“There is nothing neutral about this historical chronicle,” Galeano warned in the preface to “Memory of Fire.” “Unable to distance myself, I take sides.” Galeano followed “Open Veins” with the equally popular “Memory of Fire” trilogy, a series of vignettes of North and South America history that one Times reviewer described as a “poetic scrapbook.” Others used another metaphor to say the books were tapestries of outrage directed at perpetrators of murder and plunder. He knew firsthand the boot of oppression, having been arrested in 1973 by Uruguay’s right-wing military regime and forced into exile, first in Argentina, then in Spain until 1985. Galeano didn’t spare Latin American governments, using vignettes showing a panoply of injustices including murders of reformers and modern-day subjugation of indigenous peoples.
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