The Uruguayan thinker, dreamer, and truth-teller Eduardo Galeano died on this day in 2015, aged 74. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, Galeano spent his lifetime serving and glorifying his beloved Latin America.

Who was Eduardo Galeano?

“I’m a writer,” he said, “obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”

Galeano had for mission to save his cherished continent from the unmerciful claws of oblivion. A continent that radiates warmth could turn into anything but oblivion. The land of the “open veins”, as Galeano puts it, can only be saved through memory. 

“Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything from the discovery until our times has always been transmuted into European–or later–United States– capital, and as such has accumulated on distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits, and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources.”

Why is remembering so important?

Galeano reminds us of the etymology of the verb ‘remembering’ (recordar in Spanish).

If we analyze the roots of recordare in Latin, we can see that it contains the word ‘cor’ which means ‘heart’. On the other hand, the English ‘to remember’ derives from the Latin ‘rememorari’, meaning ‘call to mind‘. Interestingly enough, the romantic Romans believed that memory comes from the heart. Galeano tells us that it is where memory continues to reside. 

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