Eduardo Galeano was better known as a journalist and for his study on the effect of colonialism in Latin America, Open Veins of Latin America. Some may recall the incident when then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gifted the book to Barack Obama at a Latin American summit during his first years in office. It caused quite a shit storm, especially from those on the right. Galeano later disavowed the work, saying he wasn’t ‘qualified at the time to write it’. This book, probably his most famous, and is a more traditional academic book, far different from what he would write later, the books I fell in love with. A few years ago, shortly before Galeano’s death, I had the pleasure of attending a reading his at the Ethical Culture auditorium. It was one of the most memorable experiences I ever had.
Most memorable of his works are known as The Trilogy of Fire — Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of Wind. Composed of a series of literary vignettes, which are poetic and profound, beginning with pre-Columbian history and guiding you all the way through the mid-1980s, when the final volume was published. They are written in a highly literary style that not only makes it an enjoyable read, but they allow the reader to think about what they had just read. In some ways they read like prose poetry.
His knack for for saying a lot in very few words, allowed him to pare things down to its essentials, aiming not only for your mind but also your heart. They focus on the forgotten, the marginalized, the unknown, forcing you to see history through their eyes in a way most historians rarely do. Sometimes they harken back to indigenous myths and the wisdom they can impart to those who dwell in a more ‘modern’ world. They examine major infamous historical figures in an entirely new way, illustrating their megalomania and cruelty through what is seemingly incidental moments, but reveal a lot about their character. Galeano finds humanity in the everyday things people do in order to bring about justice for those who are desperately seeking it. These are not partisan political missives but rather a glimpse inside the often overlooked moments of history, moments of the every day, where people you will never hear of are doing incredibly brave things.
There are other books that follow this same format — Upside Down World, The Book of Embraces, Days and Nights of Love and War, Walking Words, Voices of Time, Mirrors, The Children of the Days, and the posthumous, Hunter of Stories. History is always written by the winner, the saying goes, but Galeano’s work tries to give voice to history’s losers and strips away the dogma and approaches it from a very humanist point of view.
Reading Galeano has allowed me to see the world in a profoundly different way, as well as allow me to realize things — and events — in this world are not as black and white as they sometimes appear to be, that there are many points of view to consider, and most importantly, not to cling to the dogmatic drivel being spewed forth by so many who have a vested interest in making sure you do exactly that.