Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent is a book written by Uruguayan journalist, writer and poet Eduardo Galeano, published in 1971. It has sold over a million copies and been translated into over a dozen languages, and has been included in university courses "ranging from history and anthropology to economics and geography." In the book, Galeano analyzes the history of the Americas as a whole, from the time period of the European settlement of the New World to contemporary Latin America, describing the effects of European and later United Stateseconomic exploitation and political dominance over the region. The Library Journal review stated, "Well written and passionately stated, this is an intellectually honest and valuable study."
Background
Galeano wrote Open Veins of Latin America in Uruguay while working as an independent journalist and editor and while employed in the publishing department of the University of the Republic. He said, "It took four years of researching and collecting the information I needed, and some 90 nights to write the book". Shortly after the publication of Open Veins, in 1973, a military junta took power in Uruguay, forcing Galeano into exile; for its left-wing perspective the book was banned under the right-wingmilitary governments of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.
Cultural and political significance
In the foreword to the 1997 edition, Isabel Allende stated that "after the military coup of 1973 I could not take much with me: some clothes, family pictures, a small bag of 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 América Latina". Venezuelan PresidentHugo Chávez gave United States President Barack Obama a Spanish copy of Open Veins of Latin America as a gift at the 5th Summit of the Americas in 2009. As a result of this international exposure, the book's sales are reported to have risen sharply—it was the 54,295th most popular book on Amazon.com on one day, but it moved to #2 on the list a day later. In 2014, at an event in Brazil honoring him on the 43rd anniversary of the book's publication, Galeano said he no longer felt so connected to it. He said he was not sorry he had written it, but he had lacked the necessary development to write a book on political economy at that stage and criticized the book's prose as "extremely boring". This was often interpreted in the media as a renunciation of the book. However, when interrogated about the media reaction which followed the event in Brazil, Galeano remarked,
It's proof that writing is good for something, at least for inspiring celebration and protest, applause and also indignation. The book, written ages ago, is still alive and kicking. I am simply honest enough to admit that at this point in my life the old writing style seems rather stodgy, and that it’s hard for me to recognize myself in it since I now prefer to be increasingly brief and untrammeled. voices that have been raised against me and against The Open Veins of Latin America are seriously ill with bad faith.
