Open Veins of Latin America

“Latin America is the region of open veins.”

The description of Latin America’s open veins inspires the book’s title. It refers to the ways in which Latin America operates like a human body’s set of veins, which European colonialism split open. As a result, the contents of the veins, which are Latin America’s wealth of resources, flows outward to benefit US and European interests. 

“In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.”

Using the metaphor of alchemy to describe the impacts of European colonialism, Galeano illustrates how gold did not just turn into currency used for luxury items for the European rich. For the slaves who had to mine the gold and who lost their lives in the process, gold had a toxic value that led to their impoverishment and death.

“The expansion of the kingdom of Castile extended God’s reign over the earth.”

The earliest European colonizer of Latin America was Spain. The spread of Catholicism motivated Spain’s rule over its Latin American colonies, which had been an important part of the religious wars that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella fought in Europe. The Spanish royalty saw their colonial efforts as a religious right.

“America was the vast kingdom of the Devil, its redemption impossible or doubtful; but the fanatical mission against the natives’ heresy was mixed with the fever that New World treasures stirred in the conquering hosts.”

To justify their violence against the natives in Latin America, the early European colonizers used religion to indicate that the natives were sinful people. As such, the European colonizers not only tried to convert the native people to Catholicism and Christianity, they also used religion to moralize the enslavement and forced labor of the natives. According to the colonizers, the enslavement and forced labor would transform the natives’ sinful ways.

“In the Middle Ages a small bag of pepper was worth more than a man’s life, but gold and silver were the keys used by the Renaissance to open the doors of paradise in heaven and capitalist mercantilism on earth.”

Galeano contrasts early colonial travels to Asia and the later exploration of the Americas. During the spice trade, pepper was extremely valuable. Yet this was nothing compared to the discovery of gold and silver in the Americas. The colonial desire for these precious metals started the course for capitalism.

“The Spaniards owned the cow, but others drank the milk.”

While Spain dominated much of the early colonial activities in Latin America, it was other European countries that benefitted from the Latin American exports that Spanish merchants brought back to Spain. Galeano characterizes Spain as the owner of the cow, which provided milk or riches from Latin America. However, rather than benefitting from the milk or riches, the bounty went primarily to other European countries.

“Latin America was a European business.”

During early European colonialism, different European countries divided Latin America up based on their interests. Over time, these European concerns continue to dominate Latin American political and economic decision-making with the intention of continuing to monetize off the region’s cheap labor and exports.

“Plunder, internal and external, was the most important means of primitive accumulation of capital, an accumulation which, after the Middle Ages, made possible a new historical stage in world economic evolution.”

European colonialism and the beginning of capitalism did not start nor did it continue peacefully. The accumulation of capital at the rate in which Europe moved after the Middle Ages required violence and exploitation of black and native people to thrive.

“The bleeding of the New World became an act of charity, an argument for the faith.”

European colonizers rationalized their violence towards Indians as part of their religious duty. They felt that they had a divine right to enter into the Latin American colonies and that the Indians represented immorality that only forced labor could correct.

“The whole process was a pumping of blood from one set of veins to another: the development of some, the underdevelopment of others.”

Returning to his earlier metaphor of Latin America as a set of open veins, Galeano emphasizes how the colonial infrastructure created imbalances across the region. Capital and wealth became concentrated in Latin American cities that were direct channels to Europe, yet other parts of the region did not share this abundance.

“No curse is attached anymore to the theme of agrarian reform: politicians have learned that the best way not to have it is to keep invoking it.”

Agrarian reform was once the platform that galvanized peasants through the promise of redistribution of land to the poor. Yet heavy opposition over the years had made agrarian reform seemingly impossible. It became an attractive platform for politicians to appeal to peasants, but there was never any intention to follow through with true structural change.

“Subimperialism has a thousand faces.”

Galeano’s notion of subimperialism refers to the ways in which more prominent and affluent Latin American countries subjugate smaller ones with less power. The amount of power that these countries have is determined by their trade relationship to the US and Europe. The more affluent Latin American countries are more willing to concede to US and European interests in the world market. They are also willing to assist US and Europe in forcing smaller countries in the region to acquiesce to Western demands as well.

“There is no change in the system of intercommunicating arteries through which capital and merchandise circulate between poor countries and rich countries. Latin America continues exporting its unemployment and poverty: the raw materials that the world market needs, and on whose sale the regional economy depends.”

Many years have passed since the Spanish first arrived in Latin America, yet the inequities between US and European countries and Latin America still persist in present-day. US and Europe still control the low cost of exports from Latin America, keeping the region politically and economically tethered to these Western powers.

“U.S. capital is more tightly concentrated in Latin American than in the United States itself; a handful of concerns control the overwhelming majority of investments. For them the nation is not a task to undertake, a flag to defend, or a destiny to fulfill: it is no more than a hurdle to leap—for sovereignty can be inconvenient—or a succulent fruit to devour.”

The US has a major stake in the political and economic development in Latin America as much of its capital comes from managing the cheap labor and exports from the region. In contrast to the US’s early colonial drive towards manifest destiny, the country’s approach to Latin America does not have expressed desire for colonization but rather that Latin America remain separate but still dependent on the US.

“Yet the IMF, instead of attacking the causes of the apparatus’s insufficient supply, launches its cavalry against the consequences, crushing even further the feeble consumer power of the internal market: in these lands of hungry multitudes, the IMF lays the blame for inflation at the door of excessive demand.”

The creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) operated under the pretenses of fostering the economic development of countries in need. However, for Latin American countries, the IMF had created more debt for the region that they continue to struggle to repay. Instead of recognizing that the loan infrastructure is flawed, the IMF ignores the issue of inflation, which privileges wealthier countries like the US and parts of Europe over poorer countries in Latin America.

“Latin America provides the saliva as well as the food, and the United States limits its contribution to the mouth.”

Latin American exports fuel the primary flow of capital in the US. The region’s wealth in minerals, sugar, coffee, and other products have great value, but the US is unable to offer anything substantive in turn. The US consumes these products but do not offer anything equal in substance despite possessing tremendous power over Latin America.

“‘Aid’ works like the philanthropist who put a wooden leg on his piglet because he was eating it bit by bit.”

Global money lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank facilitate the loan of money between wealthier countries and poorer ones with the intention of fostering growth in the latter countries. However, this notion of aid is more disabling than beneficial. It provides a temporary solution to the deficiency of capital in poorer territories without addressing the larger structural change that needs to occur so that the loans do not need to happen in the first place.

“Wages can remain low while productivity rises, and productivity rises at the expense of cuts in the labor force. The nature of ‘satellized’ industrialization is to exclude: in this region with the highest demographic growth on earth, the masses multiply at dizzying speed but the development of dependent capitalism—a voyage with more shipwrecks than navigators—marks many more people ‘surplus’ than it is able to use.”

Latin America’s population is on the rise, producing more people than there are jobs available in the region. Despite technological advancements in manufacturing and increased US and European intervention in Latin America, unemployment continues to grow without any effort on the Western countries’ part to create more opportunities. By marking Latin America’s unemployed population as “surplus,” the US and Europe interpret the region in capitalist production terms, dehumanizing the Latin American people while also refusing to change their circumstances.

“The Latin American cause is above all a social cause: the rebirth of Latin America must start with the overthrow of its masters, country by country.” (Chapter 5, Page 281)

Galeano believes that the social transformation of Latin America from economic dependency to true independence requires a revolution that spreads through every country in the region. The masters include not just the US and European enterprises in these countries but the wealthy ruling classes as well that enable their presence.

“I suspect that boredom can thus often serve to sanctify the established order, confirming that knowledge is a privilege of the elite.”

Galeano reveals that he was concerned at first that his book did not possess the same academic rigor as traditional historical and economic texts. However, he also expresses that he is interested in communicating to a wider public without the use of complicated language and forms. The elite or highly educated classes have utilized knowledge as a way of gatekeeping. He wants his work to be resonant with all people, particularly those less privileged.

“The right chooses to talk about the past because it prefers dead people: a quiet world, a quiet time. The powerful who legitimize their privileges by heredity cultivate nostalgia.”

Galeano emphasizes why he has chosen to write a political and economic history of Latin America. From what he has seen, the conservatives who would prefer to maintain social hierarchies as they are rely on framing the past as something that has no resonance today. By depicting how US and European colonization and intervention have historically impacted Latin America’s current political and economic climate, he hopes to show that understanding Latin American history can be a powerful tool for social change.

“Dictators, torturers, inquisitors: the terror has its officials, just as it has post offices and banks, and they apply it because it is necessary. It isn’t a case of a plot by the perverse.”

The image of violence typically finds association with rogue murderers. However, state violence works by creating administrative decisions that become a part of a citizen’s everyday life. This form of violence operates on managing the population through terror or the possibility of punitive measures that could lead to the end of one’s life for their dissent.

“The vicious cycle is perfect: foreign debt and foreign investment oblige us to multiply exports that they themselves devour. The task can’t be accomplished with gentlemanly matters. To fulfill their function as hostages of foreign prosperity, Latin American workers must be held prisoner, either inside or outside the bars of the jails.”

Galeano critiques the system of international aid, which creates greater debt for countries that seek out loans. The system also creates greater dependency on loaning countries. In the case of Latin America, the US provides loans to several countries in the region with the expectation of control over the prices and volume of exports. As US consumption grows, Latin American workers become impoverished but without the power to do anything otherwise but succumb to the labor circumstances generated by a wealthier country.