You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
462 reviews for:
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Eduardo Galeano
4.29 AVERAGE
462 reviews for:
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Eduardo Galeano
4.29 AVERAGE
On its face, Open Veins is an impassioned history of Latin America and its economic exploitation at the hands of Europeans and, later, the United States. Eduardo Galeano writes with a passion and an anger that cuts through the ensuing decades.
South and Central America, rich in natural resources like gold and silver and perfectly suited to the growth of coffee, cacao, tobacco, sugar, indigo and other crops suited to European markets, was forced into a state of subjugation to serve as both a source of raw materials and a market for the products of European manufacturing.
While the continent was nominally at the mercy of Portugal and Spain, Galeano explains how it was actually Dutch and — principally — British banks and merchants who profited from the exploitation of the colonial system. They nurtured the creation of monolithic capitals in the ports, they financed the wars against countries like Paraguay which sought to follow different paths, and they helped crush internal markets.
The reason the United States didn't suffer the same thing, he argues, is that the U.S. didn't have the obvious natural resources to exploit. So instead New England was largely left to its own devices to develop industry to suit its internal market. The American South later rose in the banana republic style more typical of South America, but victory by the Union in the Civil War ensured that the country would follow the British model of protectionism and industrial development.
In the wake of WWII, the United States took the reins of power in the Western hemisphere. The North American model of economic imperialism is slightly more subtle. Usurious loans take the form of economic aid. Instead of outright war, the CIA assassinates political and union leaders and finances guerrillas. Instead of the express ownership of homegrown enterprises, corporations use technology to foster dependence and chronic unemployment to keep wages low.
The sins of the system he describes aren't the sins of European and North American peoples, however. They seem to me to be the inevitable consequences of international capitalism. Indeed, in the years since this was written, the same forces that concentrated power in the hands of a technocratic few in Latin America's banana republics are grinding the American and European middle classes to dust and bone.
Not that such a process should make anybody feel better, especially since the concentration of resources still favors the so-called first world, but the system he describes will ultimately consume us all. Happy thoughts!
If I had to criticize the book, it's that his thoughts and examples often fear extremely scattershot. It's clear, as Isabel Allende writes in the foreword, that few men alive know as much about Latin America as Eduardo Galeano. But at times I struggled to piece together how he was getting from one anecdotal piece of history to another.
It's possible that somebody with a better education in Latin American history will already know all the needed signposts to follow his narrative, but as a relatively well-educated American in 2016, I didn't have them.
Even so, it may not matter, because the passion breaks through.
"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations."
South and Central America, rich in natural resources like gold and silver and perfectly suited to the growth of coffee, cacao, tobacco, sugar, indigo and other crops suited to European markets, was forced into a state of subjugation to serve as both a source of raw materials and a market for the products of European manufacturing.
While the continent was nominally at the mercy of Portugal and Spain, Galeano explains how it was actually Dutch and — principally — British banks and merchants who profited from the exploitation of the colonial system. They nurtured the creation of monolithic capitals in the ports, they financed the wars against countries like Paraguay which sought to follow different paths, and they helped crush internal markets.
The reason the United States didn't suffer the same thing, he argues, is that the U.S. didn't have the obvious natural resources to exploit. So instead New England was largely left to its own devices to develop industry to suit its internal market. The American South later rose in the banana republic style more typical of South America, but victory by the Union in the Civil War ensured that the country would follow the British model of protectionism and industrial development.
In the wake of WWII, the United States took the reins of power in the Western hemisphere. The North American model of economic imperialism is slightly more subtle. Usurious loans take the form of economic aid. Instead of outright war, the CIA assassinates political and union leaders and finances guerrillas. Instead of the express ownership of homegrown enterprises, corporations use technology to foster dependence and chronic unemployment to keep wages low.
The sins of the system he describes aren't the sins of European and North American peoples, however. They seem to me to be the inevitable consequences of international capitalism. Indeed, in the years since this was written, the same forces that concentrated power in the hands of a technocratic few in Latin America's banana republics are grinding the American and European middle classes to dust and bone.
Not that such a process should make anybody feel better, especially since the concentration of resources still favors the so-called first world, but the system he describes will ultimately consume us all. Happy thoughts!
If I had to criticize the book, it's that his thoughts and examples often fear extremely scattershot. It's clear, as Isabel Allende writes in the foreword, that few men alive know as much about Latin America as Eduardo Galeano. But at times I struggled to piece together how he was getting from one anecdotal piece of history to another.
It's possible that somebody with a better education in Latin American history will already know all the needed signposts to follow his narrative, but as a relatively well-educated American in 2016, I didn't have them.
Even so, it may not matter, because the passion breaks through.
In these lands we are not experiencing the primitive infancy of capitalism but its vicious senility. Underdevelopment isn't a state of development, but its consequence. Latin America's underdevelopment arises from external development, and continues to feed it. A system made impotent by function of its international servitude, and moribund since birth, has feet of clay. It pretends to be destiny and would like to be thought eternal. All memory is subversive, because it is different, and likewise any program for the future. The zombie is made to eat without salt: salt is dangerous, it could awaken him. The system has its paradigm in the immutable society of ants. For that reason accords ill with the history of humankind, because that is always changing. And because in the history of humankind every act of destruction meets its response, sooner or later, in an act of creation.
This book felt over explained and under explained at the same time. It's hard to describe so many countries going through a similar trauma (although it so many different ways) well, but I think Eduardo did the best he could with such a broad topic. I learned a lot but felt like an 100 page chapter about mining in various locations (with eeriely similar rises and falls) was unnecessary. But it does put a lot into perspective, especially of US involvement in destroying these countries.
O melhor livro que já li.
Perante uma realidade que parece imutável com toda a podridão que nos impõem e nos obrigam a engolir, o melhor remédio será sempre a fraternidade das nossas causas e a empatia da nossa união.
Todos os exemplos de luta que li são apaixonantes e é impossível ficar inquieto ao lê-los. É angustiante conhecer as inúmeras tentativas de emancipação por povos com séculos de opressão em cima, lutas que são sistematicamente destruídas pelos bastiões da liberdade sobre a natureza neocolonial do mercado livre...
Mas enfim, a esperança continua a alimentar os sonhos.
Perante uma realidade que parece imutável com toda a podridão que nos impõem e nos obrigam a engolir, o melhor remédio será sempre a fraternidade das nossas causas e a empatia da nossa união.
Todos os exemplos de luta que li são apaixonantes e é impossível ficar inquieto ao lê-los. É angustiante conhecer as inúmeras tentativas de emancipação por povos com séculos de opressão em cima, lutas que são sistematicamente destruídas pelos bastiões da liberdade sobre a natureza neocolonial do mercado livre...
Mas enfim, a esperança continua a alimentar os sonhos.
An eye opening, educational, and wonderfully written book. I read this in my immigration class and ate it up. I laughed out loud at some of the subheadings and was blown away by the facts in it. Definitely recommend, especially to any history majors.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
excellent book, really useful tool and beautifully written.
falls short in its analysis of the US as its missing analysing it as a settler colony
(i am not educated enough on the conditions of the lat american nations to say whether theyre settler-colonies or not)
falls short in its analysis of the US as its missing analysing it as a settler colony
(i am not educated enough on the conditions of the lat american nations to say whether theyre settler-colonies or not)
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Incredibly interesting retelling of all the years of pillage in Latin America. Gives a whole different view on the current situation of Lating America and the guilty parties
Las venas abiertas de América Latina es una minuciosa descripción de cómo el continente llegó a donde está ahora. Después de siglos de esclavitud, hipocresía y ambición, nuestra querida América terminó en ruinas. Es por eso que este non-fiction es tan pesado y, honestamente, brutal.
Está dividido en capítulos los cuales voy a resumir en una o dos oraciones a continuación, para que sepan qué les espera al recorrer estas páginas:
1. Fiebre del oro, fiebre de la plata: Cómo los europeos se aprovecharon de América y esclavizaron a todo americano nativo que se encontraron para enriquecerse en su pequeña burbuja con ideales europeos y dejaban nuestras tierras hechas trizas. Todo eso mientras alimentaban su ambición pre-capitalista (se trataba del mercantilismo, sistema que sentó las bases de lo que conocemos como capitalismo).
2. El rey azúcar y otros monarcas agrícolas: Cómo los europeos se aprovecharon de América parte 2, pero esta vez con el azúcar (que por cierto, inutiliza las tierras para otros cultivos y, consecuentemente, empobreció a las regiones que en su momento fueron parte de boom del azúcar *Léase también: Cuba*)
3. Las fuentes subterráneas del poder: Cómo las trece colonias de Norteamérica se aprovecharon de Latinoamérica y se hicieron ricas y poderosas gracias a la miseria Latinoamericana.
4. Historia de una muerte temprana: Cómo los Latinoamericanos tenían muchísimas ganas de sabotearse a sí mismos así que además de estar en conflicto con el exterior, también generaron conflictos internos (la Guerra de la Triple Alianza, por ejemplo, que hizo que Paraguay pasara de ser uno de los países más ricos de Sudamérica a ser el más pobre).
5. La estructura temprana del despojo: Cómo, para empeorar la situación mil veces más, todos los políticos Latinoamericanos tomaron pésimas decisiones que trajeron consecuencias que seguimos pagando al día de hoy + cómo EEUU ofrece ayuda con préstamos del FMI y el BM que lo único que hacen es cavar hoyos para tapar otros y los Latinoamericanos no tienen mejor idea que tomarlos.
Para cerrar, quiero citar al Galeano cuando da una última visión de América Latina al final del libro:
"El subdesarrollo de América Latina proviene del desarrollo ajeno y continúa alimentándolo. Impotente por su función de servidumbre internacional, moribundo desde que nació, el sistema tiene pies de barro." Esta es nuestra historia.
Está dividido en capítulos los cuales voy a resumir en una o dos oraciones a continuación, para que sepan qué les espera al recorrer estas páginas:
1. Fiebre del oro, fiebre de la plata: Cómo los europeos se aprovecharon de América y esclavizaron a todo americano nativo que se encontraron para enriquecerse en su pequeña burbuja con ideales europeos y dejaban nuestras tierras hechas trizas. Todo eso mientras alimentaban su ambición pre-capitalista (se trataba del mercantilismo, sistema que sentó las bases de lo que conocemos como capitalismo).
2. El rey azúcar y otros monarcas agrícolas: Cómo los europeos se aprovecharon de América parte 2, pero esta vez con el azúcar (que por cierto, inutiliza las tierras para otros cultivos y, consecuentemente, empobreció a las regiones que en su momento fueron parte de boom del azúcar *Léase también: Cuba*)
3. Las fuentes subterráneas del poder: Cómo las trece colonias de Norteamérica se aprovecharon de Latinoamérica y se hicieron ricas y poderosas gracias a la miseria Latinoamericana.
4. Historia de una muerte temprana: Cómo los Latinoamericanos tenían muchísimas ganas de sabotearse a sí mismos así que además de estar en conflicto con el exterior, también generaron conflictos internos (la Guerra de la Triple Alianza, por ejemplo, que hizo que Paraguay pasara de ser uno de los países más ricos de Sudamérica a ser el más pobre).
5. La estructura temprana del despojo: Cómo, para empeorar la situación mil veces más, todos los políticos Latinoamericanos tomaron pésimas decisiones que trajeron consecuencias que seguimos pagando al día de hoy + cómo EEUU ofrece ayuda con préstamos del FMI y el BM que lo único que hacen es cavar hoyos para tapar otros y los Latinoamericanos no tienen mejor idea que tomarlos.
Para cerrar, quiero citar al Galeano cuando da una última visión de América Latina al final del libro:
"El subdesarrollo de América Latina proviene del desarrollo ajeno y continúa alimentándolo. Impotente por su función de servidumbre internacional, moribundo desde que nació, el sistema tiene pies de barro." Esta es nuestra historia.