By Adolfo Pérez Esquivel on May 21, 2021
painting by: Oswaldo Guayasamin
Abya Yala – The Continent of Fertile Land “We are your sons and daughters and in the regions of the South, Pachamama, our Mother Earth, though the conquerors called you “America” which is inhabited by peoples who fight to protect and preserve the balance of life with our Mother Earth, with our cultures and memories of our ancestors, confronting the aggression and looting by the powerful of yesterday and the present day.
Fifty years ago, Eduardo Galeano did an analysis, uncovering the drama of our continent, its journey between light and shadow, going deeper in his critical analysis, following with passion the unending resistance of the peoples who try to survive and to fight for their liberation, overcoming the dominance that, since the conquest, has opened wounds, looting, destroying cultures, beliefs, ruled by a voracious unlimited appetite for the goods and resources of the peoples, enslaving those who were native here, and then, when those lives were finished by massacres and absolutely unlimited greed, they resorted to slave trade of men and women from the peoples of Africa.
Eduardo Galeano brought forth this fundamental work that shows us life, death and resistance, in The Open Veins of Latin America, in which the blood of our ancestors continues to run until our own times.
The invaders caught gold fever and silver fever; Columbus carried off 500 people indigenous to these lands and sold them as slaves in Seville, and Queen Isabella became the godmother of the Holy Inquisition. Charles V of Spain received tons of silver and gold into his depleted coffers, products of the looting by Francisco Pizarro, who imprisoned, tortured and killed Inca Atahualpa; this booty was the product of the robbery and sacking of the temples, of works of art that were reduced to ingots of gold and silver.
They arrived with the cross and the sword – which were the same thing. In this devil’s gathering of destruction and death, only a few critical voices were raised to denounce the violations of the rights of the Indigenous peoples and the African slaves whom the conquerors considered similar to animals, soulless and whom they subjected to all sorts of mistreatment, torture and exploitation; the voices that went unheard included Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Junipero and other religious figures.
Galeano, in the introduction to The Open Veins, says, “The international division of labor consists of the fact that some counties are specialists in winning and others in losing. Our region of the world, which we today call Latin America, was precocious: it specialized in losing from the distant times in which the Europeans of the Renaissance launched themselves across the seas and sank their teeth into our throat. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected this, our function…”
“In Latin America, the region of open veins, from the time of its ‘discovery’ until the present time, everything has been turned into European capital, or, later, North American capital, and, as such, it has accumulated and continues to accumulate in distant centers of power…”
Eduardo travels our continent in search of the traces of those who went before us, among anguish and hope, demonstrating, denouncing, in pain and angry, resisting the plundering of our ancestors that has continued through to new generations. He shows the lives stolen from more than 120 million children. There are many more from whom life and hope has been robbed.
The revolution of the enslaved people of Haiti was the first cry of freedom in the continent, confronting the French aggression, in which the French Revolution, while laying the foundations of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” forgot to recognize the colonies like Haiti. There, the French demanded a huge compensation in exchange for Haitian freedom, imposing an immoral, unjust, and unpayable “foreign debt” so that today Haiti is the poorest country in the region; it has never been able to recover from this looting, through invasions, dictatorships, and United States invasions.
Cuba was another target of European greed; the English took over Havana in 1762; there was a scorched earth policy for exploitation of sugar cane production at the cost of thousands of lives of enslaved people.
“At the time of the fall of Batista, Cuba sold everything to the United States, and Fidel Castro, in the Revolution, said, “Cuba continues to be a raw materials producer. We export sugar to import candy.” As the Cuban Revolution affirmed their sovereignty and right to self-determination, they unleashed the fury of the empire, which put into place the blockade against rebellious Cuba that exists until the present.
The Monroe Doctrine is still in place: “Latin America for the U.S.” which cannot permit the independence of any country of the continent not under U.S. domination. The challenges of the Cuban Revolution were enormous, and their response was to build hospitals, government policies for free healthcare and education, water and electricity supply services – necessities multiplied geometrically and production could only increase in linear arithmetic fashion. The Revolution is living through hard times, but in the last 50 years the Latin American School of Medicine has been created, and Cuban and Latin American doctors are helping poor countries, sending health professionals, carrying out Operation Milagro, and other humanitarian work in the world; Cuba is today the first and only country in Latin America capable of developing a vaccine against COVID-19.
The peoples’ resistance is evident all over the continent – for ten years, the Sandinista Revolution withstood the aggression of the US and its partners the Contra. Resistance to Yankee aggression included the participation of religious figures inspired by Liberation Theology, like Ernesto Cardenal, his brother Francisco, Miguel d’Escoto, Canciller, and the hope of building a new society with more justice and brotherhood and sisterhood for all, and free of domination.
Fifty years later, many events have shaken the lives of the peoples – the armed forces conducting coup d’etats, imposing the doctrine of National Security, the persecution of community workers, disappearances of adults and of little boys and girls, torture and destruction of the productive capacities of the peoples. The Malvinas War set off by the military dictatorship in Argentina revealed the fact that the theory of conflict is not East -West, but rather North-South. The empire had to change their policies for the continent and return to limited and conditional democracies, in order to continue strangling the peoples, imposing conditions like Foreign Debt, “Lawfare” which is warfare via the legal system used to carry out soft coups, such as the ones that occurred in Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and the attempts against the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina.
There are governments that will sell themselves for thirty pieces of silver, just as there are judges, officials, and legislators who believe that the US considers them allies, friends, partners; but the empire has no allies, friends or partners, and is only interested in power of domination.
I remember one senator from the U.S. who said that “in Congress we don’t talk about the poor, we talk about power, and not so much about how to achieve power, but about how to hold on to it, which is more difficult.”
Eduardo Galeano is bringing to the surface the memory of experiences and occurrences lived through by the peoples, that awaken consciences and mobilize hearts with desire to win the freedom of the Patria Grande – the greater homeland of the continent as a whole – and to make the dreams and hopes of the liberators of our continent a reality; these are the hopes and dreams of the thinkers and the peoples who fight to close the wounds of the Open Veins of Latin America, those who continue struggling and resisting the dictatorships controlled by the empire. It is an unequal struggle, but they do not lose the hope of rebellions in which thousands of men and women fight and resist all the dominations of the last more than 500 years and keep alive the memories of those who opened the way and gave their lives for the lives of others.
Eduardo Galeano’s work continues to live and call for thought and reflexion; as the old proverb says, “If you don’t know where you’re going, go back and find out where you came from.” There is no person or people without memory.
The Cuban Revolution continued to strengthen the resistance and without ever giving in on the right to their self-determination and sovereignty. The United States could not, and still cannot, allow another example like Cuba, in which a country gets free of U.S. control.
I remember one of the meetings with Fidel … one very early morning he looked for me in a Havana hotel in order to go out to the sugar mills. When we arrived, the workers approached him and talked about their needs, their families, and their lives; they are in the middle of the sugar harvest, the machinery is old – almost museum pieces, with pulleys and belts – but everything works. I say to him, “Fidel, it’s astonishing that everything is functional with this machinery from the beginning of the century. How do you do it?” “Comrade, he said, “We can do this thanks to the United States blockade. We laugh at the irony of the situation because the way we overcome the empire’s blockade is with imagination, resistance, and the work of the people.”
The Open Veins of Latin America continue to bleed, 50 years after Eduardo Galeano showed the reality that the continent has to live through. He said, “I finished writing the Open Veins in the last days of 1977. In the final days, Juan Velazco Alvarado died on an operating table. His coffin was carried on people’s shoulders to the cemetery; with the largest crowd ever seen in the streets of Lima… he had begun social and economic reforms. In 1968 he initiated a true agrarian reform…”
“In Bolivia on Christmas Eve of 1977, another general who was completely unlike Velazco Alvarado pounded his fist on his desk. General Hugo Banzer, the dictator of Bolivia, refused amnesty to prisoners, exiles and workers thrown out of their jobs. Four women and fourteen children arrived in La Paz from the tin mines, and began a hunger strike. “This is not the right moment,” said those in the know. “We’ll let you know when..” They sat down on the floor. “We’re not asking you, “said the women. “We’re telling you. The decision has been made already. There in the mines, it’s always like a hunger strike. As soon as we are born, the hunger strike begins. We are going to die there just the same – more slowly – but we will die all the same…” In spite of the threats and punishments of the dictatorship, the hunger strike unleashed forces that had been contained for a long time. All Bolivia was aroused, and ten days later, it was not four women and fourteen children, it was 1,400 workers and students who had risen up and joined the hunger strike. The dictatorship felt that the ground was opening under their feet. And a general amnesty was proclaimed…”
I knew one of these brave women miners who shook the Banzer dictatorship. We met in the Colegio Fe y Alegría in La Paz, with Domitila Chungara, who published a book of her experiences of life and struggle called “Si me dejaran hablar.” ( If I May be Permitted to Speak.)
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the group of grandmothers and human rights organizations came forth from the resistance. It is necessary to see and recognize the tracks of freedom, of the peoples’ struggles, and to have the memory of the Open Veins of Latin America, and Eduardo Galeano, speaking to us and bringing us together fifty years later, is a light that shines on us and gives us strength to build a new dawn.
Thank you, my companion on this journey.
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Buenos Aires
Source: Red-In Defense of Humanity, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English