Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Eduardo Galeano may not be so well known among readers in general, but they would be well advised to make his acquaintance. This book was published around 1970, but the lessons it imparts about how the more "advanced" nations, for over 5 centuries, have at least in part achieved their status and standard of living - much to the detriment of the native populations of the "Global South" - are just as important (and perhaps even more so) to know and study today, nearly 50 years later. Most of the sad story that the author tells has only gotten sadder still in the intervening years, albeit with some hopeful changes along the way. The author was well read, well informed and widely traveled (he passed just in 2015), and brings much authority to his work - having also lived through many difficulties in his native home himself. The book covers a vast expanse of time and geography, and it can be hard to keep a focus because of this. It also unrelentingly hammers away at the explicit violence done to the peoples of these lands, which makes it difficult to read. But it must be read, in order to at least begin to correct the myopia which afflicts modern Westerners in regard to their cherished "way of life". The history of the last 500 years in Latin America (Galeano defines that region as being from the Rio Grande south to the Tierra del Fuego), is portrayed by the author as a period of almost universal exploitation and denial of freedoms, with only brief bright spots of attempts at self-determination. The book tells in excruciating detail of the voracious plunder of the Global South (including the African slave trade) by European countries, and then the U.S. and other advancing economies, as they ruthlessly expropriated valuable natural resources for their own advantage, but not for that of the local populations they decimated - except those who collaborated with and enabled the invaders. No one can speak of human rights, or of development of a true human family, or even about strategies to attempt to mitigate climate change, without acknowledging and opposing the disgraceful treatment of a vast portion of that human family, all for the vain worship of material gods and golden calves. You don't need to look beyond the widely exposed machinations of the "1%" currently in the media to see the depravity of these attitudes, but this intense work will illuminate you as to just how deep the roots of economic exploitation actually are.

I would like to say "Muchas Gracias!" to our good friend, El Comandante Chavez, the same guy who gives heating oil to the slum communities of America, for making this book known to me. American education under free speech and expression had kept it hidden from me I'm afraid. The book presents many established historical facts documenting the exploitation of Latin America by the western powers of Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, and the great USA. These nations buy, and for cheap, Latin America's raw materials and pay hunger wages to Latin America's workers and then they sell the manufactured goods dearly, making some nice hefty profits in the process. Buy low, sell high! There is no benefit of foreign investments in Latin America when five times more in profit is exported out of Latin America, mainly to the great USA. The World Bank and the IMF are like the sub prime mortgage lenders to Latin America in the sense that the terms of the loans are predatory for Latin America. Speaking of cheap, for those who complain that the book is a waste of money, unless you work for hunger wages, don't be a cheap [...]! The book only costs around 10 US dollars. The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know (FDR), but unfortunately it will be very difficult for most Americans to accept the facts contained in this book since the history that is brainwashed and indoctrinated to school kids is biased towards portraying a more positive outlook of the great USA. Therefore, most Americans will dismiss this good book as being false. This book widened my liberal education. Free trade is a euphemism, for example. We see the word free, and perhaps from being cheap, think it must be good, sort of like thinking if some food says its fat free then it must be good. We need to look beyond free and understand whether the free trade is really fair trade and we will see that it has not been fair for Latin America. So then, free trade does not necessarily mean fair trade in the same way that many fat free foods are loaded with calories. The book changed my views of the Monroe Doctrine. The great USA was not really generous to Latin America by preventing foreign powers from re-colonizing. It was really planting the seeds of the future economic exploitation of the region. It is very interesting that the great USA demands no revolutions in its backyard (except for capitalist ones), but at the same time it meddles with Russia's sphere of influence. It's high time for Latin America to revolt against foreign exploitation. Though easier said than done, since the current system creates too much resistance and oppression, the people must force change to enact protectionist policies, build up the local industries and agricultural capacity to be able to feed their peoples, and after that, when they can produce surpluses of goods, can they engage in free trade that is fair. If anything, the book may help us see what is to come. In time perhaps the tables will turn and others will dominate us. The great USA has lost many manufacturing jobs, is outsourcing jobs overseas, experiencing a brain drain, borrowing lots of money from China, and so on and so forth and Great Britain has also been falling. Come now. Be brave. Dare to learn the truth. I know its hard, but concentrate. Focus. Turn off Fox News and Read The Opens Veins of Latin America today!

Eduardo Galeano died in April, 2015. He was a Uruguayan journalist, best-selling author, and one of the most prominent Latin American writers. This book about the last five centuries of Latin American history focuses on the genocide, abuse and exploitation that started with the Spanish conquistadors and colonization. It continued with foreign economic domination of the banana republics and the brutal dictators -- many imposed and supported by the CIA -- during the twentieth century. Open Veins of Latin America was initially banned in several Latin American nations, including Uruguay. Galeano’s thesis is that Latin America, “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…our region still works as a menial…Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European – and later United States – capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power…The history of Latin America’s underdevelopment is an integral part of world capitalism’s development.” The pre-Columbian population of the Americas totaled no less than 70 million when the foreign conquerors arrived. A century and half later, they had been reduced to 3.5 million, just five percent of the original number. It was a virtual death sentence for millions of indigenous peoples who were forced to work in the mines, clawing out gold, silver, and other metals for shipment to Europe. When there weren’t enough Indian slaves, millions of Africans were imported to work the mines and plantations. The African death rate in Latin America was far higher than in the United States. Pope Francis, the first Latin American Pope, apologized for his Church’s role in the colonial invasion of the Western Hemisphere and the violent subjugation of its indigenous inhabitants. “Many grave sins were committed against the Native people of America in the name of God,” Pope Francis said. “I humbly ask for forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church itself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.” The Pope’s critique of capitalism echoes Galeano’s. It is said that Pope Francis has embraced liberation theology, which led Christian resistance to the right-wing regimes in Latin America during the 1970s and 80s. The Pope calls upon us to rethink capitalism, indicting the global economic system with its “deified market” that vastly enriches a few while leaving billions behind in misery. Galeano asserts that the economic system is Latin America has almost always enriched a few while leaving the masses in abject poverty. In short, Francis and Galeano are singing from the same hymnal. One fascinating event Galeano describes is how in 1864, Paraguay was invaded in “a war of extermination which was the most infamous chapter in South American history.” The government of Paraguay had been the most progressive in Latin America, fomenting internal development using protectionism and without foreign investment. Britain encouraged Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to invade their neighbor. The war lasted five years, killed more than 80 percent of the Paraguayan population, and led to the annexation of large parts of the country by Brazil and Argentina. Though formal colonization had ended in Latin America, foreign domination did not. U.S. President William H. Taft said in 1912 that the correct path in foreign policy “may well be made to include active intervention to secure for our merchandise and our capitalists opportunity for profitable investment.” Looking at just tiny Panama, American troops intervened there twenty times, most recently in the invasion of 1989. The US occupied Haiti for twenty years. Marine General Smedley D. Butler, who had led many military expeditions south of the border, said in 1935 that, “I spent my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.” When Latin Americans resisted brutal oligarchies, the US typically backed the generals, such as the notorious Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, who ruled from 1932-1944. The US overthrew the democratically elected reform government in Guatamala in 1954, and this led to 15 years of violence. Economic development in Latin America, Galeano writes, has been held back by producing only certain crops, such as bananas, sugar cane, and coffee, by the lack of agrarian reform and by dependence on Britain or the US. His heroes are the land reformers, who inevitably faced foreign opposition and reversal of reform, such as the liberator Simon Bolivar, Jose Arrigas in Argentina, and Emiliano Zapata in Mexico. Both the US and Britain long used tariffs to protect their infant industries from foreign competition, while pressuring Latin America to lower it tariffs for British or American goods. In other words, do as I say, not as I do. Several chapters in the book are devoted to the Twentieth Century, focusing on the American desire for oil, iron ore, copper and other metals. Latin Americans got little of the benefit from the sale of their natural resources -- workers got very low pay, and the governments typically got modest tax revenues or concession payments – while the profits went to the multinational corporation that controlled the process. Dictators “hawked the country to foreign capitalists as a pimp offers a woman.” In this way, countries rich in natural resources remained poor. “What Latin America sells gets constantly cheaper and what is buys gets constantly dearer.” Thus economic inequality grows. If there were any benefits to Latin Americans from economic domination, other than for a few oligarchs, Galeano does not mention them. He does not acknowledge the improvements in Latin American living standards and life expectancy that have occurred despite the obstacles, though it is true Latin America remains relatively poorer than North America. Some readers will take exception to Galeano’s sympathy for Castro, and may be uncomfortable with the forward by Isabel Allende, who describes how the democratically elected president of Chile – Salvador Allende -- was overthrown by the CIA in 1973, installing General Pinochet and his long and brutal reign. These reservations aside, Galeano is a gifted story-teller who can turn a phrase, and if he is a dangerous radical, then so is the Pope. ###

tough book to read, can only read it a little bit at a time due to the subject matter

I had to order this when President Chavez of Venezuela gave it to President Obama. The tennet of the book is pretty straight forward - that the latin americas and south america have been sacked by rampant capitalism which has emptied their countries of resources, exploited their people, and left the peoples of those areas poor. The book is a call to action to look for another way. Some people think this way is communism or socialism. However, the book doesn't go deep enough --- the Latin Americas and South Americas have been plundered since colonial times by European Powers. It doesn't have to do with capitalism or colonialism. It has to do with the peoples of Latin and South America standing up and building value. Communism is not the answer and neither is socialism -- the answer lays in the indigenous populations of these areas: -getting educations -applying that education to building their countries -accepting help from outside but not letting outsiders be they european or from wherever plundering their countries -building for the future I found the work a bit narrow but a good start to an important discussion.

My first read of this book in or around 2014, my mindset was that it is an overview of Latin-American political and economic history from a certain left leaning perspective of the author. This time I am struck with the integrated whole of the Americas and how our economies and histories are more interconnected over a larger geography–North and South. This is key to understanding current situations in economics, political power and migration of people. Originally published in 1971 as Las Venas Abiertas de Latina America in Spanish, it is a product of its time captured by a journalist (and academic) from Uruguay. The history of the United States exerting control against leftist governments, whether democratically elected or not, in order to maintain its economic upperhand has set the stage for much of what is going on at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. An interesting note about this book and some others. I picked this book up to review after starting to read Everyone Who is Gone is Here by Jonathan Blitzer (2024) which was on former President Barack Obama’s summer reading list. In 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a copy of Las Venas Abiertas (Open Veins) at the 5th summit of the Americas as a gift. I cannot help but think that if the policy makers involved in recent administrations would apply some wisdom of Latin America, we would have a much better understanding of the issues and therefore the solutions to the constant ebb and flow of migration throughout the Americas and particularly at the northern border of Mexico with the United States. I am curious about what a more complete survey of the geopolitical literature available on economics, history and politics of the whole region would include. It is interesting that in the epilogue in this 1997, the author, Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) reaffirms the substance of the books history, but criticizes his own use of the style of a novel about love or pirates. His style, according to his own analysis, empowered the book to reach a wider and non-specific audience about the topic. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of Latin America, indeed all of the Americas, to better understand current events and more recent history.

Though the boom was written nearly 50 years ago (half century ago) the facts haven’t changed much. The book and style is like the prequel of Ademoğlu’s why nations fail or the latter is the sequel

Masterpiece!! As I grow older I continue to unlearn the propaganda, lies, half-truths and omissions the American school system poured into my head. The corporate media and the largely ignorant masses who surrounded me, of course, helped to propagate and reinforce this misinformation so that by the time I reached adulthood I was as stupid, misinformed and biased as everyone else. How easy the sheep are led!! Along the way, by sheer dumb luck, I begin to meet certain rare individuals who knew what was happening and went through certain life experiences that caused me to question everything I thought I knew and believed in. It was a traumatic time in my life. At first I resisted the truth. How could everything my teachers, parents, friends, the media and various authoritarian figures told me be wrong??? Once the truth stuck its foot in my door I was finally forced to question everything and forced also to search for the truth on my own. Its something everyone must do if they really want to know reality. One source of the truth can be found in certain select books and their authors who are courageous enough to face the powers of falsehood and deception. Galeano's "Open Veins" is one such book. It, together with Howard Zinn's People's History, should replace all the current history books in our schools and should be required reading for the President of the US and all the others who hold the fate of our nation and the world in their hands. That is why Hugo Chavez gave it to Obama, hoping it would be read so that the leader of the US might gain some modicum of understanding about the history of Latin America. I doubt he ever read it. This book is packed border to border with facts, figures and accounts all duly documented with a bibliography nearly as long as the book itself. How one man could put together, assemble such a wealth of information, in one book of 300 pages is mind-boggling. I knew our government's foreign policy record in Latin America was bad but didn't know how bad. Now, I know--and it has left me saddened and exasperated because there is no way we can undo the injustices of six hundred years--not even a way we can change the current and future policies that perpetuate those injustices for those who hold power are too entrenched. My thanks and gratitude to Galeano, a giant of a man, through whose book I now know the history of Latin America--through whose book I now know the truth. "And There I Was" by DH Koester

Galleano tells the story of the exploitation on Latin America since the discovery by Christopher Columbus up to the 1970s. The edition is a reedition of the book of 1972. Nethertheless it is actual and makes the reader understand what happens to this continent.

My only complaint is that since this book was published in the early 1970s no one has created an updated version. This book is horrifying and upsetting, you will never see certain industries and countries the same again. I think it is absolutely vital that everyone read this book.

One of the best books iv every read, an amazing journey through the history of South America

New, perfect condition!

OK