Resistencia, identidad y dependencia en Eduardo Galeano

Abstract

The work of Eduardo Galeano
has had a huge impact in Latin America as well as
elsewhere. It most impressive book, The Open
Veins of Latin America, published in 1971 the first
time, has enjoyed over fifty editions in Spanish
already, plus other editions in several other
languages. This work whit memories of fire,
represent a coherent wholw and they ought to be
read together. Other writings have followed ever
since such as the Book of Embraces and books on
the environment, women, football, neo-liberalism
and so forth. In these publications Galeano presents
us with a powerful, altohough highly poetic, prose
that exposes the barbarities committed against our
continent in over 500 years. For Galeano, America
Latina is being made, has been made and it will be
continued to be made by the unavoidable struggles
of the oppressed. His message is, therefore, on of
praise and encouragement of resitance, both passive
and active, against the horrors inflict upon so many
by so few. The need to maintain and perpetuate such
na unjust system is required by the mechanisms of
accumulation the “system” has designed, perfect and
made ever more brutal with every cycle of capitalist
accumulation humanity has been forced to go
through. This system has robbed of our own being
in the process and Galeano, with his simple but
powerful writings, has undertaken to recover the
sources of our identity-to-be.