Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015), 1973 (written 1970, published 1971 in [image]
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015), 1973 (written 1970, published 1971 in Spanish as Las venas abiertas de América Latina; epilog 1978, new foreword by Isabel Allende, 1997), ISBN 0853459916, Dewey 330.98
For high-school age and up. Facts that history as told by conquerors hides or lies about. p. 265. The most favorable reviews came from the military dictatorships who praised the book by banning it.
New foreword by Isabel Allende, 1997: The U.S. would not allow a leftist experiment to succeed in "its backyard." After coups in many countries, half the continent's population was living in terror. (Salvador Allende was president of Chile when Galeano wrote this book. p. 130. Dec. 20, 1970 he announced plans to nationalize Chile's copper mines--from which Anaconda Copper and Kennecott Copper, U.S. firms, had extracted $4 billion. p. 144. Allende would die during a CIA-sponsored coup in 1973.)
Introduction: The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.
Part I: Mankind's Poverty as a consequence of the wealth of the land
1: Lust for Gold, Lust for Silver
1513 Balboa sees the Pacific 1522 Magellan's 18 surviving circumnavigators return to Spain. 1533 Pizarro seizes the heart of the Inca empire. p. 16. 1800 at least half of Mexican land & capital belonged to the Church. p. 31.
A staggering fraction of the population was worked to death in the mines. Mercury poisoning killed miners within 4 years, if nothing else yet had. Today's (1971) Bolivian miners die of lung diseases at age 35. pp. 46-47. The gold mines of Ouro Preto in Brazil had an insatiable appetite for slaves: they died in short order, only in rare cases enduring the seven years of continuous labor. p. 54. Even now (1971) Bolivians die with rotted lungs so the world may consume cheap tin. p. 149.
Wealth extracted from land and labor was squandered in opulence.
The exploited workers under colonial rule remained exploited workers after independence: the landed aristocrats under colonial rule were still landed aristocrats after independence. pp. 46, 116.
2. King Sugar and Other Agricultural Monarchs
Where opulence is most opulent, misery is most miserable. p. 64. Allen Dulles was a director of the Francisco Sugar Company in Cuba. p. 74. Police in Brazil arrested peasants and sold them as slaves, to wealthy landowners, in 1970. p. 87. Countries dependent on banana, coffee, cacao exports, subject to competition & price reductions, leave people poor and underfed. p. 94.
"Dumping" of U.S.-Government-subsidized cotton, rice, wheat, corn, and other agricultural commodities destroys farmers' livelihoods worldwide. p. 95. Latin American agricultural workers receive hunger wages or are serfs. Salvadorans, who supply cotton to Japanese textile industries, consume fewer calories and proteins than the hungry peasants of India. 25% of Salvadorans die of vitamin deficiency. p. 98.
U.S. companies take the profit from Latin American bananas, coffee, and cotton. Latin Americans are the victims. p. 100.
Colombia erupted in peasant revolt, savagely crushed by the forces of wealth, 1948-1957. 80 percent were undernourished. p. 104.
Early 1800s, the red cochineal bug and blue indigo plant were Central American exports to the British textile industry. 1850, German chemists supplanted them with synthetics. p. 105.
1880: coffee. Local elite grabbed the land and labor, with government help. p. 106. U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler was "a high-class muscle man for Big Business" for 33 years. p. 108.
United Fruit (now Chiquita) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite... essentially owned Guatemala. It used only 8% of the land it held. The Arbenz government bought some of the unused land and began distributing it to peasants. The Eisenhower administration trained and equipped Colonel Armas' thugs to overthrow Guatemala's government in 1954 and install Armas as military dictator. "We had to get rid of a Communist government," said Eisenhower. p. 113. CIA director Allen Dulles had been on United Fruit's board of directors. His brother John Foster Dulles was a lawyer who had worked for United Fruit. This began a [40]-year reign of terror. The slaughter that is greater but more hidden--the daily genocide of poverty--also continues.
In Mexico, Emiliano Zapata and his followers fought the landowners and their governments, 1910 to 1919, when they killed him. pp. 120-126.
1.5% of agricultural landlords own half of all cultivable land.
Latin America from the start was used for plunder of its land and labor, which continues. The New England colonies by contrast yielded no mineral or tropical-crop plunder: England permitted them to develop factories, and use the land for homesteading pioneers. pp. 130-133.
3. The Invisible Sources of Power
The U.S. depends on foreign sources for most of the minerals it needs to maintain its ability to wage war. p. 137.
Part II: Development Is a Voyage with More Shipwrecks than Navigators
4. Tales of Premature Death
After World War II, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank denied underdeveloped countries the right to protect their industries. p. 204.
5. The Contemporary Structure of Plunder
Imperialism spreads poverty widely and concentrates wealth narrowly. p. 207.
Latin-American dictatorships hawk their countries to foreign capitalists as a pimp offers a woman. p. 217.
IMF requirements further opened the gates to foreign conquerors. p. 220.
"Aid" works like the philanthropist who put a wooden leg on his piglet because he was eating it bit by bit. p. 227.
The World Bank responds to the United States like thunder to lightning. p. 234.
Part III: Seven Years After
Chilean dictator Pinochet gave foreign monopolists the businesses Allende had nationalized. Business free as never before; people in jail as never before. Free market? The price of milk has not been controlled in Chile since 1975. Two firms dominate the market. The price of milk for consumers went up 40%, while for the producers it went down by 22%. p. 271.
The abyss in Latin America between the well-being of the few and the misery of the many is infinitely greater than in Europe or the United States. p. 271. Hence more ruthlessness in maintaining it. In Uruguay, the function of one fifth of the active population is to watch, trail, and punish the others.
Dictators keep their boots on the necks of their people to supply cheap labor to an international market that demands cheap products. p. 275.
Thomas Ray
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