| Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Eduardo Galeano |
| Original title | Las venas abiertas de América Latina |
| Translator | Cedric Belfrage |
| Country | Uruguay |
| Language | Originally Spanish, translated into English |
| Genre(s) | History, essay |
| Publisher | Monthly Review Press |
| Publication date | 1971 |
| Published in English |
1973 (1st edition) 1997 (25th Anv. edition) |
| Pages | xiii, 317 p. |
| ISBN | 978-0853459903 |
| OCLC Number | 37820142 |
| Dewey Decimal | 330.98 21 |
| LC Classification | HC125 .G25313 1997 |
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (in Spanish Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina) is a book written by Uruguayan journalist, writer and poet Eduardo Galeano, and published in 1971.
Contents |
In the book Galeano analyzes the history of Latin America as a whole from the time period of the European settlement of the New World to contemporary Latin America, arguing against European and later US economic 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."[1]
Open Veins of Latin America was written by Eduardo Galeano in Uruguay in 1971. During this period Galeano was working as a journalist, editing books, and was employed in the publishing department of the University of the Republic. Galeano states that "it took four years of researching and collecting the information I needed, and some 90 nights to write the book".[2] Shortly after the publishing of Open Veins of Latin America, in 1973, a military junta took power in Uruguay forcing Galeano into exile. As a result of the book's left-wing perspective it was banned under the right-wing military governments of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.[3]
In the foreword for 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".[4]
Venezuelan President Hugo 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.[5][6][7][8] 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.[9][10]
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