Eduardo Galeano: Critical thinking that revolutionized literature in Latin America (+seeding)

Published at: 13/04/2025 09:00 AM

On April 13, 2015, at 74 years old, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano died in Montevideo, his hometown, after suffering from lung cancer.

This outstanding writer and journalist is known for his essential work “The Open Veins of Latin America”, which marked an entire current of thought on the continent and translated into more than twenty languages.

“An extraordinary book that helped me when I was very young to better understand Latin America, our history, our reality. It's a monument to our identity,” said Commander Hugo Chávez, who in 2009 gave a copy of this work to Barack Obama.

Among his best-known books is Memory of Fire (1986). His works transcend orthodox genres and combine documentary, fiction, journalism, political analysis and history.

“I write for those who can't read me. Those at the bottom, those who have been waiting for centuries in the queue of history, don't know how to read or have nothing to do with,” Galeano once said.

Galeano began journalism at the age of fourteen, in the socialist weekly El Sol, where he published political cartoons and cartoons that he signed as Gius.

Later he was editor-in-chief of the weekly Marcha and director of the newspaper Época. In 1973 he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded the magazine Crisis, and in 1976 he continued his exile in Spain.

He returned to Uruguay in 1985, when Julio María Sanguinetti won the democratic elections. He later founded and directed his own publishing house (El Chanchito), while publishing a weekly column in the Mexican newspaper “La Jornada”. In 1999, he was awarded the Lanna Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom in the United States.

Shortly before his death, Galeano joined the Bolivarian Government's initiative that says that “Venezuela is not a threat, we are hope”. Demonstrating once again their fighting spirit.

“Utopia is on the horizon. I walk two steps away, she moves two steps away and the horizon runs ten steps further. So what is utopia for? For that, it is good for walking”, a phrase by Galeano that made him immortal and turned him into a reference for inspiration in these times of revolution.

Mazo News Team