Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (in Spanish Las venas abiertas de América Latina) is an essay written by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano in 1971.

In the foreword for the 1997 edition, Chilean novelist and close relative of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, Isabel Allende says 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 America Latina."

Plot summary

In Open Veins of Latin America Galeano analyzes the history of Latin America as a whole from the time period of the European discovery of the New World to contemporary Latin America arguing against European and later U.S. economic exploitation and political dominance over the region.

Background

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 Montevideo. Galeano states that "it took four years of researching and collecting the information I needed, and some 90 nights to write the book". ^[1] 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 during the military governments of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

References

External links

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es:Las venas abiertas de América Latina pt:Las venas abiertas de América Latina ca:Les venes obertes d'Amèrica Llatina it:Le vene aperte dell'America Latina