January 4, 2026
Library fight night
Open Veins of Latin America Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent [pdf]
A 70s classic roars back as readers spar over empire, Venezuela, and “bad economics”
TLDR: A PDF of Galeano’s 1971 classic resurfaced, sparking a brawl: some say it perfectly frames U.S.–Venezuela tensions and centuries of exploitation, while critics argue the author later distanced himself and the economics are flawed. It matters because old ideas are shaping how people read today’s power struggles.
A 1971 firebrand book just crashed the front page—Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America—and the comments lit up like a telenovela. One user says it’s “topical to the current situation between the USA and Venezuela,” tying the book’s 500-year exploitation theme to today’s oil-and-sanctions drama, while others drop links like receipts: here’s the Wikipedia page and even the Spanish original for the purists. The vibe: half book club, half geopolitical cage match.
Then came the haymaker. A blunt commenter claims “The Author Disowned It,” calling the book simplistic, a “zero-sum fallacy,” and accusing it of ignoring homegrown corruption. Cue the “Econ 101” energy and a pile-on of thinky takes about wealth creation vs. pillage. Meanwhile, the share of the Spanish version turns the thread bilingual, with folks flexing “read it in the original” cred as others nod to the Isabel Allende foreword and the Chilean coup backdrop.
The split is sharp: one camp treats it as essential context for understanding empire and extraction; the other says it’s a moral story dressed up as economics. There’s shade, there’s history, there’s oil. And yes, there’s popcorn. This isn’t just a PDF—this is a referendum on how we read the last five centuries, today.
Key Points
- •The document presents the 25th anniversary English edition of Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America,” translated by Cedric Belfrage.
- •Original Spanish edition was published in 1971 by Siglo XXI Editores (Mexico); English editions were published by Monthly Review Press (1973, 1997).
- •Front matter includes an epigraph from the 1809 Revolutionary Proclamation of the Junta Tuitiva in La Paz.
- •The table of contents outlines three main parts covering resource extraction, development, and contemporary structures of plunder, plus references and an index.
- •Isabel Allende’s foreword situates the book within early-1970s Chilean politics, referencing Salvador Allende’s government, U.S. Cold War posture, and the 1973 coup leading to Augusto Pinochet’s rule.