Academic

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

By propertyprof

ANC News is reporting that Hugo Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.   Though the book has been translated into English, the copy was in Spanish, which just goes to show that this wasn't intended to be read by Mr. Obama.  And don't expect Mr. Obama to read it anytime soon.  According to a Washington Post story, a senior administration offcial said, "The president is a very well-read man.... But I don't know what his reading list is."

Still, I think this is more fodder for the history of the book crowd, who place books and the ideas in them at the center of historical analysis.  Presumably the ideas in the book contain a message that's meaningful to Chavez.  And therein lies the opportunity for a lot of speculation about Chavez and what's important to him.  And maybe the fact that the copy was in Spanish gives even greater weight to the sense that this will tell us about Chavez, rather than about United States' history with Latin America.  This is similar to what I'm trying to do with University, Court, and Slave--to usethe writings of proslavery university faculty to understand their world, to see what works they cite and how they understand history and contemporary politics.

Update:  I wasn't familar with Galeano's book before this morning, though I see that it's in a lot of libraries--more than 1300 according to worldcat.  And it's been selling like hot cakes on amazon today.

Alfred L. Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 18, 2009 (boomark / email).