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Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
by Eduardo Galeano
You've probably heard about this book in the news lately, after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy at the Summit of the Americas. Open Veins has been a favorite at Red Emma's since we opened our doors - it's the definitive work on the impacts of colonialization and imperialism on Latin America, not just because of the comprehensive research and impressive analysis, but because Galeano is such an excellent writer - despite being a book which is largely about political economy, it never comes off as dry or hard to read. In fact, even where Galeano is writing about the intricacies of, say, import substitution as a strategy for independent, non-exploitative development, the text reads like a prose poem.
One of favorite things about Open Veins is the way in which it demonstrates how colonialism remained (and remains) a problem long after formal political independence. For instance, Galeano shows how policies of "free trade" (first British, then American) picked up exactly where the colonial policies of Spain and Portugal left off. With Obama breaking his campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA with an eye towards greater environmental and labor protections, it seems unlikely that he's actually read the book he was given.
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