The open veins of Latin America

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The open veins of Latin America is the main work of the Uruguayan journalist, essayist and writer Eduardo Galeano . It was published in Spanish in 1971under the title Las venas abiertas de América Latina . The first German translation appeared in 1972, it is subtitled The history of a continent .

backgrounds

Eduardo Galeano at the Feria del Libro in Madrid, 2008

The publication of this work fell in an era of political upheaval in Latin America . Galeano worked as a journalist at that time, edited books and was employed at the Universidad de la República . Galeano spent four years researching the work, and it took him about 90 nights to write the text. 1973 took over in Uruguay 's military junta to power, prompting Galeano into exile after Argentina , and later on to Spain was forced to flee. Because of the “ left ” character of the essay , The Open Veins of Latin America was banned under the military governments of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile .

“[The] key comments on this book [are] not from the pen of any recognized literary critic, but from the military dictatorships who praised it by banning it. "The open veins" were not allowed to be sold in my country or in Chile, and in Argentina the book was panned out on television and in the press as corrupt and harmful to minors . "

- Eduardo Galeano : Amendment 1978: Seven Years Later - Foreword in The Open Veins of Latin America , expanded new edition

content

In The Open Veins of Latin America , Galeano summarizes the history of Latin America since its discovery and analyzes it from a dependency theoretical point of view. Galeano describes different facets of the five centuries of economic exploitation by the European colonial powers and later the USA as well as their political dominance. Gold, silver, cocoa, cotton and many other metals and raw materials were, he explains, exploited in Latin America and absorbed in the wealth of the USA and Europe.

construction

The work is divided into two parts: After the introduction (one hundred and twenty million children in the center of the thunderstorm ) follow the chapters Gold Fever, Silver Fever , King Sugar and Other Agricultural Monarchs and The Underground in the first part ( The Poverty of Man as a Result of the Earth's Wealth ) Sources of power . In the second part ( The development is a voyage with more shipwrecked people than seafarers ), Galeano deals with The Story of Premature Death and The Current Structure of Looting . More recent editions include the 1978 supplement: seven years later , in which Galeano describes the extent to which the situation in the region has worsened rather than improved since the book was first published. Some editions since 1997 contain a foreword by Isabel Allende .

meaning

The open veins of Latin America is considered a classic in political and historical literature about Latin America. Choice , a magazine of the American Library Association , praises the work as “ a superbly written […] and powerfully persuasive expose ” (German: “a wonderfully written […] and powerfully convincing memorandum”). The Venezuelan head of state Hugo Chávez described it as a “monument to our Latin American history”, according to Arundhati Roy the work also contains “profound lessons for today's India ”. Bernd Marquardt called the work the “ popular science ' Bible ' of the dependency theory”.

The font was boosted in popularity when Hugo Chávez gave a copy of the work to US President Barack Obama in front of the camera at the fifth America Summit in April 2009 .

However, the author himself distanced himself from the style of his book many years later. At the Brasília Book Fair in April 2014, he said at a press conference that the book was the result of an attempt by a young man to write a work on political economy who did not understand enough of the subject. He wrote it at a certain time that has since been overcome. The world has changed a lot. Incidentally, he would no longer be able to read his book because he could no longer physically stand the bad style of language used by the traditional left.

expenditure

  • Eduardo Galeano: The Open Veins of Latin America: The History of a Continent from Discovery to the Present . 16th, expanded edition. Hammer, Wuppertal 2002, ISBN 3-87294-162-3 .
  • Eduardo Galeano: The Open Veins of Latin America: The History of a Continent . New edition, 1st edition. Hammer, Wuppertal 2009, ISBN 978-3-7795-0271-5 .
  • Eduardo Galeano: Las venas abiertas de America Latina . 6th reprint, 2nd Spanish edition. Siglo XXI de España Editores, Madrid 2010, ISBN 84-323-1525-7 .
  • Eduardo Galeano: Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent . 25th edition. Monthly Review Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-85345-991-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Scott Wimmer: Writer Without Borders . Interview on inthesetimes.com
  2. ↑ Eduardo Galeano: The open veins of Latin America. The history of a continent from its discovery to the present . Extended new edition (11th edition in total). Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag 1985
  3. ↑ a b Open Veins of Latin America at monthlyreview.org
  4. ↑ Paul Ingendaay: The open veins. On the death of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 15, 2015, p. 10.
  5. ↑ Bernd Marquardt: State, Constitution and Democracy in Hispano-America since 1810. Volume 1: The liberal century. 1810 to 1916. (= historical-political studies of the transatlantic area. Volume 1). Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotà 2008, ISBN 978-958-701-927-8 . P. 20
  6. ↑ Chavez: My Next Gift For Obama Will Be Lenin Book ( Memento of the original from June 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on huffingtonpost.com  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.huffingtonpost.com
  7. ^ Author Changes His Mind on '70s Manifesto. In: New York Times, May 23, 2014, accessed June 9, 2016
  8. ↑ Galeano diz que realidade mudou e que nicht releria seu livro mais conhecido. In: Agência Brasil, April 11, 2014, accessed June 9, 2016 (Portuguese)
  9. ↑ Galeano: “Eu ung seria capaz de ler de novo 'As Veias Abertas…', cairia desmaiado”. ( Memento from March 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Socialista Morena from April 14, 2014, Memento accessed on June 9, 2016 (Portuguese)