Clara Barros/ Staff Writer
I’ve heard people say that sometimes, “the artwork is greater than the artist.”
This is undoubtedly the case of Eduardo Galeano.
An Uruguayan journalist-turned-writer, he was one of the greatest, most laureated Hispanic personalities in the world.
Born in 1940, he turned his writing — and indeed his life — into a powerful manifesto against injustice and exploitation. As he himself put it, Galeano wrote for “the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, the wretched of this earth.”
Nowhere is this commitment more clear than in his masterpiece, “Open Veins of Latin America.”
Ever since it was published in 1971, the book has never stopped selling — and has indeed been immortalized as a Latin American monument.
Even today, it’s a required text in many social science courses around the world, including in universities.
Written furiously in just 12 weeks — while military dictatorships took control of Brazil, Chile and Argentina — “Open Veins in Latin America” denounces the systemic exploitation Latin America has historically been subject to.
From the Spanish conquistadores to U.S. corporations, Galeano describes the “five centuries of the pillage of a continent.”
The book is a sharp, merciless response to those who blame South and Central American countries for their own poverty and underdevelopment as if their condition had been a result of their people’s incompetence or their leaders’ poor management.
“The division of labor among nations”, explains Galeano nakedly and brilliantly, “is that some specialize in winning and others in losing” — Latin America has “specialized in losing,” but “the winners happen to have won thanks to our losing.”
The winners Galeano refers to are, of course, Europe and the United States, who’ve accumulated a large portion of their wealth by appropriating our region’s “everything: the soil, its fruits [and minerals], the people and their capacity to work and to consume.”
With a long trace that links the colonization, theft of gold and slave trade of the times of the European voyages to modern-day capitalism and imperialism — such as U.S. economic dominance and military coups — Galeano draws the open veins of our continent.
“Along the way,” he continues, “we have even lost the right to call ourselves Americans.”
For most people today, America is just the United States — while Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Perú or Bolivia are “a sub-America, a second-class America of a nebulous identity.”
To say that the book is written with passion would be an understatement.
Galeano’s words seem to convey the vibrancy of a youth, the severity of an elder and the urgency of those who struggle to survive.
In the times we’re living in — Galeano is more than just someone worth remembering.
His work is necessary —we ought to read it, devour it and speak it.
We need to speak, as Galeano put it, “the true name of all things.”
Eduardo Galeano was profoundly anti-oppression, but above all, profoundly Latin American.
DISCLAIMER:
The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.
Photo by DONOSTIA KULTURA on Flickr
About Post Author
