Open Veins of Latin America
also by EDUARDO GALEANO
Days and Nights of Love and War
Memory of Fire:
Volume I, Genesis
Volume II, Faces and Masks
Volume III, Century of the Wind
The Book of Embraces
Eduardo Galeano
OPEN VEINS of LATIN AMERICA
FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE OF A CONTINENT
Translated by Cedric Belfrage
25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
FOREWORD by Isabel Allende
Copyright © 1973, 1997 by Monthly Review Press
All Rights Reserved
Originally published as Las venas abiertas de América Latina
by Siglo XXI Editores, México, copyright © 1971 by Siglo XXI Editores
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publishing Data
Galeano, Eduardo H., 1940-
[Venas abiertas de América Latina. English]
Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent / Eduardo Galeano; translated by Cedric Belfrage. — 25th anniversary ed. / foreword by Isabel Allende.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-853-45991-0 (pbk.: alk. paper). — ISBN 978-0-85345-990-3 (cloth)
1. Latin America—Economic conditions. I. Title.
HC125.G25313 1997
330.98—dc21 97-44750
CIP
Monthly Review Press
146 West 29th Street
New York, NY 10001
15 14 13 12 11 10
“We have maintained a silence
closely resembling stupidity.”
—From the Revolutionary Proclamation
of the Junta Tuitiva, La Paz, July 16, 1809
Contents
FOREWORD BY ISABEL ALLENDE
FROM IN DEFENSE OF THE WORD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
INTRODUCTION: 120 MILLION CHILDREN
IN THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE
PART I: MANKIND’S POVERTY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE WEALTH OF THE LAND
1. LUST FOR GOLD, LUST FOR SILVER
2. KING SUGAR AND OTHER AGRICULTURAL MONARCHS
3. THE INVISIBLE SOURCES OF POWER
PART II: DEVELOPMENT IS A VOYAGE WITH MORE SHIPWRECKS THAN NAVIGATORS
4. TALES OF PREMATURE DEATH
5. THE CONTEMPORARY STRUCTURE OF PLUNDER
PART III: SEVEN YEARS AFTER
REFERENCES
INDEX
Foreword Isabel Allende
Many years ago, when I was young and still believed that the world could be shaped according to our best intentions and hopes, someone gave me a book with a yellow cover that I devoured in two days with such emotion that I had to read it again a couple more times to absorb all its meaning: Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano.
In the early 1970s, Chile was a small island in the tempestuous sea in which history had plunged Latin America, the continent that appears on the map in the form of an ailing heart. We were in the midst of the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, the first Marxist ever to become president in a democratic election, a man who had a dream of equality and liberty and the passion to make that dream come true. That book with the yellow covers, however, proved that there were no safe islands in our region, we all shared 500 years of exploitation and colonization, we were all linked by a common fate, we all belonged to the same race of the oppressed. If I had been able to read between the lines, I could have concluded that Salvador Allende’s government was doomed from the beginning. It was the time of the Cold War, and the United States would not allow a leftist experiment to succeed in what Henry Kissinger called “its backyard.” The Cuban Revolution was enough; no other socialist project would be tolerated, even if it was the result of a democratic election. On September 11,1973, a military coup ended a century of democratic tradition in Chile and started the long reign of General Augusto Pinochet. Similar coups followed in other countries, and soon half the continent’s population was living in terror. This was a strategy designed in Washington and imposed upon the Latin American people by the economic and political forces of the right. In every instance the military acted as mercenaries to the privileged groups in power. Repression was organized on a large scale; torture, concentration camps, censorship, imprisonment without trial, and summary executions became common practices. Thousands of people “disappeared,” masses of exiles and refugees left their countries running for their lives. New wounds were added to the old and recent scars that the continent had endured. In this political context, Open Veins of Latin America was published. This book made Eduardo Galeano famous overnight, although he was already a well-known political journalist in Uruguay.
Like all his countrymen, Eduardo wanted to be a soccer player. He also wanted to be a saint, but as it turned out, he ended up committing most of the deadly sins, as he once confessed. “I have never killed anybody, it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire.” He worked for a weekly political magazine Marcha, and at twenty-eight he became the director of the important newspaper Epoca, in Uruguay. He wrote Open Veins of Latin America in three months, in the last ninety nights of 1970, while he worked during the day in the university, editing books, magazines, and newsletters.
Those were bad times in Uruguay. Planes and ships left filled with young people who were escaping from poverty and mediocrity in a country that forced them to be old at twenty, and that produced more violence than meat or wool. After an eclipse that had lasted a century, the military invaded the scene with the excuse of fighting the Tupamaro guerrilla. They sacrificed the spaces of liberty and devoured the civil power, which was less and less civil.
By the middle of 1973 there was a military coup, he was imprisoned, and shortly afterward he went into exile in Argentina, where he created the magazine Crisis. But by 1976 there was a military coup also in Argentina, and the “dirty war” against intellectuals, leftists, journalists, and artists began. Galeano initiated another exile, this time in Spain, with Helena Villagra, his wife. In Spain he wrote Days and Nights of Love and War, a beautiful book about memory, and soon after he began a sort of conversation with the soul of America: Memories of Fire a massive fresco of Latin American history since the pre-Colombian era to modern times. “I imagined that America was a woman and she was telling in my ear her secrets, the acts of love and violations that had created her.” He worked on these three volumes for eight years, writing by hand. “I am not particularly interested in saving time: I prefer to enjoy it.” Finally, in 1985, after a plebiscite defeated the military dictatorship in Uruguay, Galeano was able to return to his country. His exile had lasted eleven years, but he had not learned to be invisible or silent; as soon as he set foot in Montevideo he was again working to fortify the fragile democracy that replaced the military junta, and he continued to defy the authorities and risk his life to denounce the crimes of the dictatorship.
Eduardo Galeano has also published several works of fiction and poetry; he is the author of innumerable articles, interviews, and lectures; he has obtained many awards, honorary degrees, and recognition for his literary talent and his political activism. He is one of the most interesting authors ever to come out of Latin America, a region known for its great literary names. His work is a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good storytelling. He has walked up and down Latin America listening to the voices of the poor and the oppressed, as well as those of th
e leaders and the intellectuals. He has lived with Indians, peasants, guerrillas, soldiers, artists, and outlaws; he has talked to presidents, tyrants, martyrs, priests, heroes, bandits, desperate mothers, and patient prostitutes. He has suffered tropical fevers, walked in the jungle, and survived a massive heart attack; he has been persecuted by repressive regimes as well as by fanatical terrorists. He has opposed military dictatorships and all forms of brutality and exploitation, taking unthinkable risks in defense of human rights. 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. He is an adventurer with a talent for writing, a compassionate heart, and a soft sense of humor. “We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.”
All these talents were already obvious in his first book, Open Veins of Latin America, as was his genius for story-telling. I know Eduardo Galeano personally: he can produce an endless stream of stories with no apparent effort, for an undetermined period of time. Once we were both stranded in a beach hotel in Cuba with no transportation and no air-conditioning. For several days he entertained me with his amazing stories over piña coladas. This almost superhuman talent for storytelling is what makes Open Veins of Latin America so easy to read—like a pirate’s novel, as he once described it—even for those who are not particularly knowledgeable about political or economic matters. The book flows with the grace of a tale; it is impossible to put it down. His arguments, his rage, and his passion would be overwhelming if they were not expressed with such superb style, with such masterful timing and suspense. 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 despoliation. There is a mysterious power in Galeano’s story-telling. He uses his craft to invade the privacy of the reader’s mind, to persuade him or her to read and to continue reading to the very end, to surrender to the charm of his writing and the power of his idealism.
In his Book of Embraces, Eduardo has a story that I love. To me it is a splendid metaphor of writing in general and his writing in particular.
There was an old and solitary man who spent most of his time in bed. There were rumors that he had a treasure hidden in his house. One day some thieves broke in, they searched everywhere and found a chest in the cellar. They went off with it and when they opened it they found that it was filled with letters. They were the love letters the old man had received all over the course of his long life. The thieves were going to burn the letters, but they talked it over and finally decided to return them. One by one. One a week. Since then, every Monday at noon, the old man would be waiting for the postman to appear. As soon as he saw him, the old man would start running and the postman, who knew all about it, held the letter in his hand. And even St. Peter could hear the beating of that heart, crazed with joy at receiving a message from a woman.
Isn’t this the playful substance of literature? An event transformed by poetic truth. Writers are like those thieves, they take something that is real, like the letters, and by a trick of magic they transform it into something totally fresh. In Galeano’s tale the letters existed and they belonged to the old man in the first place, but they were kept unread in a dark cellar, they were dead. By the simple trick of mailing them back one by one, those good thieves gave new life to the letters and new illusions to the old man. To me this is admirable in Galeano’s work: finding the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn-out events, and invigorating the tired soul with his ferocious passion.
Open Veins of Latin America is an invitation to explore beyond the appearance of things. Great literary works like this one wake up consciousness, bring people together, interpret, explain, denounce, keep record, and provoke changes. There is one other aspect of Eduardo Galeano that fascinates me. This man who has so much knowledge and who has—by studying the clues and the signs—developed a sense of foretelling, is an optimist. At the end of Century of the Wind, the third volume of Memory of Fire, after 600 pages proving the genocide, the cruelty, the abuse, and exploitation exerted upon the people of Latin America, after a patient recount of everything that has been stolen and continues to be stolen from the continent, he writes:
The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the warm music spinning around it will never stop. However much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breaths them and the land plows and loves them.
This breath of hope is what moves me the most in Galeano’s work. Like thousands of refugees all over the continent, I also had to leave my country after the military coup of 1973. I could not take much with me: some clothes, family pictures, a small bag with dirt from my garden, and two books: an old edition of the Odes by Pablo Neruda, and the book with the yellow cover, Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina. More than twenty years later I still have that same book with me. That is why I could not miss the opportunity to write this introduction and thank Eduardo Galeano publicly for his stupendous love for freedom, and for his contribution to my awareness as a writer and as a citizen of Latin America. As he said once: “it’s worthwhile to die for things without which it’s not worthwhile to live.”
In Defense of the Word
One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one’s solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who read.… One writes, in reality, for the people whose luck or misfortune one identifies with—the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, and the wretched of this earth—and the majority of them are illiterate.
… How can those of us who want to work for a literature that helps to make audible the voice of the voiceless function in the context of this reality? Can we make ourselves heard in the midst of a deaf-mute culture? The small freedom conceded to writers, is it not at times a proof of our failure? How far can we go? Whom can we reach?
… To awaken consciousness, to reveal identity—can literature claim a better function in these times?… in these lands?
… Our own fate as Latin American writers is linked to the need for profound social transformations. To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked … so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through … the mass media.
… Great changes, deep structural changes, will be necessary in our countries if we writers are to go beyond… the elites, if we are to express ourselves.… In an incarcerated society, free literature can exist only as denunciation and hope.
… We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are.…
In this respect a “revolutionary” literature written for the convinced is just as much an abandonment as is a conservative literature devoted to the … contemplation of one’s own navel.…
Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight.
… In Latin America a literature is taking shape and acquiring strength, a literature … that does not propose to bury our dead, but to immortalize them; that refuses to stir the ashes but rather attempts to light the fire … perhaps it may help to preserve for the generations to come … “the true name of all things.”
Eduardo Galeano, 1978
translation by Bobbye Ortiz
from Days And Nights of Love and War (1983)
reprinted by Monthly Review Press to honor Jud
y Ruben
Acknowledgement
This book would not have been possible without the collaboration, in one form or another, of Sergio Bagú, Luis Carlos Benvenuto, Fernando Carmona, Adicea Castillo, Alberto Couriel, Andre Gunder Frank, Rogelio García Lupo, Miguel Labarca, Carlos Lessa, Samuel Lichtensztejn, Juan A. Oddone, Adolfo Perelman, Artur Poerner, Carlos Quijano, Germán Rama, Darcy Ribeiro, Orlando Rojas, Julio Rossiello, Paulo Schilling, Karl-Heinz Stanzick, Vivian Trías, and Daniel Vidart. To them, and to the many friends who have encouraged me in the task of these recent years, I dedicate the result, of which they are of course innocent.
Montevideo, 1970
Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane
The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role. We are no longer in the era of marvels when fact surpassed fable and imagination was shamed by the trophies of conquest—the lodes of gold, the mountains of silver. But our region still works as a menial. It continues to exist at the service of others’ needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them. The taxes collected by the buyers are much higher than the prices received by the sellers; and after all, as Alliance for Progress coordinator Covey T. Oliver said in July 1968, to speak of fair prices is a “medieval” concept, for we are in the era of free trade.
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent Page 1
