Eduardo Hughes Galeano (Spanish pronunciation: [eˈðwaɾðo ɣaleˈano]; 3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015) was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist considered, among other things, "global soccer's pre-eminent man of letters" and "a literary giant of the Latin American left".
Galeano's best-known works are
Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) and
Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1982–6). "I'm a writer,"
the author once said of himself, "obsessed with remembering, with
remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate
land condemned to amnesia."
Author Isabel Allende, who said
her copy of Galeano's book was one of the few items with which she fled Chile
in 1973 after the military coup of Augusto Pinochet, called Open Veins of Latin
America, "a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic
flair, and good storytelling."