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Rating: "In democratic countries, the violent nature of the economy is not revealed, just as in authoritarian countries, the economic nature of violence is not revealed" Bertolt Brecht.
"In Latin America, economic freedom is incompatible with civil liberties" Orlando Letelier, minister of Salvador Allende, in the aftermath of the coup that overthrew his government.
This work, which introduced the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano to an international audience, became the reference text for an entire generation of South American intellectuals, convinced that the position of eternal losers to which the world had destined their continent was not irreversible. Banned during the military dictatorships of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, "Open Veins of Latin America" is an indispensable read for anyone wishing to understand how the geopolitical, but I would also say the cultural and South American mindset, were formed.
The story follows the path of History, presenting us with a first phase of invasion and annihilation of the magnificent indigenous cultures by the colonial powers of Spain and Portugal. In a very sharp manner, Galeano points out how the immense wealth drawn from the new continent ultimately decreed the decline of these nations, instead favoring the emerging and dynamic industrial economies of France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands. In particular, England was able to build its development on the underdevelopment of others, moving from being highly protectionist (in an initial phase of consolidating its domestic economy) to being a strong advocate of free trade worldwide (when its competitive tariffs would comfortably outstrip the competition internationally). This is what England did at the dawn of the industrial revolution, later imitated by the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Essential to the rise of these two industrial powers was the maintenance of underdevelopment in Latin America, based mainly on large estates and the systematic stifling of its nascent domestic industry. Galeano states: "The history of Latin America's underdevelopment is an integral part of the history of world capitalism's development". And again: "Not even in our times can the existence of the wealthy centers of capitalism be explained without that of the poor and subjugated peripheries: they all are part of the same system".
Times change, humanity evolves but the power dynamics between the North and the South of the world do not: in the twentieth century, the executioners wear suits and ties, hiding behind the sterile and apparently philanthropic insignias of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the myriad of other pan-American organizations whose sole purpose is to maintain a strict control system based on the foreign debt of poor countries and the consequent loans provided to them.
Progress has improved the social and economic conditions of workers, but certainly not for the overwhelming sub-humanity that populates the degraded outskirts of the major urban centers of Lima, Bogotá, Buenos Aires. The "toderos", those willing to do anything and everything for a few coins, create a continuous, relentless competition from below on labor costs, which will inevitably continue to decrease more and more. We are at a paradox: countries with very low wages and very high costs of living, countries that supply the world with food and raw materials (metals, precious stones, oil, bananas, sugar, coffee), but which cannot process and refine them internally; countries to which we resell our second and third-hand technology, making them pay as if it were new.
The reading flows smoothly, and, although extremely detailed, it never gets lost in technicalities. Certainly, the reader may feel despair, even if Galeano never abandons the hope of redemption, illustrating how over the centuries the Latin American peoples have always managed to stand up against their oppressors, participating in striking revolts and moments of democratic redemption, such as the rise of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early seventies. Galeano wrote in 1970: "The United States, trapped in the Southeast Asian wars, did not hide its official discomfort with the unfolding of events south of the Andes. But Chile is not today within reach of a sudden marines expedition and, after all, Allende is a president consecrated by all the criteria of that representative democracy that the state of the North formally preaches". Alas, history will prove how wrong he was...
It will not be bad, in these times of outsourcing, deregulation, privatization, to realize what happens when the mechanisms of capitalism develop without any social structure to curb them, often with the enthusiastic support of the privileged segment of the local population. In light of what is outlined in this work, a new meaning emerges from what my Spanish teacher, an Argentine, told me in the aftermath of the collapse of Buenos Aires' economy that paralyzed the country and brought its middle class to its knees: "You should know that you Italians are better off just because you are in Europe".
But for how long?
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