Open Veins of Latin America

Eduardo Galeano's 1971 work tracing the economic exploitation of Latin America from the Spanish conquest through the present — arguing from a dependency theory perspective that Latin American poverty is the direct product of European and American extraction.

Created the canonical dependency theory narrative of Latin American history — Open Veins' argument that every Latin American export boom has enriched foreign powers while impoverishing local populations provides the foundational text for the Latin American Left's understanding of their continent's relationship to global capitalism.