Open Veins of Latin America

The Open Veins of Latin America is the main work of Uruguayan journalist, essayist and writer Eduardo Galeano. It was published in 1971 in Spanish under the title Las venas abiertas de América Latina, the German translation (Leonardo Halpern, Anneliese Schwarzer de Ruiz ) is subtitled The Story of a continent.

Background

The appearance of this work coincided with a marked by political upheavals era of the Latin American region. Galeano was at that time working as a journalist, edited books and was employed at the Universidad de la República. At the research for the work Galeano was employed for four years, to compose the text he needed about 90 nights. In 1973 in Uruguay, a military junta to power, after which Galeano later had to flee into exile continues after Argentina, Spain. Due to the "left" nature of the essay The Open Veins of Latin America under the military governments of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile was prohibited.

" [ The ] main comments about this book is not [ come ] from the pen of any recognized literary critic, but from the military dictatorships that praised it by banning it. How could " the open veins " are sold in my country still in Chile, and Argentina in the book was panned on television and in the press as corrupt and harmful to minors. "

Content

In The Open Veins of Latin America Galeano summarizes the history of Latin America together since the discovery and analyzes it from a dependenztheoretischen view. Galeano describes various facets of the five centuries of economic exploitation by the European colonial powers and later the United States and their political dominance. Gold, silver, cocoa, cotton and many other metals and commodities are, it is assumed been exploited in Latin America and been absorbed into the wealth of the U.S. and Europe.

Construction

The work is divided into two parts: After the introduction ( One hundred and twenty million children in the center of the storm ) follow ( The poverty of the people as a result of the wealth of the earth ) in the first part of the chapter gold rush, silver fever, king sugar and other agricultural monarch and the underground sources of power. In the second part ( The development is a journey with more than shipwrecked sailors ) treated Galeano The history of premature death and the current structure of the plunder. More recent editions is the addition in 1978: annexed Seven years later, in the Galeano is, how did the situation in the region since the first publication of the book deteriorated rather than improved. Some editions from 1997 contained a foreword by Isabel Allende.

Importance

The Open Veins of Latin America is considered a classic politico- historical literature on the Latin American region. Choice, a magazine of the American Library Association, praises the work as "a superbly written [ ... ] and powerfully persuasive expose" ( German: " a great- written [ ... ] powerful and compelling memoir "). Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called it a " monument of our Latin American history ," Arundhati Roy According to the work contains also " profound lessons for today's India."

A boost in popularity received the Scripture than Hugo Chavez at the fifth Summit of the Americas in April 2009 gave the U.S. President Barack Obama in front of the camera a copy of the work.