Word: galeano
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...fidgeted and mentioned Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude. He shrugged. José Martí's Our America? Eh. How about everything by Gabriel García Márquez? (Although I had to admit that was to impress women.) He shook his head and handed me Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America - the same book Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made a show of giving Barack Obama on Saturday before Obama's meeting with South American leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad. (See TIME's photos of Carnival...
...Read the subtitle of Galeano's 1971 work - Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent - and you know why the left-wing, anti-U.S. Chávez would present it to a U.S. President. The book's thesis is that Spain, then Britain, the U.S. and Latin oligarchs ransacked Latin American resources, from copper to crude, bleeding the region of its natural wealth and its sovereign dignity. But even if you don't subscribe to its Marxist-tinged polemic, The Open Veins is one of the best introductions to the longstanding Latin grievances that keep producing populist leaders...
...same time, if Chávez and other Latin leftists want Obama to read Galeano, they in turn should read Obama. In his own books, like The Audacity of Hope, Obama lays out the common-sense, post-ideological political philosophy that has led to the U.S. shift on Latin America that so many in the region are now applauding. It's something Latin America's yanqui-bashers, if they want to keep receiving applause from Latin voters themselves, should keep in mind...
...Indeed, Galeano is at his best when discussing such absurdities as the drug war or the U.S.’s overuse of automobiles. In these cases the path to a solution is clear: to attack the problem of drugs by curbing demand, and to reverse the worldwide trend away from public transportation. It is when Galeano discusses grosser problems, such as the increasingly skewed distribution of wealth, that his discussion is frustrating. He comes across like a crabby housewife continually pointing out flaws in her husband’s manner of dressing. He overcomes this in the rare moments...
While the book is occasionally very funny, most of what seem to be attempts at dry wit fall flat, quite possibly having been lost in translation. Mark Fried has done a competent job bringing the book into English, but no more. Galeano seems to be aware of the dangers of translation, and has done much to attenuate them through his liberal use of the engravings of José Guadalupe Posada to illustrate the text. The book is worth buying just to see the whimsical woodcuts of skeletons, soldiers, dragons and peasants. Posada died in 1913; his illustrations survive not only...