At the 2009 Summit of Americas in Trinidad, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez walked up to Barack Obama, patted him on his left shoulder and almost shoved a book in his face. As Obama stared at the cover of Las venas abiertas de América Latina, trying to make sense of the Spanish title, Chavez whispered something to Obama, shook his hands and went back to his seat. Nobody knows if Obama has ever flipped through the pages of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, but within hours of Chavez’s impromptu gesture, Eduardo Galeano's book, written in 1971, had shot up the sales chart of Amazon. Next day, it moved up to second spot.
Though the book has been around for years – and banned in countries like Uruguay, Argentina and Chile – it was not known much outside the left-wing circles until Chavez put it on the world map. A tale of abuse of Latin America by Europeans and North Americans, Galeano summarised 500 years of sweat and blood in 360 pages of lucid prose. The story was simple: the outsiders have always come to this part of the world to dig holes and plunder gold and silver and leave the locals with nothing. It’s been a history of the world's biggest daylight robbery. “Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others,” Galeano wrote in Open Veins.
But more than anything else, Galeano, 74, who died on Monday in Montevideo, Uruguay, after a brief battle with cancer, was worried about the theft of memories. The outsiders, he believed, not only stole their gold, cocoa and cotton, but also their memories. “I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
Ravages of colonialism
Like all writers, Galeano too was a product of his milieu, his times and his memories. Growing up in Uruguay, ravaged by poverty and injustice, he could not help noticing the similarities with other neighbouring countries, which all had borne five centuries of European colonisation followed by US machinations and war games since the early 20th century. The pain of it all came out in the Open Veins but the book was banned in his native Uruguay when the country fell to a military junta in 1973. Galeano was arrested and sent into exile. He returned many years later after the junta had been packed off to the barracks.
Out of the country for many years, Galeano never lost touch with his people. Nor did he lose his unique style: a mixture of journalism, fiction and history writing about people, places, politics and football. He told his stories in a prose that was poetic, caustic and humorous at the same time. Yet, it was all very deep. And his thoughts stayed with the readers, rising from the pages of his books and turning into sweet memories into their minds. That's how his books are.
There are so many of them. Soccer in Sun and Shadow is arguably the most compelling commentary on football. Memory of Fire is undoubtedly the best narrative history of the Americas. Mirrors is the most expansive and powerful voice ever given to the voiceless.
Though he called himself a chronicler – and reminder – of memories, all his life Galeano was obsessed with the idea of justice. He sought it everywhere, even on the football pitch. “Anything can happen in football,” he wrote in the opening line of his essay on the 2010 World Cup. As he took the readers on a roller-coaster ride of the Cup, explaining how “best save of the championship wasn’t made by a goalie but a striker – Luis Suarez”, how the “Jabulani ball was unusual, slippery and half mad, fled hands and disobeyed feet” and why Paul the Octopus “had a decisive effect on the betting and was heeded around the world with religious reverence, loved and hated, and even slandered by a resentful few, like myself, who came to suspect, without proof, that the octopus was corrupt”, he didn't forget to tell them that the game and his article was all about justice.
The Beautiful Game
“It was unusual that at the end of the competition, justice was done, which is infrequent in both football and life,” Galeano wrote, referring to Spain winning the title for the first time. “He proved that sometimes, in the magical realm of football, there is justice,” he wrote of Andre Iniesta’s sublime play.
No football writer has ever got even closer to describing the beautiful game as beautifully as did Galeano. Few Latin American historians have recorded the crimes and lies of history in such gory details as collected by Galeano. Few contemporary commentators have explained our lives and times with such clarity and audacity as Galeano showed in his sentences.
Though Galeano belonged very much to the South American traditions of writing made famous by the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Armado, Machado de Assis and Mario Vargas Llosa, he took it beyond magic realism and love poetry. With his constant critique of the past and razor-sharp analysis of the present, Galeano became a spiritual guide for South America’s new left that has captured power in most countries in the region and done such widespread social reforms that were not even contemplated in the past 500 years.
Widespread influence
But Galeano’s influence goes beyond South America. In the activist circles of Greece and Spain, two European countries witnessing a left-wing surge, Galeano is more popular than any European thinker. In a 2010 essay, View from Montevideo, Galeano made such a passionate cry for justice that it went viral across the globe. “Is justice just? In this upside-down world, is she still on her feet?’’ he posed a question and then went on to answer with a set of polemical questions:
But the Uruguayan was not a pessimist. Till his last days, when cancer was eating him from inside, he was full of hope – not just for himself but the world at large. “Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good soccer,” he said in a rare interview recently. "I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’ And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it."
Eduardo Galeano refused to give up – on past as well as future.
This week, at the Summit of Americas in Panama, Barack Obama broke the ice with Cuba by meeting Raul Castro. The American president called it a “historic meeting”. At the same summit, he also shook hands with Chavez’s successor Nicolas Maduro, who said that he likes Obama but “doesn’t trust him”. It’s possible that Obama has read a few pages of Galeano’s book. It will do him a lot of good if he finishes it and hands it over to his successor in 2016.
The Americas’ memories, which have been cut into pieces by centuries of lies, deceit, theft and war, need to be pieced together. That will bring a real closure. That will make Galeano happy, wherever he is now.
Shobhan Saxena is an independent journalist and analyst based in Rio de Janeiro, from where he writes on South America
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Though the book has been around for years – and banned in countries like Uruguay, Argentina and Chile – it was not known much outside the left-wing circles until Chavez put it on the world map. A tale of abuse of Latin America by Europeans and North Americans, Galeano summarised 500 years of sweat and blood in 360 pages of lucid prose. The story was simple: the outsiders have always come to this part of the world to dig holes and plunder gold and silver and leave the locals with nothing. It’s been a history of the world's biggest daylight robbery. “Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others,” Galeano wrote in Open Veins.
But more than anything else, Galeano, 74, who died on Monday in Montevideo, Uruguay, after a brief battle with cancer, was worried about the theft of memories. The outsiders, he believed, not only stole their gold, cocoa and cotton, but also their memories. “I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
Ravages of colonialism
Like all writers, Galeano too was a product of his milieu, his times and his memories. Growing up in Uruguay, ravaged by poverty and injustice, he could not help noticing the similarities with other neighbouring countries, which all had borne five centuries of European colonisation followed by US machinations and war games since the early 20th century. The pain of it all came out in the Open Veins but the book was banned in his native Uruguay when the country fell to a military junta in 1973. Galeano was arrested and sent into exile. He returned many years later after the junta had been packed off to the barracks.
Out of the country for many years, Galeano never lost touch with his people. Nor did he lose his unique style: a mixture of journalism, fiction and history writing about people, places, politics and football. He told his stories in a prose that was poetic, caustic and humorous at the same time. Yet, it was all very deep. And his thoughts stayed with the readers, rising from the pages of his books and turning into sweet memories into their minds. That's how his books are.
There are so many of them. Soccer in Sun and Shadow is arguably the most compelling commentary on football. Memory of Fire is undoubtedly the best narrative history of the Americas. Mirrors is the most expansive and powerful voice ever given to the voiceless.
Though he called himself a chronicler – and reminder – of memories, all his life Galeano was obsessed with the idea of justice. He sought it everywhere, even on the football pitch. “Anything can happen in football,” he wrote in the opening line of his essay on the 2010 World Cup. As he took the readers on a roller-coaster ride of the Cup, explaining how “best save of the championship wasn’t made by a goalie but a striker – Luis Suarez”, how the “Jabulani ball was unusual, slippery and half mad, fled hands and disobeyed feet” and why Paul the Octopus “had a decisive effect on the betting and was heeded around the world with religious reverence, loved and hated, and even slandered by a resentful few, like myself, who came to suspect, without proof, that the octopus was corrupt”, he didn't forget to tell them that the game and his article was all about justice.
The Beautiful Game
“It was unusual that at the end of the competition, justice was done, which is infrequent in both football and life,” Galeano wrote, referring to Spain winning the title for the first time. “He proved that sometimes, in the magical realm of football, there is justice,” he wrote of Andre Iniesta’s sublime play.
No football writer has ever got even closer to describing the beautiful game as beautifully as did Galeano. Few Latin American historians have recorded the crimes and lies of history in such gory details as collected by Galeano. Few contemporary commentators have explained our lives and times with such clarity and audacity as Galeano showed in his sentences.
Though Galeano belonged very much to the South American traditions of writing made famous by the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Armado, Machado de Assis and Mario Vargas Llosa, he took it beyond magic realism and love poetry. With his constant critique of the past and razor-sharp analysis of the present, Galeano became a spiritual guide for South America’s new left that has captured power in most countries in the region and done such widespread social reforms that were not even contemplated in the past 500 years.
Widespread influence
But Galeano’s influence goes beyond South America. In the activist circles of Greece and Spain, two European countries witnessing a left-wing surge, Galeano is more popular than any European thinker. In a 2010 essay, View from Montevideo, Galeano made such a passionate cry for justice that it went viral across the globe. “Is justice just? In this upside-down world, is she still on her feet?’’ he posed a question and then went on to answer with a set of polemical questions:
“Who are the just and who the unjust? If international justice really exists, why are the powerful never judged and sent away? Why are the authors of the most horrendous carnage never arrested? Is it because they hold the keys to the prisons? Is it right that world peace is entrusted to the five largest arms-producing nations? Not to insult drug traffickers, but isn’t this also a case of ‘organised’ crime?”
But the Uruguayan was not a pessimist. Till his last days, when cancer was eating him from inside, he was full of hope – not just for himself but the world at large. “Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good soccer,” he said in a rare interview recently. "I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’ And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it."
Eduardo Galeano refused to give up – on past as well as future.
This week, at the Summit of Americas in Panama, Barack Obama broke the ice with Cuba by meeting Raul Castro. The American president called it a “historic meeting”. At the same summit, he also shook hands with Chavez’s successor Nicolas Maduro, who said that he likes Obama but “doesn’t trust him”. It’s possible that Obama has read a few pages of Galeano’s book. It will do him a lot of good if he finishes it and hands it over to his successor in 2016.
The Americas’ memories, which have been cut into pieces by centuries of lies, deceit, theft and war, need to be pieced together. That will bring a real closure. That will make Galeano happy, wherever he is now.
Shobhan Saxena is an independent journalist and analyst based in Rio de Janeiro, from where he writes on South America