About book Open Veins Of Latin America: Five Centuries Of The Pillage Of A Continent (1997)
Open Veins was a title in the Hugo Chavez Book Club; the Venezuelan strongman surprised President Barrack Obama with a copy in 2009. Open Veins was written by a novelist in the vivid prose of a novel and the history takes many liberties, making it more like historic fiction. On pg. 283, author Galeano cited Chilean dictator Pinochet leaving “30,000 dead”, which didn’t ring true to my memory. A quick check of Wikipedia shows “various reports and investigations claim that between 1,200 and 3,200 people were killed”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_... That is Galeano’s Open Veins in a nutshell: taking various misfortunes and admitted outrages and then, massively exaggerating them.How does one rate a book like this, which suffers from even a rudimentary understanding of economics (e.g. repeated assertions that individual corporations control prices, which is only true of monopolies) and lays every conceivable ill of Latin America at the doorstop of capitalism, Europe, the IMF, the United States, and Latin American liberal advocates of market economies and free trade? Score a 2 or 3 for Galeano writing in a lyrical way. I think of this as a story, rather than history. The first part, detailing the evils of colonialism and the European importation of millions of African slaves, is its best. The story goes downhill, deep into 1 tierra, as it drones on about American and British companies and the dictators they back supposedly destroying Latin America. Hence, Chavez's love of this book. There is no attempt at balance. Galeano gives individual names killed by a right-wing military in Guatemala, yet, there is not one word about those killed by Che and Castro in Cuba. This 1971 book and its 1978 update predate the worst of the Colombian FARC or the barbaric Communist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebellion that started in Peru in 1980. But, the author has not a word about Leftist killings in Colombia, Cuba, Bolivia, or anywhere else. I place this tale at 1.5 stars.Galeano idolizes the Aztecs, Maya, and Incas. They had their accomplishments, indeed, but they were warlike, practiced human sacrifice, and enslaved other tribes. Cortez’s and Pizzaro’s tiny bands would have been forced into the sea if not for the ability to raise huge indigenous armies thirsty to overthrow Aztec and Incan hegemony. Without question, the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and English mistreated the native peoples and African slaves. The greatest value of Open Veins is in the early pages, which hold nothing back when vividly describing Spanish enslavement of Indians to work in the gold and silver mines and to work the haciendas. The Spanish didn’t bring wives and took Indian women, at gunpoint if needed. Galeano fails to see the connection between early Spanish rule and the present, but other, more thoughtful authors have fingered the “mordida” (bribe) culture of colonial Spain and authoritarian, caudillo rule as continuing today in many Latin American countries. Open Veins is not shy in its Marxist economic critique. Galeano gleefully flies in the face of mainstream economics with strident advocacy of protectionism. He is practically the last person alive to think communism was a rousing success in Cuba. The book suffers from a rudimentary understanding of economics. I found the frequent Marx and Lenin quotes jarring. Even the phrasing is Marxian. Most of Latin America saw the back of colonial Spain two centuries ago. In Galliano’s view, nothing changed with new “masters”, “imperial” England and the USA. There is, of course, great truth about Uncle Sam’s involvement in Latin America. Although, in typical fashion, Galeano exaggerates (“Marines here, there, everywhere”). I don’t pretend to be an expert on everything that ever happened in Latin America, but Open Veins doesn’t mesh with what I’ve read elsewhere about the end of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, Ford in the Amazon, Mexico, the Panama Canal, Walker in Nicaragua, and the like. In so many cases, there is a kernel of truth to European/American heavy handedness, but Galeano is like a steam-roller, using outlandish, emotional statements (e.g. seemingly voluntary economic transactions are actually “plunder”, “devastation”, and “slavery”). There is absolutely nothing here about, say, Western medicine conquering malaria. Yankee “godless technology" built a leisure class of a fortunate few in Lima, Caracas, Buenos Aires, etc. Galeano’s cluelessness shows through with statements like, of the Argentine capitalists, “productivity is low because it suits them; the law of profit prevails over all overs.” Actually, higher productivity drives higher profits; I doubt Argentinian capitalists want “low” productivity. Low productivity may exist, but not because of a devious plot. He actually writes of 20 American aid organizations bringing “birth control” to the Amazon not to help the people- no, but to depopulate it so American economic interests can conquer Amazonia. As I said at the outset, Open Veins is more like a novel than a serious history.Given that Galeano’s “solutions” of socialism and protectionism have failed, what is better? He never even considers other developing nations, and even by 1980, a number of formerly colonized Asian nations were fast approaching developed world standards. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and liberalizing China are illustrative. Even within Latin America, Chile, the nation which suffered the admitted human rights abuses of Pinochet, liberalized its economy under the “Chicago Boys” and has higher living standards today and is a functioning democracy.A much better thinker about Latin America, and a more gifted novelist, too, is Mario Vargas Llosa, who ran for president of Peru. His Sables y Utopias is infinitely more nuanced than Open Veins, saying, “La globalizacion no es, por definicion, ni buena ni mala" ["globalization is neither good nor bad"], it is the result of many factors including technological and scientific advances, international business and capital flows, and interdependent world markets. (pg. 158). Vargas Llosa succinctly writes, “Obstaculos al desarrollo: nacionalismo, populismo, indigenismo, corrupcion.” [“Obstacles to development: nationalism, populism, indigenism, corruption.”] Indeed, Latin America has been ill-served by its governments, often the legacy of colonial Spain and stillborn reforms of Juarez, Bolivar and well-meaning others. Latin America has had far too many right-wing dictators and military juntas; it also experienced Peronist and Cardenas-style Leftist populism. More recently we saw the failure of Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, who incredibly, brought shortages and economic depression, during an era of record oil prices, to the nation holding the world’s largest oil reserves! For decades, rafts floated one direction in the Florida Straight: away from Cuba. Galeano never says a word about Latin Americans living in the United States. Is there not a lesson in the economic success of America’s ~70 million Hispanics, who enjoy a higher standard of living than Hispanics anywhere in Latin America? Take a Mexican or Cuban or Colombian and put him in New York City or Miami and he tends to thrive. Same people, same culture, but a very different economic and political system. Vargas-Llosa thought Peru could learn from Asian Tigers: democratic capitalist engines like South Korea. I do not quibble for a moment about the horrors of early Spanish colonization. Yet, Latin America is not the only place that was colonized, even brutally, and dwelling on 500 years ago won’t improve today. Korea succeeded despite Japan's far more recent colonialization of that peninsula.Latin America needs the rule of law. The mordida lives and breeds cynicism, allowing narco cartels and criminal gangs to thrive from Venezuela to Tijuana. Mexico needs to stop scaring its entrepreneurs into migrating to the United States; Mexican-Americans are about 25 times more likely to own their own business, at least a legally registered one, than their relatives back in Mexico. Latin America needs property rights (another Peruvian, Hernando de Soto has written interestingly about the virtual impossibility of poor squatters in taking out even the most modest loan, which helped lead to the current popularity of microloans in developing nations). Latin America needs better education and learning focused in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). The continent has produced many great novelists and muralists, but Latin America would benefit from its own Bill Gates, Michael Dells, Jeff Bezos, and Sergey Brins. It is telling that Latin America’s richest man, Carlos Slim, while a skillful businessman, succeeded in the shadowy world of Latin American telecomm privatizations. Latin America has a few notable colleges, but it cannot even begin to compare to United States R&D (e.g., Caltech, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and most any large land-grant university). India, by comparison, created an excellent STEM program in the campuses of its Indian Institute of Technology.Galeano’s solutions to Latin American problems are Marxism and protectionism. Sadly, filling the continent with socialist strongmen like Hugo Chavez would lead to another 500 years of pain and backwardness in Latin America.
Me tomó más tiempo del que pensé en leer el libro porque tuve que consultar artículos de muchos de los eventos históricos que describen aquí lo que me pareció en cierto modo entretenido, el ensayo me parece interesante cuando narra los hechos que sucedieron a partir de la explotación colona en Ámerica luego se convierte en una crítica más agresiva a los problemas socioeconómicos que ocurren en latinoamerica, que según Galeano, todos por culpa de los intereses Gringos e Ingleses, aunque no critica sino más bien alaba al régimen cubano que posee casi comportamientos similares contra su propio pueblo ni a las políticas aplicadas en los propios gobiernos latinoamericanos (apenas algo en la Guerra de la Triple Alianza pero le termina echando la culpa a los Ingleses) aparte de no ofrecer soluciones concretas sino acumular odio, resentimiento e incluso algo de xenofobia (generaliza el pueblo con los gobernantes) con el pasar de las páginas.Actualización al 04-12-2014:Luego de haberme documentado más al respecto, sobretodo en temas de sistemas económicos a lo largo de la historia me doy cuenta de que esta crítica es una completa falacia, Galeano no ve que la raíz del problema social y económico en latinoamérica no se trata de la explotación de recursos que ocurrió en el pasado, o "el capitalismo" sino en las medidas estatistas que terminan corrompiendo a la sociedad haciendo a los individuos que la conforman incapaces de funcionar independientemente, es decir, debido a las medidas que imponen los gobiernos en busca de un bienestar común se crea una sociedad dependiente que impide el desarrollo de los individuos, la verdadera crítica es hacia el estado, no indagar en hechos históricos que no llevan a una solución.
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One of the best books ever written for a general audience...period. This guy writes fiction likes it's non-fiction and non-fiction likes it's fiction. He blends in and out better than anyone I know of. What beauty, what poetry, what defiance, what anger, what celebration, what satire, what humour. Sheer brilliance. Oh, and he does his research too. Recommended related readings: Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Exterminate All the Brutes, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, The Wretched of the Earth.
—Miquixote
Benim gibi latin kültürüne bu kadar ilgi duyan birinin es geçmemesi gereken bir kitaptı. Üzgünüm ki yazarı hayattayken okuyamadım... Daha sonrasında gelen 2009'daki çıkışını ve tepkilerini okuma fırsatım oldu. Üzerine epey yazılmış ve çizilmiş. Biraz dağınık bir şekilde anlatsa da, ülke ülke kim nerede ne yapmış anlatıyor. Hangi ülkenin sahip olduğu hangi tarımsal/maden güçten dolayı neler çektiğini bir bir anlatmış. Ama 2009'da eklemeden duramıyor "Bu kitabı yazdığımda dünyanın çarklarının nasıl döndüğünden haberim yoktu." http://egecita.com/latin-amerikanin-k...
—EGe
A history of (the exploitation of) Latin America since the arrival of Europeans. The book was researched and written in the 1960s. So much has happened since then (such as Iran-Contra and our suppression of the revolution in Nicaragua; or NAFTA), but none of the events would change the story. It is a very long, sad, tragic story. Free trade comes only once restricted trade has allowed a country (the US, UK) to develop its own industries sufficiently to benefit from free trade. Then smaller countries that try to resist free trade (in their own interests, as developed countries had once done) get pegged as socialist and get ostracized and undermined. Because of its colonial history, Latin America was sufficiently fragmented that it never developed the unity and scale that would allow it to develop on its own. North America, while it had a colonial heritage, did not have the natural resources that Latin America had (e.g., copper, gold and silver) and so it was not so thoroughly exploited, but left to develop on its own. So its lack of natural resources was a blessing in disguise. When I visited Central America in 1992 we met with representatives of US AID (Agency for International Development) in Nicaragua. While they tout the aid they give, they ultimately acknowledged that it is not altruistic. Its purpose is to develop markets for the US economy. I at least appreciated their candor. The book is not at all written as a revolutionary tract--in fact it is a lyrical and compassionate, yet detailed and wide-ranging, history of the region. But it is written by a person with a political revolutionary vision. Hence it is not surprising, but a bit disappointing, that no mention is made of Liberation Theology, which was emerging in the 1960s throughout Latin America. When the author does discuss the church in Latin American history, it is an accessory to the crimes. But the Liberation Theology wing of the church was a potential ally that went unnoticed or unmentioned. I'm glad I read the book. But, well-written as it is, it is hard to read because it is so thorough and because the oppression and exploitation recounted is so unrelenting.
—James Klagge
