you're experiencing four different directions coming off, you're essentially experiencing six different directions at once, and that's profound. I do find it quite hideous and out of place here on campus, it would be more effective like one of the professors said on a mountain top or in the desert. I think one of the important parts of the piece is the tension between being there and

thinking about what it might be. It requires that you feel, you experience walking through it and walking around it and looking at it, which is emotional and physiological or whatever, and at the same time, then you have to think about what that means, what it might mean, the center of the universe or the center of the university or the center of anything, the center of yourself. When I first saw it, I thought you got great concrete, and then I thought it was kind of arrogant to call it the center of the universe, and then when I thought about it, I thought well, we do think of ourselves as the center of the universe, and it's nice to stand in the middle and look up at the sky. I'd like to know what the artist had in mind, but I just, it's just too ugly, I think things could have been done better with that money. When you look at the history of the world, wars and art are the things that tend to be remembered, so there must, without being able to say what it is, there must be some function and use,

just evidence of human endeavor. Well, I think that they ought to dedicate one section of each wall to a different department at the university and have them decorate it, and then take it on tour. Tonight's post-crypt. Coming up next week, there are eight of them, Mechum, Borlach, Campbell, Cargo, King, Papadaca, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, 35 years of state history, and all of them gather for and historic Anasaiya. So until next week then, I'm Hal Rhodes, Anasaiya Man. Thank you for joining us. Have a good night. Have a good night, Hal Rhodes, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors,

Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors,

Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors,

Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors, Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors,

Anaya, Carruthers, New Mexico's Living Governors,