Word: galeano
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Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent Eduardo Galeano Monthly Review Press 317 pages...
...Saturday, April 18, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly handed President Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's seminal left-leaning tome on the foreign exploitation of Latin America. By Monday, April 20, the book - first published in 1971 - had skyrocketed to #2 on Amazon.com's bestseller list. It seems as though the Venezuelan leader, a shrewd showman, knew that his gift would draw attention not just to the book itself, but to the dramatic tale told within...
...Galeano, a Uruguayan journalist, explains how Europe, and later the United States, plundered Latin America's resources and helped create a perpetual state of widespread poverty and wealth disparity. From the obliteration of indigenous people by Spanish conquistadors to the destructive cycles of foreign debt, investment and capitalism, Galeano lays out the Latin American saga from 1492 to the 20th century. (See TIME's Pictures of the Week...
...Galeano's book is a well-researched historical account and, while it does include quotes by Karl Marx, a left-leaning perspective does not rob the book of value. It's perhaps overly dense with fact after fact after fact - the author doesn't zoom out often - but the book still makes a convincing argument that Latin America was a victim of European and American exploitation. This is not a difficult case to make when you're talking about colonialism. But with leftist leaders like Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales assuming power of 21st century Latin American governments...
...course, Chavez's gesture will only succeed if he can refrain from again calling the American president an "ignoramous." And on his end, Obama might want to take a closer look at gifts from now on. After receiving Galeano's tome, he reportedly quipped, "I thought it was one of Chavez's books. I was going to give him one of mine...