Description
Erudite, angry, sweeping in its scope, Open Veins of Latin America is a powerful survey of a continent’s under-development and the role of foreign capital and national politics in that process.
Eduardo Galeano traces Latin America’s exploitation and impoverishment through the history of its principal commodities. Over five centuries, he explores the minerals and crops which have made a rich region poor, while building the fortunes of US and European transnationals. From the gold and silver sought by the Spanish conquistadores to the oil and copper extracted by present-day foreign corporations, Galeano presents a disturbing and fascinating picture of economic injustice.
Blending historical fact with poetic imagery, Open Veins of Latin America is both an impassioned critique of transnational exploitation and a tribute to the passions of a plundered and suffering people. Isabel Allende’s inspiring Foreword to this classic text testifies to Eduardo Galeano’s status as one of Latin America’s foremost writers.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Isabel Allende: From ‘In Defense of the Word’
Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane
Part I: Mankind’s Poverty as a Consequence of the Wealth of the Land
- Lust for Gold, Lust for Silver
- King Sugar and Other Agricultural Monarchs
- The Invisible Sources of Power
Part II: Development is a Voyage with More Shipwrecks than Navigators
- Tales of Premature Death
- The Contemporary Structure of Plunder
Part III: Seven Years After
References
Index
Esa noche nos invadió la tristeza (That Night Sadness Invaded Us), linocut by Artemio Rodriguez
Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (1940-2015) was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, “I’m a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
– From wikipedia
