As Galeano said in the interview, “… The Open Veins tried to be a political economy book, but I simply didn’t have the necessary education. “Reality changes,” Galeano said in response to a question about what the contemporary Open Veins of Latin America might be “Time has passed, I’ve begun to try other things, to bring myself closer to human reality in general and to political economy specifically.” However, in contrast to those who feel that Galeano is renouncing and shaming his work and even leaving ‘the left’ in the gutter, I feel that, instead, he is acknowledging this book’s weaknesses and failings as a work of scholarship, while still believing the key tenets he witnessed, which provided the fuel to his passionate fire. This was part of the justification that Galeano gave at the II Bienal Brasil do Livro e da Leitura in late April this year, when he publicly distanced himself from his most famous work The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. This has allowed Galeano to view certain idiosyncrasies of history and our interaction with it – that history never says, for instance, “goodbye”, preferring instead to tantalisingly utter “see you later” or, that, “because of the complexities of human nature, reality” – history’s cousin of the present – “can change.” It is not that this task is the privileged prerogative of Galeano alone, rather he is simply one of the many who accept history’s offer to peer through her pages. In payment for this access, Galeano bears the burden of sharing this story: a continuum of voices and loves of treasures found and mountains emptied of secrets forgotten and memories made secret of the waters, colours, and soil that shakes itself free and arrives somewhere else of ardour, treachery and, above all, optimism.

History offers Galeano timeless access to the scrolls that disentangle themselves across the planet for his perusal, yet the relationship is certainly reciprocal.

History and Eduardo Galeano have an intimate relationship.

Open the veins of latin america