Eduardo Galeano – a tribute
By Vanessa Baird
Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer who died on Monday, aged 74, would sign his name with a little sketch of a flying pig, red rose firmly held in its teeth. For this reason he always carried with him a black and a red pen, in his top pocket.
It was the perfect icon for this ardent defender of the right to dream and struggle for a better world, whatever those in power might say or do. His was a fierce politics of hope – laced with idiosyncratic wit.
An outstanding intellectual of the Latin American Left, he was also a prolific and deeply original, genre-breaking writer. His eye for human foibles and the destructive follies of the systems by which we live was acute; his turns of phrase at once playful and deeply meaningful.
He started his career as a journalist in the early 1960s, becoming editor of the influential weekly Marcha, based in Uruguay. His 1971 book, The Open Veins of Latin America, which told the story of the (on-going) colonization of the continent in a way that was stunningly fresh and eye-opening, brought him international fame.
Galeano’s sharp insights and uncensored talent for turning things on their head to make you see the insanity of what passed for normality, were bound to offend the military rulers who seized power in his country two years later. He was imprisoned in 1973, fled to neighbouring Argentina, but three years later was placed on the military’s death list in that country after the 1976 coup.
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© Julio Etchart
