Open Veins

I am getting a crash course in Latin American and Guatemalan history while I am here. One of our initial readings is “Open Veins of Latin America” by Eduardo Galeano, a classic written in the early seventies. It is at times both lyrical and scathing.

It reminded me a little of one of my favorite books, “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond, which provided a framework to think about huge historical forces beyond the control of individuals, and basically changed how I thought about history. “Open Veins” is doing this for me in terms of how to think about Latin America.

If the theme of “Guns, Germs and Steel” is that environment is destiny (the physical location and resources available to a society largely determine how successful it will be in competition with other societies), then Open Veins’ theme is that having resources that others want invites violence and oppression from more technologically advanced societies. Both books must over generalize to tackle such broad topics, but it is their very expansiveness that makes them valuable as frameworks.

Galeano is nothing if not quotable. He says that Latin Americans suffer from the “curse of their own wealth” and that “our richness has always generated our poverty for nourishing the prosperity of others”. Latin America “continues to exist at the service of other’s needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and food destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them.”

What is he talking about? Latin America teems with natural resources, so it is wealthy in terms of raw materials. But he goes through case after case, starting with the initial conquistadors through the modern era where outside countries have conquered and enslaved them so that the flow of cheap raw materials can continue unabated to enrich the occupiers. It started with gold, then silver, then continued with copper, nitrate, tin, sugar, coffee etc. For example, modern day coffee farmers make a pittance on the coffee they grow, which is usually not on land that they can ever own. Most of the profits go to middlemen, often large multinational corporations, who often own the land as well. And, depressingly, this is progress compared to the atrocities that happened during colonization.

Another theme of the book is that there are always people will to betray their community to enrich themselves. Conquerors need merely find those people, pay them off to be their strongmen, and they will be happy to live in mini-splendor amongst poverty and suffering, even though the lion’s share of the profit goes elsewhere.

Galeano lays out a convincing case, but it is a depressing one. Having access to raw resources can either enrich or enslave those who live near them, depending on whether they can protect themselves from inevitable invasion. Latin America over the centuries has been plundered because it did not have enough power to defend itself, and has remained beholden to Western powers.

This is yet another example of imbalance in power leading to great suffering and injustice. Those with power can’t seem to stop themselves from taking advantage of those without power, and the only way to reduce or eliminate this condition is to work towards balancing power.

One small way to help will make my wife happy. She is religious about buying fair trade coffee, and fair trade goods in general are something that helps. They come from farmers who manage to get small plots of land to farm on, and the profits primarily go to the farmers themselves. Same goes for fair trade crafts at places like 10,000 villages.

Another surprising fact is that immigrants sending money home to their families is the number two factor in Guatemala’s GNP (or GDP or money from exports or something like that). I had no idea how important immigrants in the US are to the lives of people here. So, supporting sane immigration policy is also a good place to start.

Unfortunately, these small, painless steps don’t completely make up for 500 years and counting of oppression. In fact, they are pretty pathetic in the grand scheme of things. But, they are at least headed in the right direction.