ABSTRACT
The work of Eduardo Galeano is perhaps one of the most problematical among recent Latin American authors in terms of categorisation and critical study, for he is neither simply an essayist, nor a journalist nor a historian, but rather a combination of the three whose writing has an undeniably literary quality. The virtual critical vacuum within which Galeano finds himself is due not to the quality of his work, for he has published two works, Las venas abiertas de America Latina, 1971 (The Open Veins of Latin America) and the trilogy Memoria del fuego, 1982–86 (Memory of Fire), which are widely recognised to be of seminal value. Instead, the reason appears to be the uncertainty with which literary critics confront works which are clearly documents of economic and socio-cultural history. Similarly, Galeano’s work carries too much of the creativity and conscious interpretation of events common to much of contemporary Latin American fiction to attract conventional historians. This unique vision of Latin America arises from Galeano’s experiences of life and the written word, central to which is a twelve-year period of exile, first in Argentina and later in Spain, to escape persecution by the increasingly brutal Uruguayan, and subsequently Argentine, military regimes of the 1970s, whose censure of him arose from his position as editor-in-chief of Época and his critical, politically committed journalism.
