I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Galeano's vision is unswerving, surgical and yet immensely generous and humane. This book, written more than thirty years ago, contains profound lessons for contemporary India. Eduardo Galeano ought to be a household name in this country. – Arundhati Roy
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.
‘A superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive exposé which all students of Latin America and U.S. history must read.’
– CHOICE, American Library Association
Eduardo Galeano’s analysis of the effects and causes of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America presents a clear, passionate account of almost 500 years of Latin American history. Galeano shows how foreign companies reaped huge profits through their operations in Latin America. He explains the politics of the Latin American bourgeoisies and their subservience to foreign powers, and how they interacted to create increasingly unequal capitalist societies in Latin America. Open Veins continues to speak to generations of people who want to understand capitalism and exploitation in Latin America, and in the rest of the world.
– ELIZABETH DORE, University of Southampton, author of Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua
He has more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody else I can think of, and uses it to tell the world of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures of its people.…Galeano denounces exploitation with uncompromising ferocity, yet this book is almost poetic in its description of solidarity and human capacity for survival in the midst of the worst kind of despoilation. … This almost superhuman talent for storytelling is what makes Open Veins of Latin America so easy to read. The book flows with the grace of a tale; it is impossible to put it down
– ISABEL ALLENDE, from the Foreword
about the author
EDUARDO GALEANO is a world-renowned journalist and the author of the acclaimed trilogy 'Memories of Fire'. His other works include 'Days and Nights of Love and War', 'Book of Embraces', 'Soccer in Sun and Shadow', 'Upside Down' and 'Voices of Time: A Life in Stories'
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