Galeano Vijay Prashad

The Uruguayan authors socialism never lost its heart or its ambitions.

It was closely aligned with the dreams of ordinary people to transform

this extraordinarily harsh world into something humane. By VIJAY
PRASHAD
Eduardo Galeano's last connection to India came through his most important
book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a
Continent (1971). P.K. Rajan from the Chennai-based Bharati Puthakalayam
sought permission for this landmark book to be translated into Tamil. The
prospect pleased Galeano. He had strong opinions about translation, wanting his
original Spanish edition to be the basis and not Cedric Belfrages English version
(Belfrage, an English film critic and socialist, had lived in Mexico from the 1960s
and introduced writers such as Galeano to the English-speaking world). When it
became clear that a Tamil translation was already in the works and that finding a
Spanish to Tamil translator would not be easy, Galeano consented. He was eager
to have his classic book available to readers of Tamil.
Not long after this exchange, Galeano left the world. But he can never really
leave it. Shelves of books by Galeano remain his gift to the world, from Open
Veins to Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History (2011), along with
his writings on football (Football in Sun and Shadow, 1995) and on the NorthSouth divide and its uncomfortable history (Upside Down: A Primer for the
Looking-Glass World, 1998). These are remarkable books for their cutting
analysis of imperialism and capitalism, but more so for their genuine
hopefulness. Galeanos socialism never lost its heart or its ambitions. It was
closely aligned with the dreams of ordinary people to transform this
extraordinarily harsh world into something humane.
Born in 1940 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Galeano made his mark early as a
journalist and editor (of such important journals as Marcha and poca). Galeanos
peers in this world of Uruguayan journalism included such figures as Mario
Benedetti, the author of the poem El Sur tambin existe (The South Also
Exists), which would become an anthem for Hugo Chvez during his years in
power. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 excited the continent. It provided a sense
of possibility, but also of foreboding. Earlier attempts at independent assertion
had been met with harsh retribution from the domestic ruling classes, egged on
by Washington, D.C. In a widely circulated essay from 1961, Ernesto Che
Guevara warned: Dark days lie ahead for Latin America. It was in this context
that Galeano sharpened his journalistic skills.
Across the continent, scholars had begun to assess the reasons for the failure of
formally independent South America to move toward economic development.
Work by the Argentinian intellectual Ral Prebisch had suggested that the
institutional structure of world trade, built on inequality driven by colonialism,
would prevent former colonial states from breaking out of their stagnation. These
parts of the world, Prebisch argued, would remain as exporters of raw materials
and importers of finished commodities. It was into this debate that a generation
of young Latin American scholars, led by the Brazilian sociologist Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, entered. They pushed Latin American social science to the
Left. Galeano read these scholars diligently, seeking the narrative arc within
which to slot his own journalism.
When Uruguays economy plummeted in the 1960s, the dependency school

provided the most effective analysis of the chaos. Agricultural prices crashed,
leaving dependent Uruguay unable to balance its books. Unrest became the
order of the day, with a left-wing guerrilla group (the Tupamaros) making its
debut in 1966. Across South America, similar developments presaged open war
between the ruling classes (allied with Washington, D.C.) and the fledgling Left.
Galeano held fast to the pen. He wanted to understand the history that led to
this impassethe terrible toll being exacted on people who had known suffering
for centuries. This was the context in which he wrote Open Veins, a book that is
as much rooted in dependency theory as it is in the emerging literature of magic
realism, as much reliant upon the work of Cardoso as Gabriel Garca
Mrquez. Open Veins is, in many ways, the historians equivalent of One Hundred
Years of Solitude (1967).
In 1973, Mrquez told The Atlantic: Surrealism runs through the streets.
Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America. This was not a literature of
fantasy; it was a mode that mimicked the convoluted social forces of
contemporary South America.
The reaction to Open Veins was remarkable despite being banned in most of
South America. Galeano recalled: The girl who was quietly reading Open
Veins to her companion in a bus in Bogot, and finally stood up and read it aloud
to all the passengers. The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of the
Chilean bloodbath with this book wrapped inside her babys diapers. The student
who went from one bookstore to another for a week in Buenos Aires Calle
Corrientes, reading bits of it in each store because he hadnt the money to buy
it. The book ends with hope despite its terrible catalogue of misery; it is
probably why people took to it, seeking a light of utopia at the end of the tunnel
of repression. In the history of humankind, Galeano wrote, every act of
destruction meets its response, sooner or later, in an act of creation.
Galeano fled Uruguay when the military took over. From Spain, he looked back
once more to write his Memory of Fire trilogy, a longer and more meditative
account of the colonial history of South America. Galeano returned to his
homeland in the 1980s, when the military junta fell and the people, as he wrote,
voted against fear. Old Tupamaros, such as Jos Mujica, set aside their rusty
guns and tried out the ballot box. Mujicas ascendency to the presidency in 2010
allowed Galeano to be celebratory but cautious, for the election was born
blessed with the enthusiasm of the people, the fervent hope of the people, and
this is something to take care of, to be careful to not defraud. It is a day of
celebration but also of compromise. The historian of pain and hope saw the two
hands combined here. Mujicas cabinet included Ral Sendic, the son of the
founder of the Tupamaros. The Left, long in exile, now remains in charge.
When Galeano died, Mujica said that his friend had a huge love of life. That is
evident in his prose. In Days and Nights of Love and War (1978) Galeano notes:
One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to
denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. There
is an urgency in his writing, a desire to get as many stories out there as quickly
as possible, to get as much of the emotional intensity of life onto the page as
possible. Even lung cancer did not stop Galeano. Siglio XXI published
his Mujeres: antologa (2015) just as he died. It draws together stories of women
from his oeuvre. This will join the other dozen or so of Galeanos books that
remain with us to remember him.

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The Uruguayan authors socialism never lost its heart or its ambitions.

It was closely aligned with the dreams of ordinary people to transform

When Uruguays economy plummeted in the 1960s, the dependency school

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