Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born September 3, 1940) is an Uruguayan journalist whose books have been translated into many languages. His works transcend orthodox genres, combining documentary, fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has denied that he is a historian: "I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia."

Life

Galeano was born in Montevideo into a middle class Catholic family of Welsh, German, Spanish and Italian descent.

Related Topics:
Montevideo - Middle class - Catholic - Welsh - German - Spanish - Italian

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In his teens Galeano worked in odd jobs — as a factory worker, a bill collector, a sign painter, a messenger, a typist, and a bank teller. At the age of 14 Galeano sold his first political cartoon to El Sol, the Socialist Party weekly.

Related Topics:
Political cartoon - Socialist Party

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He started his career as a journalist in the early 1960s as editor of Marcha, an influential weekly journal, which had such contributors as Mario Vargas Llosa, Mario Benedetti, Manuel Maldonado Denis and Roberto Fernández Retamar. For two years he edited the daily Época and worked as editor-in-chief of the University Press.

Related Topics:
1960s - Mario Vargas Llosa - Mario Benedetti - Roberto Fernández Retamar

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In 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay; Galeano was imprisoned and later forced to flee. He settled in Argentina where he founded the cultural magazine, Crisis.

Related Topics:
1973 - Coup - Argentina - Magazine

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In 1976, when the Videla regime took power in Argentina in a bloody military coup, his name was added to the lists of those condemned by the death squads, and he fled again, this time to Spain, where he wrote his famous trilogy, Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire ).

Related Topics:
1976 - Spain

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At the beginning of 1985 Galeano returned to Montevideo, where he continues to live.

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