Open Veins of Latin America
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Eduardo Galeano's furious, lyrical history of how Latin America's wealth was carried off by empire, from the Spanish conquest to the twentieth century.
Published in 1971 by the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano, this history traces the effects of European conquest, slavery and later United States economic power on Latin America. Galeano reads five centuries as a story of extraction, in which the continent’s silver, sugar, rubber and oil made others rich and left it poorer. Banned by several military governments, the book became a touchstone for a generation of left-wing readers and has sold more than a million copies.
Recommended by 1 Person
Naomi Klein
Galeano, who died in 2015, was a Uruguayan journalist and novelist. In his incendiary, poetic, and uncomfortable history of the Americas, published in 1971, he compiled a series of historical vignettes that weave together colonialism's omnipresent themes: genocide, extraction, and exploitation.
Article · August 2017
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