What Galeano has demonstrated by this unassuming recognition is that he has evolved through the years and, like many others, realizes that the dependentista paradigm, with its rejection of western capitalism, that fueled his book had important shortcomings, and overlooked other key problems. He added that in those early days of his career he did not know enough politics and economics to write a book of such reach. He said Open Veins was too boring and written in a tedious style and with the doctrinal tone of the traditional left. Galeano’s interview signaled a refocussing of his analysis rather than wholesale rejection of it. colonial powers? Hadn’t the region been sacrificed since Columbus to profit diabolic foreign interests? When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave President Obama a copy of the book in 2009, was he clinging to an interpretation of Latin American history no longer embraced by the region’s leading thinkers? Others asked, however well-deserved a denunciation of the exploitation and oppression laid out in the book was, were they to be blamed for all of the damage inflicted in the region? Interviewed last May about the book often called the “Bible of the Latin American Left,” Galeano said, “I don’t regret having written it, but it belongs to a time that to me has been overcome.” His words left a sense of abandonment and deceit among many, who asked: What had happened to the bleeding veins of Latin America drained by European and U.S. Forty-three years after its publication, the emblematic and widely read Latin American anti-colonialist bestseller The Open Veins of Latin America has been disowned by its creator, 74-year-old Eduardo Galeano – but its literary message remains vital.

The veins of latin america