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In April Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez reached out to Barack Obama and gave him a gift. It wasn’t a billion barrels of crude or a letter of resignation, which were no doubt what Obama was hoping for, but rather a very normal and inoffensive-looking book (this was still far better than Evo Morales’ gift, which was another round of accusations that the US was trying to kill him. Sigh).
The book was Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, a tome of some existing fame which became an instant bestseller as it was passed from Chavez to Obama.
The title should give some indication as to what the book is about, but given that the gift was an untranslated Spanish-language edition, it’s safe to say Obama hasn’t spent much time pouring over its pages. To avoid the potentially awkward consequences that could ensue from the next meeting between Chavez and Obama (“how did you like your gift” “oh yeah, it was pretty, um, interesting” “so which bits did you like the best” “well definitely the um, the start was pretty, like, um, hey look, there’s Kevin Rudd!” “Who?”), I thought I’d provide some cheat notes to help Obama. He’s a busy man after all; he has a Peace Prize to earn…
Title: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Author: Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan journalist and freelance political exile.
Published: 1971, and then again later.
Chapter Summaries
Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 1: Lust for Gold, Lust for Silver. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 2: King Sugar and other Agricultural Monarchs. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 3: The Invisible Sources of Power. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 4: Tales of Premature Death. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 5: The Contemporary Structures of Power. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Seven Years After. Explains how Latin America is still exploited.
Setting
Venezuelan oil fields, Bolivian silver mines, Brazilian favelas, Caribbean sugar plantations, Central American banana plantations, Brazilian coffee plantations, Chilean guano deposits and copper mines, nineteenth century Paraguay, Zapatista Mexico, the Panama Canal, Argentine prisons, leaky slave galleons, denuded rainforests………..
Characters
The Spanish. Outsiders that harvested, mined and plundered Latin America for their own benefit. Villains.
The English, and to a lesser extent the other Europeans. Outsiders that harvested, mined and plundered Latin America for their own benefit. Came after the Spanish (see above). Villains.
The USAmericans. Outsiders that harvested, mined and plundered Latin America for their own benefit. Came after the English (see above). Villains.
The Oligarchy. Insiders that privatised, mortgaged and sold Latin America for their own benefit. Villains.
The International Monetary Fund. See the USAmericans.
Augusto Pinochet. Chilean general who became president/dictator through a violent coup. Friend of the Oligarchy (see above) and the USAmericans (see above). A villain.
Salvador Allende. Chilean socialist president overthrown by Augusto Pinochet (see above). A hero.
Isabel Allende. First cousin once removed of Salvador Allende (see above). Wrote the foreword to Open Veins. Likes it. Fled Augusto Pinochet’s coup (see above) carrying a copy of Open Veins (an early edition, before she had written the foreword).
Old Woman. Lives in a São Paulo hovel. Drinks coffee from small tin can and talks to author. Claims that Brazil is “ours”. An anecdote.
Quotes
“We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity”.
“The massacres of Indians that began with Columbus never stopped”.
“The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret – every year, three Hiroshima bombs”.
“There are less than 1,000 computers in Latin America and 50,000 in the United States”.
“One wonders if those that made us paralytic might offer us a wheelchair”.
“One writes to answer the questions that buzz in one’s head”.
Notes for the President (of the USA)
* Don’t take anything Galeano says too personally, after all you were only 10 years old when this book was published, and not directly complicit in, for example, the CIA’s support of Pinochet.
* Galeano is opposed to slavery, to indentured labour, to serfdom, and to other forms of labour exploitation. By aligning yourself similarly you may be able to reach out to those of the left like Galeano and Hugo Chavez. These people cannot vote for you, but being cordial to them might boost your popularity with certain demographics (most of whom also cannot vote for you).
* The CIA, the IMF, the green berets and the oil companies are for the large part unpopular within Latin America. This may be because every time they become involved in Latin America people start dying (according to Galeano). Finding less polarising cultural ambassadors to send to the region may prove worthwhile.
* Galeano wrote Open Veins in the years after Che Guevara was assassinated. Neither this event nor the ongoing embargo seem to have ended the Communist threat in the region. Cuba may be the country that has changed the least from the time of the book’s publication to today. It might be time to consider a new Cuba strategy.
* Five hundred years of exploitation has not caused Latin America to love unreservedly the Spanish (see above) or the English (see above) or the USAmericans (see above). For the USAmericans at least it is not to late to rethink this approach. It might be time to call off the conquest.
This week Hugo Chavez celebrated his tenth anniversary as president of Venezuela. This may not fall directly within the sphere of Bolivian topics that I have been blogging on and on about, but given how much Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution has influenced Evo Morales’s three years in office, it seems fitting to pay some respects.
So, Hugo, congratulations on ten years in office. This achievement is considerable given that when you came into office the president of Venezuela could only serve one five year term. If you have your way and manage to further amend the constitution, you may well realise your goal of staying in office for twenty five years.
Congratulations are in order for bringing affordable or free health care and education to more Venezuelans, as well as opening a chain of subsidised staples supermarkets, lavishly adorned with pro-Hugo messages.
Congratulations are in order, Hugo, for bringing Cuban doctors to the slums of Caracas, and for empowering the impoverished to vote (usually for you).
Congratulations are in order for the successful nationalisation of your country’s oil wealth, and for the ambitious campaigns you have put this wealth towards. The Bolivians who have become literate thanks to programs you sponsored no doubt also send congratulations, as do those from the North East of the USA who have received cheap fuel from you.
Congratulations are in order for surviving a coup attempt, which may or may not have had US backing. Congratulations are in order for the courage with which you have stood up to your neo-liberal, capitalist rival and client to the north. You have succeeded in blaming nearly all your problems on them, and for cooking up endless conspiracies involving American assassination attempts.
Congratulations for standing up and decrying the violence perpetrated by Israel, more so than for the occasional anti-semitic comments you let slip or insert into official speeches.
Congratulations for maintaining your accessibility, for your weekly TV show where citizens can call in to ask you questions and air their concerns. If only the respect you showed here for the media extended to enforcing freedom of press. If only you allowed other people to air their opinions as you air yours, without fear of reprisals. If only the infringing upon the freedom of the press wasn’t such a terribly slippery slope towards despotism.
Congratulations on the number of votes and elections you have won, and on your democratic approach to such matters as constitutional amendments. It is a shame these are so often beleaguered by claims of voting irregularities. Surely, with your massive popular support, you have no need to fiddle with electoral results. It’s also a shame you lost the vote that would have allowed you to stay in power for longer. Congratulations on pushing forward anyway and finding loopholes which might allow you to re-contest the matter again and again.
And if you do succeed in having the constitution amended again no doubt I will be able to congratulate you in fifteen years time when you celebrate your twenty-fifth anniversary as president. Although who knows what could happen in that long interim, and what you may have become, and which of the many paths you seem set upon you will have marched down. Right now I just don’t know what to make of you and your revolution. So congratulations and let’s see what happens.
This is not quite so current an event, but in December Bolivia became the third country in Latin America to be declared illiteracy-free. In the ensuing weeks, banners have appeared everywhere putting Evo Morales’ face beside the proud declaration.
The 30 month program to eradicate illiteracy was introduced by Evo, using a Cuban model and Venezuelan funds. Cuba declared itself illiteracy free at the beginning of the 60s. Venezuela became the second country to do so in 2005.
The UNESCO standards state that 96% of a country’s population over the age of 15 must be able to read and write for the country to qualify as illiteracy-free. In a country as traditional and underdeveloped as Bolivia, reaching this level is a significant accomplishment.
It is an achievement that plays well into Evo’s claims of being a president for the people, of raising the standard of living for the marginalised indigenous people of Bolivia. Literacy classes were offered in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara, to ensure as many people as possible could take part.
It was Fidel Castro in ‘61 and Hugo Chavez in ‘05 who made the same claims for Cuba and Venezuela respectively, other presidents for the people. It is curious to note that the three most strongly socialist countries in Latin America are the only three to claim themselves illiteracy-free.
Undoubtedly the literacy program has changed and improved the lives of many people. But how much does the statistic mean? And is there something suspicious about the socialists being the only ones claiming total literacy? On one of my first days in Sucre an indigenous woman in the middle of trying to sell her handicrafts to me receives a text message and asks me to read it to her because she apparently can’t read it for herself. Out in the countryside other volunteers report that there are plenty of men and especially women who still have to stamp official documents with a thumb print because they can’t write their names.
Perhaps these belong to the 4% margin that need not be literate for a country to be literate. Perhaps the figures are completely false. Perhaps the Cuban program is designed to improve statistics rather than reading competency. Perhaps only socialists care about such figures. Perhaps numbers are a poor measure of the literacy of a country.
Wherever the truth lies, Evo has added another accomplishment to his frenetic first term in office. Whether the real achievement is of educating the people or duping the people remains unclear.
