Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano’s best-known works are “Las venas abiertas de América Latina” [The Open Veins of Latin America] (1971) and “Memoria del fuego” [Memory of Fire] (1982-1986). Neither are necessarily works of fiction and only a few references are made to forests. Nonetheless, he is a giant amongst Latin American writers and political commentators.

As the author himself recognises it is hard to classify his work. He writes in The Open Veins of Latin America: “I know that I can be accused of sacrilege in writing about political economy in the style of a novel about loves or pirates. But I confess I get a pain reading valuable works by certain sociologists, political experts, economists, and historians who write in code”. Likewise: “Memory of Fire is not an anthology…I don’t know if it is a novel or essay or epic poem or testament or chronicle or…Deciding robs me of no sleep. I do not believe in the frontiers that, according to literature’s custom officers, separate the forms.”

His message is, however, unambiguous: “… underdevelopment in Latin America is a consequence of development elsewhere, that we in Latin America are poor because the ground we tread is rich, and that places privileged by nature have been cursed by history”. His essays show how the continent’s natural resources, including its forests, have been exploited since the 15th century – five centuries of pillage.