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

by Eduardo Galeano

is put into action when the dominant classes can pursue their business by no other means. Torture wouldn’t exist in our countries if it weren’t effective; formal democracy would continue if it could be guaranteed not to get out of the hands that hold power. In difficult times democracy becomes a crime against national security—that is, against the security of internal privilege and foreign investment. Our devices for mincing human flesh are part of an international machinery. The whole society is militarized, the state of exception is made permanent, and the repressive apparatus is endowed with hegemony by the turn of a screw in the centers of the imperial system. When crisis begins to throw its shadow, the pillage of poor countries must be intensified to guarantee full employment, public liberties, and high rates of development in the rich countries. The sinister dialectic of victim-hangman relations: a structure of successive humiliations that starts in international markets and financial centers and ends in every citizen’s home.