Literature / Open Veins of Latin America

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (Spanish title: Las venas abiertas de América Latina) is an essay book written by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano. It's divided in two parts and it basically analyses how Latin America has been used by the world powers since the arrival of the early Europeans.

The first part deals specifically with the arrival of Columbus and the Europeans and the resources' exploitations. The second part chronicles Latin American history and the most recent external interventions.

Notably, the book received a sales boost when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave a copy of the book to Barack Obama. A later edition had also received a foreword from writer Isabel Allende, the niece of Chilean president Salvador Allende^note Allende the writer is often mistaken for Salvador Allende's daughter, also named Isabel, who is a politician, who had famously died in a military coup that ushered in Pinochet's dictatorship.

A bit later, the book jumped to the news again when Galeano desperately disowned it, claiming that he wrote the book while lacking knowledge of the topic and that he would literally faint if he read it again. Needleasly to say, this brought controversy in plenty.

This book provides examples of:

• Banned in China: Because of the book's criticism of the right-wing military governments all around the zone, it was banned in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay (but it isn't anymore.)

• Hero with Bad Publicity: Tiny nations that tried to resist international meddling, like Paraguay.

• Shown His Work: Galeano took four years just to compile the information. According to him, he wrote the book in just three months.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The European powers (mainly the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal) and the United States.

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