Profile of Eduardo Galeano on Famous Like Me

Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born September 3, 1940) is an Uruguayan journalist whose books have been translated into many languages. His works transcend orthodox genres, combining documentary, fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has denied that he is a historian: "I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia."

Life

Galeano was born in Montevideo into a middle class Catholic family of Welsh, German, Spanish and Italian descent.

In his teens Galeano worked in odd jobs — as a factory worker, a bill collector, a sign painter, a messenger, a typist, and a bank teller. At the age of 14 Galeano sold his first political cartoon to El Sol, the Socialist Party weekly.

He started his career as a journalist in the early 1960s as editor of Marcha, an influential weekly journal, which had such contributors 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 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay; Galeano was imprisoned and later forced to flee. He settled in Argentina where he founded the cultural magazine, Crisis.

In 1976, when the Videla regime took power in Argentina in a bloody military coup, his name was added to the lists of those condemned by the death squads, and he fled again, this time to Spain, where he wrote his famous trilogy, Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire ).

At the beginning of 1985 Galeano returned to Montevideo, where he continues to live.

Works

Las venas abiertas de América Latina (The Open Veins of Latin America) is arguably Galeano's best-known work, a powerful indictment of the exploitation of Latin America by foreign powers from the 15th century onwards. It was the first of his many books to be translated into English, many by Cedric Belfrage.

Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire) is a three-volume narrative of the history of America, North and South. The characters are historical figures; generals, artists, revolutionaries, workers, conquerors and the conquered, who are portrayed in brief episodes which reflect the colonial history of the continent. It starts with pre-Columbian creation myths and ends in the 1980s.

Memoria del fuego was widely praised by reviewers. Galeano was compared to John Dos Passos and Gabriel García Márquez. Ronald Wright wrote in the Times Literary Supplement: "Great writers... dissolve old genres and found new ones. This trilogy by one of South America's most daring and accomplished authors is impossible to classify."

In New York Times Book Review Jay Parini praised as perhaps his most daring work The Book of Embraces, a collection of short, often lyrical stories presenting Galeano's views on emotion, art, politics, and values, as well as offering a scathing critique of modern capitalistic society and views on an ideal society and mindset. (The Book of Embraces was the last book Cedric Belfrage translated before he died in 1991.)

Galeano is also an avid football fan; Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1995) is a review of the history of the game. Galeano compares it with a theater performance and with war; he criticizes its unholy alliance with global corporations but attacks leftist intellectuals who reject the game and its attraction to the broad masses for ideological reasons.

Galeano is a regular contributor to The Progressive and the New Internationalist, and has also been published in the Monthly Review and The Nation.

Books

• Los días siguientes (1963)
• China (1964)
• Guatemala (1967 - Guatemala: Occupied Country)
• Reportajes (1967)
• Los fantasmas del día del léon y otros relatos (1967)
• Su majestad el fútbol (1968)
• Las venas abiertas de América Latina (1971) The Open Veins of Latin America
• Siete imágenes de Bolivia (1971)
• Violencía y enajenación (1971)
• Crónicas latinoamericanas (1972)
• Vagamundo (1973)
• La cancion de nosotros (1975)
• Conversaciones con Raimón (1977)
• Días y noches de amor y de guerra (1978) Days and Nights of Love and War
• La piedra arde (1980)
• Voces de nuestro tiempo (1981)
• Memoria del fuego (1982-1986) Memory of Fire
• Aventuras de los jóvenes dioses (1984)
• Ventana sobre Sandino (1985)
• Contraseña (1985)
• El descubrimiento de América que todavía no fue y otros escritos (1986)
• El tigre azul y otros artículos (1988)
• Entrevistas y artículos (1962-1987) (1988)
• El libro de los abrazos (1989) The Book of Embraces
• Nosotros decimos no (1989) We Say No
• América Latina para entenderte mejor (1990)
• Palabras: antología personal (1990)
• An Uncertain Grace with Fred Ritchin, photographs by Sebastiao Salgado (1990)
• Ser como ellos y otros artículos (1992)
• Amares (1993)
• Las palabas andantes (1993) Walking Words
• úselo y tírelo (1994)
• El fútbol a sol y sombra (1995) Soccer in Sun and Shadow
• I Am Rich Potosi: The Mountain That Eats Men photographs by Stephen Ferry (1999)
• Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World (2000)
• Bocas del Tiempo (2004)

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