Eduardo Galeano

Template:Short description Template:Family name hatnote Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer Eduardo Germán María Hughes Galeano (Template:IPA; 3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015) was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist considered, among other things, "a literary giant of the Latin American left" and "global soccer's pre-eminent man of letters".<ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

Galeano's best-known works are Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) and Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire, 1982Template:Ndash6). "I'm a writer," the author once said of himself, "obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia."<ref name=":0" />

Author Isabel Allende, who said her copy of Galeano's book was one of the few items with which she fled Chile in 1973 after the military coup of Augusto Pinochet, called Open Veins of Latin America "a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good storytelling."<ref name="Bernstein">Template:Cite news</ref>

Life

Galeano was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 3 September 1940.<ref name="Bernstein" /><ref name="fnl">Template:Cite news</ref> He was the son of Eduardo Hughes Roosen, an official at the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries and owner of a ranch in the Paysandú Department, and Licia Esther Galeano Muñoz.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was of Welsh, Italian, German and Spanish descent.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Martin 1992 148">Template:Harvnb.</ref>

Coming from a prominent Uruguayan family, he was a descendant, through his maternal line, of Fructuoso Rivera, the first president of Uruguay, and, through his paternal line, of Leandro Gómez, a military leader recognized for his defense of the city of Paysandú during its siege in 1864.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

After completing two years of secondary school at Erwy School, Galeano went to work at age fourteen in various jobs, including messenger and fare collector.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Martin 1992 148" /> He eventually landed at El Sol. The Uruguayan socialist weekly first published the teenager's comics prior to his writing. Galeano's passion for drawing continued throughout his life; his vignettes can be seen in many of his later books while his signature was often accompanied by a small hand-drawn pig.<ref name="Galeano">Template:Cite web</ref> As a journalist throughout the 1960s Galeano rose in prominence among leftist publications, and became editor of Marcha, an influential weekly with contributors such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Mario Benedetti, Manuel Maldonado Denis and Roberto Fernández Retamar. For two years he edited the daily Época and worked as editor-in-chief of the University Press. In 1959 he married his first wife, Silvia Brando, and in 1962, having divorced, he remarried to Graciela Berro.<ref name="Wilson 1980 31">Template:Harvnb.</ref> He wrote under his maternal family name; as a young man, he briefly wrote for a Uruguayan socialist publication, El Sol, signing articles as "Gius," "a pseudonym approximating the pronunciation in Spanish of his paternal surname Hughes."<ref>Simon Romero, "Eduardo Galenao, Uruguayan Voice of Anti-Capitalism, Is Dead at 81," The New York Times, 14 September 2021, A17.</ref>

In 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay; Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee, going into exile in Argentina where he founded the magazine Crisis.<ref>Romero, "Eduardo Galeano,"</ref> His 1971 book Open Veins of Latin America was banned by the right-wing military government, not only in Uruguay, but also in Chile and Argentina.<ref>Fresh Off Worldwide Attention for Joining Obama’s Book Collection, Uruguayan Author Eduardo Galeano Returns with "Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone".</ref> In 1976 he married for the third time to Helena Villagra; however, in the same year, the Videla regime took power in Argentina in a bloody military coup and his name was added to the list of those condemned by the death squads. He fled again, this time to Spain,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Galeano"/> where he wrote his famous trilogy, Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire), described as "the most powerful literary indictment of colonialism in the Americas."<ref name = "Maybury-Lewis 1991 376">Template:Harvnb.</ref>

File:Eduardo Galeano en 1984.jpg

Galeano in 1984

At the beginning of 1985 Galeano returned to Montevideo when democratization occurred. Following the victory of Tabaré Vázquez and the Broad Front alliance in the 2004 Uruguayan elections marking the first left-wing government in Uruguayan history Galeano wrote a piece for The Progressive titled "Where the People Voted Against Fear" in which Galeano showed support for the new government and concluded that the Uruguayan populace used "common sense" and were "tired of being cheated" by the traditional Colorado and Blanco parties.<ref>Eduardo Galeano, "Where the People Voted Against Fear" Template:Webarchive January 2005 The Progressive</ref> Following the creation of TeleSUR, a Latin American television station based in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2005 Galeano along with other left-wing intellectuals such as Tariq Ali and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel joined the network's 36 member advisory committee.<ref>Alfonso Daniels, "'Chavez TV' beams into South America",The Guardian, 26 July 2005.</ref>

On 10 February 2007, Galeano underwent a successful operation to treat lung cancer.<ref>"Eduardo Galeano se recupera de operación" Template:Webarchive, El Universal, 11 February 2007 Template:In lang.</ref> During an interview with journalist Amy Goodman following Barack Obama's election as President of the United States in November 2008, Galeano said: "The White House will be Barack Obama's house in the time coming, but this White House was built by black slaves. And I'd like, I hope, that he never, never forgets this."<ref>Interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, 5 November 2008 (video, audio, and print transcript)/</ref> At the 17 April 2009 opening session of the 5th Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave a Spanish-language copy of Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America to U.S. President Barack Obama, who was making his first diplomatic visit to the region.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In a May 2009 interview he spoke about his past and recent works, some of which deal with the relationships between freedom and slavery, and democracies and dictatorships: "not only the United States, also some European countries, have spread military dictatorships all over the world. And they feel as if they are able to teach democracy". He also talked about how and why he has changed his writing style, and his recent rise in popularity.<ref>Audio and transcript of interview, May 2009.</ref>

In April 2014 Galeano gave an interview at the II Bienal Brasil do Livro e da Leitura in which he regretted some aspects of the writing style in Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, saying

"Time has passed, I've begun to try other things, to bring myself closer to human reality in general and to political economy specifically. 'The Open Veins' tried to be a political economy book, but I simply didn't have the necessary education. I do not regret writing it, but it is a stage that I have since passed."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

This interview was picked up by many critics of Galeano's work in which they used the statement to reinforce their own criticisms. However, in an interview with Jorge Majfud he said,

"The book, written ages ago, is still alive and kicking. I am simply honest enough to admit that at this point in my life the old writing style seems rather stodgy, and that it's hard for me to recognize myself in it since I now prefer to be increasingly brief and untrammeled. [The] voices that have been raised against me and against The Open Veins of Latin America are seriously ill with bad faith."<ref>The Open Veins of Eduardo Galeano, Monthly Review, 11.06.14.</ref>

Work

Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America), a history of the region from the time of Columbus from the perspective of the subjugated people, is considered one of Galeano's best-known works. An English-language translation by Cedric Belfrage gained some popularity in the English-speaking world after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave it as a gift to U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Decades after its first publication, Galeano disavowed certain aspects of the book while still upholding many ideas embodied in it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Galeano was also an avid fan of football, writing most notably about it in Football in Sun and Shadow (El fútbol a sol y sombra).<ref name="fnl"/> In a retrospective for SB Nation after Galeano's death, football writer Andi Thomas described the work—a history of the sport, as well as an outlet for the author's own experiences with the sport and his political polemics—as "one of the greatest books about football ever written".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Death

Galeano died on 13 April 2015 in Montevideo<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>"Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan Voice of Anti-Capitalism, is Dead at 74." The New York Times, Tuesday, 14 April 2015, A17.</ref> from lung cancer at the age of 74, survived by third wife Helena Villagra and three children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Awards and honors

• 2006: International Human Rights Award by Global Exchange<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2010: Stig Dagerman Prize<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2021: Posthumous "honoris causa" prize from the National University of Misiones.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• ???: Order of Ruben Darío<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Works

Books

Year	Spanish title	Spanish ISBN	Spanish Publisher	English translation
1963	Los días siguientes		Alfa	The following days
1964	China
1967	Guatemala, país ocupado			Guatemala: Occupied country (1969)
1967	Reportajes
1967	Los fantasmas del día del león y otros relatos
1968	Su majestad el fútbol
1971	Las venas abiertas de América Latina	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	Open Veins of Latin America (1973) Template:ISBN<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
1971	Siete imágenes de Bolivia
1971	Violencia y enajenación
1972	Crónicas latinoamericanas
1973	Vagamundo	Template:ISBN
1980	La canción de nosotros	Template:ISBN
1977	Conversaciones con Raimón	Template:ISBN
1978	Días y noches de amor y de guerra	Template:ISBN	Del Chanchito	Days and Nights of Love and War Template:ISBN
1980	La piedra arde
1981	Voces de nuestro tiempo	Template:ISBN
1982–1986	Memoria del fuego	Template:ISBN	Del Chanchito	Memory of fire: Volume I: Template:Cite book Volume II: Faces and Masks. Template:ISBN. Volume III: Century of the Wind. Template:ISBN.
1984	Aventuras de los jóvenes dioses	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI
1985	Ventana sobre Sandino
1985	Contraseña
1986	La encrucijada de la biodiversidad colombiana
1986	El descubrimiento de América que todavía no fue y otros escritos	Template:ISBN	Editorial Laia
1988–2002	El tigre azul y otros artículos	Template:ISBN	Ciencias Sociales (Cuba)
1962–1987	Entrevistas y artículos		Ediciones Del Chanchito
1989	El libro de los abrazos	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	The Book of Embraces Template:ISBN
1989	Nosotros decimos no	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI
1990	América Latina para entenderte mejor
1990	Palabras: antología personal
1992	Ser como ellos y otros artículos	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI
1993	Amares	Template:ISBN	Alianza, España
1993	Las palabras andantes	Template:ISBN	Del Chanchito
1994	Úselo y tírelo	Template:ISBN	Editorial Planeta
1995	El fútbol a sol y sombra	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	Football (soccer) in Sun and Shadow Template:ISBN
1998	Patas arriba: Escuela del mundo al revés	Template:ISBN	Macchi	Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World 2000, Template:ISBN
1999	Carta al ciudadano 6.000 millones<ref>De autores varios: Maryse Condé; Ariel Dorfman.</ref>	Template:ISBN	Ediciones B
2001	Tejidos. Antología	Template:ISBN	Ediciones Octaedro
2004	Bocas del tiempo	Template:ISBN	Catálogos Editora	Voices of time: a life in stories Template:ISBN
2006	El viaje	Template:ISBN
2007	Carta al señor futuro
2008	Patas Arriba: La escuela del mundo del revés	Template:ISBN	Catálogos Editora
2008	Espejos	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone 2009, Template:ISBN
2008	La resurrección del Papagayo	Template:ISBN	Libros del Zorro Rojo
2011	Los hijos de los días	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History Template:ISBN
2015	Mujeres – antología	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	<ref name="paperback">Template:Cite web</ref>
2016	El cazador de historias	Template:ISBN	Siglo XXI	Hunter of Stories 2017, Template:ISBN
2017	Cerrado por fútbol		Siglo XXI

Articles

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See also

• Culture of Uruguay
• List of Uruguayan writers
• Z Communications

References

Bibliography

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External links

• Interview with Eduardo Galeano
• Sandra Cisneros reads "Los Nadies/The Nobodies" by Eduardo Galeano from Book of Embraces, El libro de los abrazos (1989) "[1]".
• "Writer Without Borders Template:Webarchive"—interview by Scott Widmer on In These Times
• "Author of the Month Template:Webarchive," Escritores.org
• "Chávez creates overnight bestseller with book gift to Obama", The Guardian, 19 April 2009
• Eduardo Galeano Interviewed by Jonah Raskin by Monthly Review, October 2009
• Haiti Occupied Country
• Template:C-SPAN
• "Eduardo Galeano, Chronicler of Latin America’s 'Open Veins,' on His New Book 'Children of the DaysTemplate:'" (interview), Democracy Now!, 8 May 2013