WORLD VIEW LATIN AMERICA AND NORTH CAROLINA SEMINAR 2011
INTRODUCTION TO SEMINAR READINGS
For this year’s reading I asked our plenary speakers to suggest an article. Emillio del Valle Escalante suggested the introduction to the book that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela gave to President Obama at the Summit of the Americas, as it ties the readingto current events and most certainly will spark a lively discussion.
Below you will find the Washington Post coverage of Chavez’s giftand some postings with background information and reaction to the book. My choice of postings represents the balance of positive / negative posts I found on the web, but my search was not exhaustive.
Since the book was written a quarter of a century ago, I’ve also included another short reading that fills in the political scene from the 70s to the present.
Chavez Gives Obama Book on Latin American History
By Scott Wilson , The Washington Post, Saturday, April 18, 2009; 11:43 AM
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago, April 18 -- With the media watching their every gesture, President Obama and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela continued their getting-to-know-you phase with a gift and another handshake, this one for more than one camera.
Before Obama began a closed-door meeting with the leaders of UNASUR, an association of the 12 South American nations, Chavez walked around the u-shaped table and handed him a book, "Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina," or "The Open Veins of Latin America." Cameras clicked, tape rolled.
The work, originally published in 1970, is probably the best known by Eduardo Galeano, an Uruguayan writer of socialist leanings. It explores the history of European colonization of Latin America and what Galeano believes is the malign political and economic influence the United States has exerted over the region in recent decades. Galeano was persecuted in the 1970s by military juntas in Uruguay and Argentina, both recognized by the U.S. government.
POSTINGS AND REACTIONS TO OPEN VEINS
Chávez’s perfect gift to Obama
Richard Gott guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 April 2009
Galeano is one of the most well-known and celebrated writers in Latin America, up there with Gabriel García Márquez, and his huge output of fact and fiction, as well as his journalism, has been published all over the continent. His books have been continuously in print since the 1960s, read voraciously by successive generations. Full Article: guardian.co.uk
Open Veins of Latin America: Obama Should Read It
John Peeler , LA Progressive, April 21, 2009
Few in the American press corps or in the White House staff would have understood the importance of this book. Originally published in 1971 in Spanish and in 1973 in English, the book has been reprinted many times and remains standard reading for any educated Latin American, and for most English-speaking students of that region.
Eduardo Galeano is an Uruguayan writer who has published several other books and continues to write essays for many Latin American publications, as well as for such English-language magazines as The New Internationalist. Open Veins depicts the history of Latin America since the conquest that began with Columbus’ “discovery” of the New World. Its theme is set in its first sentence: “The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.”
The Idiot's Bible
Mary O’Grady, The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2009
Just days after Hugo Chávez gave President Barack Obama a copy of "Open Veins of Latin America" in Trinidad last week, the English-language version of the book shot to the No. 2 slot on Amazon.com.
Americans seemed to be curious about Mr. Chávez's reading tastes. But in Latin America, "Open Veins" is a well-known rant by Uruguayan Marxist Eduardo Galeano. And it also has another distinction that Mr. Chávez may be less inclined to publicize: It is widely regarded in free-market circles as "the idiot's bible."
The book was tagged with that moniker in the 1996 best seller, "The Manual of the Perfect Latin American Idiot." Penned by three Latin American journalists -- Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Alvaro Vargas Llosa -- the "manual" is a witty assault on the populist, militarist, caudillo mentality that has dominated the region for hundreds of years.
Book Review
Ernesto Verdeja, Critical Sociology 26
The story of Latin America has often been told through the metaphors of rape and pillage. Indeed, these tropes are frequently employed to highlight the region’s domination by North America and Europe. Galeano’s dependency-theory version of this tale, however, stands apart from most leftist histories for its superb combination of poetic phrasing and factual accounts of exploitation. He offers the reader an astounding, and often enraging, reading of “the division of labor among nations”, in which “some specialize in winning and others in losing”. [1]
But what is the value in republishing a history book that, over twenty-five years old, has surely been superseded by more modern texts covering newer cases of exploitation and repression? The Pinochet regime, the economic collapse of the eighties, the Central American proxy wars between the super powers, the failures of the Sandinista revolution and the Cuban experiment, the implementation of NAFTA and the rightward swing of previously popular parties and politicians (the PRI, Justicialists and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to cite only a few) and of course the termination of the Cold War—none of these had occurred when the book was first published, and all have had significant impacton the social and political landscape of the region. Indeed, the reasons to reada more contemporary text on the plight of Latin America seem overwhelming. Open Veins draws its relevance from three sources: the author’s passionate,and often lyrical, exposition of numerous cases of domination; the historical
significance of the book among leftists in Latin America, for whom it servedas a kind of literary manifesto against capitalism; and the response to the bookfrom the right, which has often taken the form of shrill tirades and occasionalill-conceived mockery. The text remains important for its accessibility and wit,as well as for its place in the ideological battles of Latin American intellectuals.
1