Open Veins of Latin America

By Eduardo Galeano,

Book cover of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Book description

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Open Veins of Latin America as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Eduardo Galeano examines Simón Bolivar’s famous question of whether Latin America will ever know happiness by documenting how exploitation has led to social inequities and political instability. Another question I have grappled with is just as complex to answer, but Galeano does it. Why has Latin America suffered so many military dictatorships?

Recent political developments in the United States resemble the instability and unprincipled rhetoric that caused democracies to fall all over the southern continent. 


A classic book that weaves together the history of how Columbus’ arrival in the Americas set the stage for the mining of the New World by European and other colonial powers--for its gold, silver, cacao, cotton, rubber, and coffee--and for how that impacted the people who lived there. A brilliant synthesis of the many forces that were unleashed by the joining of the Old World and the New.

From Kim's list on South American history.

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