The Open Veins of Latin America
Monthly
Review, April 1997, by Isabel Allende
COPYRIGHT
1997 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2008
Gale, Cengage Learning
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In the early seventies Chile was a small island in
the tempestuous sea in which history had plunged Latin
America, the continent that appears on the map in the
form of an ailing heart. We were in the midst of the
Socialist government of Salvador Allende, the first
Marxist ever to become president in a democratic election,
a man who had a dream of equality and liberty, and
the passion to make that dream come true. That book
with the yellow covers, however, proved that there
were no safe islands in our region, we all shared five
hundred years of exploitation and colonization, we
were all linked by a common fate, we all belonged to
the same race of the oppressed. If I had been able
to read between the lines, I could have concluded that
Salvador Allende's government was doomed from the beginning.
It was the time of the Cold war, and the United States
would not allow a leftist experiment to succeed in
what Henry Kissinger called "its backyard." The Cuban
revolution was enough; no other socialist project would
be tolerated, even if it was the result of a democratic
election. On September 11, 1973, a Military Coup ended
a century of democratic tradition in Chile and started
the long reign of General Augusto Pinochet. Similar
coups followed in other countries, and soon half the
continent's population was living in terror. This was
a strategy designed in Washington and imposed upon
the Latin American people by the economic and political
forces of the right. In every instance the military
acted as mercenaries to the privileged groups in power.
Repression was organized on a large scale; torture,
concentration camps, censorship, imprisonment without
trial, and summary executions became common practices.
Thousands of people "disappeared," masses of exiles
and refugees left their countries running for their
lives. New wounds were added to the old and recent
scars that the continent had endured. In this political
context The Open Veins of Latin America was published.
This book made Eduardo Galeano famous overnight, although
he was already a well known political journalist in
Uruguay. Like all his
countrymen, Eduardo wanted to be a soccer player. He
also wanted to be a saint, but as it turned out, he
ended up committing most of the deadly sins, as he
once confessed. "I have never killed anybody,
it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage
or the time, not because I lacked the desire." He worked
for a weekly political magazine Marcha, and at twenty-eight
he became the director of the important newspaper Epoca,
in Uruguay. He wrote The Open Veins of Latin America
in three months, in the last ninety nights of 1970,
while he worked during the day in the University, editing
books, magazines, and newsletters. Those were bad times in Uruguay. Planes and ships
left filled with young people who were escaping from
poverty and mediocrity in a country that forced them
to be old at twenty, and that produced more violence
than meat or wool. After an eclipse that had lasted
a century, the military invaded the scene with the
excuse of fighting the Tupamara guerrilla. They sacrificed
the spaces of liberty and devoured the civil power,
which was less and less civil.
By the middle of 1973 there was a military coup, he
was imprisoned, and shortly afterward he went into
exile in Argentina, where he created the magazine Crisis.
But by 1976 there was a military coup also in Argentina,
and the "dirty war" against intellectuals, leftists,
journalists, and artists began. Galeano initiated another
exile, this time in Spain, with Helena Villagra, his
wife. In Spain he wrote Days and Nights of Love and
War, a beautiful book about memory, and soon after
he began a sort of conversation with the soul of America:
Memories of Fire, a massive fresco of Latin American
history since the pre-Colombian era to modern times. "I
imagined that America was a woman and she was telling
in my ear her secrets, the acts of love and violations
that had created her." He worked on these three volumes
for eight years, writing by hand. "I am not particularly
interested in saving time: I prefer to enjoy it." Finally,
in 1985, after a plebiscite defeated the military dictatorship
in Uruguay, Galeano was able to return to his country.
His exile had lasted eleven years, but he had not learned
to be invisible or silent; as soon as he set foot in
Montevideo he was again working to fortify the fragile
democracy that replaced the military junta, and he
continued to defy the authorities and risk his life
to denounce the crimes of the dictatorship.
Eduardo Galeano has also published several works of
fiction and poetry; he is the author of innumerable
articles, interviews, and lectures; he has obtained
many awards, honorary degrees, and recognition for
his literary talent and his political activism. He
is one of the most interesting authors ever to come
out of Latin America, a region known for its great
literary names. His work is a mixture of meticulous
detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good
storytelling. He has walked up and down Latin America
listening to the voices of the poor and the oppressed,
as well as those of the leaders and the intellectuals.
He has lived with Indians, peasants, guerrillas, soldiers,
artists, and outlaws; he has talked to presidents,
tyrants, martyrs, priests, heroes, bandits, desperate
mothers, and patient prostitutes. He has been bitten
by snakes, suffered tropical fevers, walked in the
jungle, and survived a massive heart attack; he has
been persecuted by repressive regimes as well as by
fanatical terrorists. He has opposed military dictatorships
and all forms of brutality and exploitation, taking
unthinkable risks in defense of human rights. He has
more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody
else I can think of, and uses it to tell the world
of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures
of its people. He is an adventurer with a talent for
writing, a compassionate heart, and a soft sense of
humor. "We live in a world that treats the dead better
than the living. We, the living, are askers of questions
and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects
unpardonable by a system that believes death, like,
money, improves people."
All these talents were already obvious in his first
book, The Open Veins of Latin America, as was his genius
for story-telling. I know Eduardo Galeano personally:
he can produce an endless stream of stories with no
apparent effort for an undetermined period of time.
Once we were both stranded in a beach hotel in Cuba
with no transportation and no air-conditioning. For
several days he entertained me with his amazing stories
over pina coladas. This almost superhuman talent for
storytelling is what makes The Open Veins of Latin
America so easy to read - like a pirate's novel, as
he once described it - even for those who are not particularly
knowledgeable about political or economic matters.
The book flows with the grace of a tale; it is impossible
to put it down. His arguments, his rage, and his passion
would be overwhelming if they were not expressed with
such superb style, with such masterful timing and suspense.
Galeano denounces exploitation with uncompromising
ferocity, yet this book is almost poetic in its description
of solidarity and human capacity for survival in the
midst of the worst kind of despoliation. There is a
mysterious power in Galeano's story-telling. He uses
his craft to invade the privacy of the reader's mind,
to persuade him or her to read and to continue reading
to the very end, to surrender to the charm of his writing
and the power of his idealism.
In his Book of Embraces, Eduardo has a story that
I love. To me it is a splendid metaphor of writing
in general and his writing in particular.
There was an old and solitary man who spent most of
his time in bed. There were rumors that he had a treasure
hidden in his house. One day some thieves broke in,
they searched everywhere and found a chest in the cellar.
They went off with it and when they opened it they
found that it was filled with letters. They were the
love letters the old man had received all over the
course of his long life. The thieves were going to
burn the letters, but they talked it over and finally
decided to return them. One by one. One a week. Since
then, every Monday at noon, the old man would be waiting
for the postman to appear. As soon as he saw him, the
old man would start running and the postman, who knew
all about it, held the letter in his hand. And even
St. Peter could hear the beating of that heart, crazed
with joy at receiving a message from a woman.
Isn't this the playful substance of literature? An
event transformed by poetic truth. Writers are like
those thieves, they take something that is real, like
the letters, and by a trick of magic they transform
it into something totally fresh. In Galeano's tale
the letters existed and they belonged to the old man
in the first place, but they were kept unread in a
dark cellar, they were dead. By the simple trick of
mailing them back one by one, those good thieves gave
new life to the letters and new illusions to the old
man. To me this is admirable in Galeano's work: finding
the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn out events,
and invigorating the fired soul with his ferocious
passion.
The Open Veins of Latin America is an invitation to
explore beyond the appearance of things. Great literary
works like this one wake up consciousness, bring people
together, interpret, explain, denounce, keep record,
and provoke changes. There is one other aspect of Eduardo
Galeano that fascinates me. This man who has so much
knowledge and who has - by studying the clues and the
signs - developed a sense of foretelling, is an optimist.
At the end of Century of the Wind, the third volume
of Memory of Fire, after 600 pages proving the genocide,
the cruelty, the abuse, and exploitation exerted upon
the people of Latin America, after a patient recount
of everything that has been stolen and continues to
be stolen from the continent, he writes:
The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the
warm music spinning around it will never stop. However
much death may come, however much blood may flow, the
music will dance men and women as long as the air breaths
them and the land plows and loves them.
This breath of hope is what moves me the most in Galeano's
work. Like thousands of refugees all over the continent,
I also had to leave my country after the military coup
of 1973. I could not take much with me: some clothes,
family pictures, a small bag with dirt from my garden,
and two books: an old edition of the Odes by Pablo
Neruda, and the book with the yellow cover, Las Venas
Abiertas de America Latina. More than twenty years
later I still have that same book with me. That is
why I could not miss the opportunity to write this
introduction and thank Eduardo Galeano publicly for
his stupendous love for freedom, and for his contribution
to my awareness as a writer and as a citizen of Latin
America. As he said once: "it's worthwhile to die for
things without which it's not worthwhile to live."
Isabel Allende is the author of several bestselling
novels including In the House of the Spirits, The Infinite
Plan, and Paula. Eduardo Galeano's classic Open Veins
of Latin America, much honored since its publication
25 years ago, is further honored by Isabel Allende's
new preface, printed here with the author's permission.
Bibliography for: "The Open Veins of Latin America"
Isabel Allende " The
Open Veins of Latin America ". Monthly Review.
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