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

by Eduardo Galeano

One French economist argues that Latin America’s worst colonial legacy, which explains its backwardness today, is lack of capital.17 But all the historical evidence shows that the colonial economy produced bountiful wealth for the classes connected internally with the colonial system of domination. The labor that was abundantly available for nothing or practically nothing, and the great European demand for Latin American products, made possible “a precocious and abundant accumulation of capital in the Iberian colonies. The hard core of beneficiaries, far from growing, became smaller in proportion to the mass of the population, as may be seen from the well-known fact that unemployed Europeans and Creoles constantly increased.”18

Lack of capital in Latin America