Reddit reviews Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Start here:
https://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp/0853459916

Then (prepare to be hooked) go here:
https://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Memory-Fire-Eduardo-Galeano/dp/156858444X/ref=la_B000AP701M_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495635912&sr=1-5
https://www.amazon.com/Faces-Masks-Memory-Fire-2/dp/1568584458/ref=la_B000AP701M_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495635940&sr=1-13&refinements=p_82%3AB000AP701M
https://www.amazon.com/Century-Wind-Memory-Fire-3/dp/1568584466/ref=la_B000AP701M_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495635912&sr=1-10

Apologies in advance for your new Galeano addiction. :)

Here's a basic video you can show anyone.

Here are books:

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America

The Open Veins of Latin America. Here it is for free.

Failed States

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

War is a Racket This one is from the most decorated Marines in US history.

Occupy Finance. This one is (indirectly) about dependency theory on a national scale. The people of the US have become victims of capital. They go into debt for their health, transportation, education, housing, and daily activities with credit cards. They then put their pensions at the whim of the stock market, as it is plundered by Wall Street. When capitalism can no longer expand geographically, it needs to plunder the lives of people to maintain itself. In this case, the first source of capital to exploit was the lives of the people of the US. Unlike Europe, the US populace was left defenseless in the wake of the attack because of a history of active repression of the left (like COINTELPRO).

The financialization of the US populace is discussed in this essay from the Monthly Review, Monopoly Finance Capital. Here is a book on the topic.

If I remember any more resources, I'll make sure to throw them your way.

> Remember just like Americans, Latin American's or South American's forget in only a few decades if not sooner.

Are you trolling?

Go to Argentina with a T-shirt that says 'School of the Americas'.

Good luck.

Anti americanism in Latin america has its roots since the US invasion of Mexico. It's firmly entrenched in the intellectual class at least since Rodo's Ariel, more than a hundred year old.

Also, Eduardo Galeano's Open veins of Latin America competes with the new testament as holy writ here.

Words fail me to express how mistaken is the concept that that you can just buy public opinion.

Each culture has its zeitgeist, and ignoring it and its mythos (for example, the gallant revolutionary) is, in the best of cases, just throwing money away.

While not entirely Argentinan, i highly recommend The open vein of Latin America by Galeano

Interesting. I got that definition from this book. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to retract it.

American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

This book is a great summary of the imperialist forces that have shape Latin America since the arrival of the first Europeans
https://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp/0853459916/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543450085&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+open+veins+of+latin+america+by+eduardo+galeano&dpPl=1&dpID=51McAptKGTL&ref=plSrch

Another good read is Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano

I'll just leave this here.

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp/0853459916/ref=asc_df_0853459916/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312106851030&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1085325790976409734&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9032170&hvtargid=pla-450080808890&psc=1

Anthropological Economics, and we were made to read this book.

History was never the same.

what, all of it? maybe something by galeano? memories of fire or open veins.

for chile, specifically, muñoz's dictator's shadow is very good. also, i really liked this anthropological text - very good view into current (well, more or less) chilean culture and surprisingly easy to read.

One book that's on my reading list and waiting its turn on my desk is Open Veins of Latin America (original: Las venas abiertas de América Latina). It seems to polarize readers so much that Amazon ratings are predominantly either 5 or 1 stars. Can't yet give personal opinion on it but thought to mention it since it's a book that tends to come up here and there.

I had a conversation with one of them about this book.

He was a little older than the youngest guys though, maybe early 30s, past his main gangbanging days. From what I understand, the Kings view street crime as the first stage in a person's life and as a person gets older they become more of a mentor who understands the bigger picture. The kids definitely wouldn't be reading. I was talking to him about coke one day, asking if there was any good stuff around, and he said that he hadn't been in to that since the early 90s. After he got out of prison he realized that it was better to stay relatively small time; have enough money to buy nice things but not enough to draw attention.

The Moral Animal by Robert Wright

Nonzero by Robert Wright

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

...just my opinions.

A great book on this topic is The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. It doesn't exclusively deal with Britain, though - it also deals with Spain and the US, and explains how European colonial powers and the US arranged matters to ensure their own profit and the impoverishment of Latin America.

It's a polarising book, written from the left of the political spectrum. If you are conservative, you may not like it, but at least it'll give you the history - even if you don't agree with the conclusions.

> So the Standing Rock protest is really about the entire expansion west...k, sure.

Yes, the present-day colonization of indigenous land happening at Standing Rock is directly related to the history of colonialism that founded the US. Your unwillingness to recognize such a blatantly obvious connection is likely because you're white settler colonist, and a racist.

> Western culture carries around the seeds of capitalism, but it also suffers from the same dumb greedy control freak nonsense as all others.

This is literally just nonsense. You haven't said anything.

> Slavery was a huge part of human history long before the US existed, it wasn't slavery that made the US into any sort of notable society.

Chattel slavery, particularly in regards to the cash crop of cotton, was the defining institution that fueled the development and wealth of early US capitalism; in 1860 the economic value invested in slaves was more than that invested in railroads, land, manufacturing combined. Without slavery - an institution that hasn't ended, by the way - there is no United States.

> All failed socialist and communist states are actually capitalist...got it.

Communism is literally defined as a society without a state, there are no communist states, and as I said, no state in history has argued that it is communist. They have argued that they're socialist, and yes, they were in fact state capitalism, a term defined by James Connolly in 1899 in "State Monopoly vs. Socialism," written two decades before the Russian Revolution. Your understanding of history is fucking terrible...

> If I build a machine that produces useful widgets and I buy materials to make said widgets with money that I earned and I hire someone to use my machine to rearrange my materials - how does the product magically become his?

If you build a simple machine with your own hands, it's yours. If you buy the materials for the widgets, those materials are yours. Now remind me, exactly how many hospitals, apartment buildings, houses, factories, railroads, mines, or regular land, was built by one person? Answer: none of them. They were all built by workers, with materials that were harvested and manufactured by workers, that were transported by other workers. Because workers do the fucking work. Owners do not do anything but own - that's why they're the owners. Workers did the labor to build those productive resources, and they should be owned in common by said workers, because no, oligarchs don't "build" anything - they use the State to seize land, and force the now-homeless workers into wage-labor for profit. Which is literally just history.

> If you hire someone to come in and wash and fold your clothes do they get to keep the clothes? Do they get to keep your washer?

I don't make a habit of renting other human beings like farm tools to do my labor for me. That's you, the capitalist. I wash and fold my own clothing like a big boy.

> Scarcity exists, exclusive control of things prevents the tragedy of the commons and actually makes it possible for more people to have more access to things than they otherwise would.

Tell that to the indigenous communities that lived through commons-based communities for hundreds of years before colonialism came here. The "tragedy of the commons" is not a thing, as noted by the '09 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Elinor Ostrom. You may want to read her work, if you're not a racist and a sexist.

> The point is that exclusive rights to things need to be obtained voluntarily, otherwise the guy with the biggest stick always owns everything

Not only is your "voluntary exclusive rights" not a historical aspect of capitalism, as proven by every strike in the history of the global labor movement, it's not even possible. You're welcome to explain to me how people voluntarily surrender their right to grow their own food on commonly-held land so that a single community member has access to it, and uses that right to force others into exploitative labor. I'll wait...

> Cooperatives and democracy don't scale well, there still has to be a respect for property, and a means for those organizations to interact and trade in order for those things to exist at all

Property rights are theft, cooperatives scale perfectly fine, and they don't need to scale to massive sizes to begin with. The focus of socialism is building self-sustained communities, not fictional political organizations like "nations", which are so large they are forced to be centralized to operate as a part of their structure.

> There has to be a language for communicating productive efficiency vs need and scarcity and all sorts of variables - money is that language and prices communicate far more about certain economic realities than any central planner or group of central planners could possibly account for.

LMFAO! Yeah, capitalism just reeks of efficiency, never mind it's ability to take ecological and social variables into consideration! /s

> No, like the power a politician or bureaucrat has to tell others how to live their lives. Arbitrary third party authority over other people's dealings.

Yeah, so like landlords, or factory owners.

> If I grow oranges and you make knives and I want to trade 20 of my oranges for one of your knives and that sounds good to you, then no third party should be able to come in and demand some amount of knives or oranges before they will allow said trade to happen - and nothing changes if you sell your knives to others for money which you then exchange for my oranges. We don't owe anything to any uninvolved third party.

Where in this entire nonsense about trade have you addresses the relationship between the worker and the owner? I was exactly right, wasn't I? You've spent your entire life saying that people like Obama and things like nationalized healthcare are socialism, haven't you? Because you clearly have no idea what socialists are actually interested in. If you grow apples and someone makes knives, and you two want to trade that shit amongst each other, do it all you want. Know what you can't do? Seize all of the land through violence, force me into a condition of homelessness and starvation, force ME to grow the apples for YOU, take the apples, pay me a wage that is less than the value of the apples, and then trade them for knives. There is no "voluntary agreement" between workers and employers. I have to work for someone, or I don't pay rent and I don't have bread. That's not voluntary. I don't choose to work. I have to or I starve. That is the literal process that formed the industrial workforce in Britain during the emergence of industrial capitalism, and it was replicated throughout the entire colonized world. Trade whatever the fuck you want, so long as the product you're selling is actually the product of your work, not someone else who was forced to work for you to feed themselves.

> If I build a second house to rent or add an apartment to my garage, I am not obligated to give you access to my house or apartment for free. Selling access to shelter is no different than selling oranges or knives. A lot of work and money was required to create said shelter.

(a) you didn't build the house, the workers in your community who you hired did (b) you built a second house solely to deny access to it from those who need it, unless they can pay you - you're a social parasite (c) people could build their own shelter, with their own hands, if the resources to do that were held in common, which they aren't (d) the utility of the house, and the upkeep to maintain the house, are used/done entirely by the occupant; the owner does nothing, and provides nothing.

> Yes, there have been millions, even billions, of ignorant people who wanted something for nothing - that doesn't mean any of them were correct.

TIL that demanding the full value of the product you produce through your own labor, or demanding a democratically-owned and managed workplace, is "wanting something for nothing." Again, you think socialism == higher taxes, because you don't know what socialism is. Are you a worker, or a business owner?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp/0853459916