Life
Galeano was born in Montevideo in 1940 into a middle-class Catholic family of Welsh, German, Spanish and Italian descent.
In his teens Galeano worked in odd jobs — as a factory worker, a bill collector, a sign painter, a messenger, a typist, and a bank teller. At the age of 14 Galeano sold his first political cartoon to El Sol, the Socialist Party weekly,
He started his career as a journalist in the early 1960s as editor of Marcha, an influential weekly journal, which had such contributors as Mario Vargas Llosa, Mario Benedetti, Manuel Maldonado Denis and Roberto Fernández Retamar. For two years he edited the daily Épocha and worked as editor-in-chief of the University Press.
In 1973, a military coup took power; Galeano was imprisoned and later forced to flee. He settled in Argentina where he founded the cultural magazine, Crisis.
In 1976, when the Videla regime took power in Argentina in a bloody military coup, his name was added to the lists of those condemned by the death squads, and he fled again, this time to Spain, where he wrote his famous trilogy, Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire ).
At the beginning of 1985 Galeano returned to Montevideo, where he continues to live.
Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire) is a three-volume narrative of the history of America, North and South.
The characters are historical figures; generals, artists, revolutionaries, workers, conquerors and the conquered, who are portrayed in brief episodes which reflect the colonial history of the continent.
It starts with pre-Columbian creation myths and ends in the 1980s.
Memoria del fuego was widely praised by reviewers. Galeano was compared to John Dos Passos and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Ronald Wright wrote in the Times Literary Supplement: "Great writers... dissolve old genres and found new ones. This trilogy by one of South America's most daring and accomplished authors is impossible to classify."
Galeano is also an avid football fan, Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1995) is a review of the history of the game. Galeano compares it with a theater performance and with war; he criticizes its unholy alliance with global corporations but attacks leftist intellectuals who reject the game and its attraction to the broad masses because of ideological reasons.
Galeano is regular contributor to The Progressive, and has also been published in the Monthly Review and The Nation.Works
Las venas abiertas de América (The Open Veins of Latin America) is arguably Galeano's best-known work, a powerful indictment of the exploitation of Latin America by foreign powers from the 15th century onwards. It was the first of his books to be translated into English.