Version imprimableBorn Eduardo Germán MarÃa Hughes Galeano in Montevideo on September 3, 1940, Galeano began his career as a journalist in the early 1960s working as a correspondent for Sol and then as an editor for Marcha, which published such writers as Mario Vargas Llosa and Mario Benedetti. When a rightwing military coup took power in Uruguay in 1973, Galeano was jailed and subsequently went into exile, first in Argentina, where he edited Crisis, and then in Spain where he wrote his trilogy Memory of Fire (Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind). Memory of Fire mixed history and journalism in vignettes and biographical sketches written in a creative prose style that reminded American readers of John Dos Passos’ 1930s classic U.SA. triology (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money).
Open Veins of Latin America was a detailed, systematic, and sustained attack on European and U.S. imperialism in Latin America over five centuries, showing how first Spanish conquistadores, then English bankers and merchants, and finally U.S. corporations had dominated Latin America’s economy and pillaged the country’s natural resources while exploiting its enforced cheap labor. The book became a classic of the Latin American left and of the left around the world. In a famous gesture, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave a copy of Open Veins to U.S. President Barack Obama at the opening of the Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tabago, in April of 2009.
In 1985 Galeano returned from exile to Uruguay, establishing himself in the capital, Montevideo.
Galeano created a stir in March of last year with his comment made at a book fair in Brazil where he was being honored on the occasion of the forty-third anniversary of the publication of Open Veins. Asked what he thought of his book today, he said, “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it.” Conservatives pounced on his remark as a repudiation of his leftist politics, when in reality it was the judgement of a mature author looking back at a book written in his youth in an altogether different period.
Galeano remained a leftist until his death. He supported the campaign of Tabaré Vázquez and the leftist Broad Front in the 2004 election and in 2005 he became a member of the board of TeleSur, the pan-American television network based in Caracas, Venezuela. For fifty years, Galeano’s voice spoke truth to power and inspired the oppressed.
