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120 Million Children In The Eye Of The Hurricane
Open veins of Latin America: Fragment of Introduction
Date : 25/09/2011
Author Information
Uploaded by : Venancia Shirley
Uploaded on : 25/09/2011
Subject : Spanish
The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was
precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when
Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the
throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America
perfected its role. We are no longer in the era of marvels when face surpassed
fable and imagination was shamed by the trophies of conquest- the lodes of
gold, the mountains of silver. But our region still works as a menial. It
continues to exist at the service of others` needs, as a source and reserve of oil
and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods
destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin
America does from producing them. The taxes collected by the buyers are
much higher than the prices received by the sellers; and after all, as Alliance
for Progress coordinator Covey T. Oliver said in July 1968, to speak of fair
prices is a "medieval" concept, for we are in the era of free trade.
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be
built for those who suffer from that business. Our inquisitor-hang-man systems
function not only for the dominating external markets; they also provide
gushers of profit from foreign loans and investments
in the dominated internal markers. Back in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson
observed: "You hear of 'concessions` to foreign capitalists in Latin America.
You do nor hear of concessions to foreign capitalists in the United States. They
are not granted concessions." He was confident; "Slates that are obliged ... to
grant concessions are in this condition, that foreign interests are apt to
dominate their domestic affairs. . . . ," he said, and he was right.1 Along the
way we have even lost the right to call ourselves Americans, although the
Haitians and the Cubans appeared in history as new people a century before the
Mayflower pilgrims settled on the Plymouth coast. For the world today,
America is just the United States; the region we inhabit is a sub-America, a
second-class America of nebulous identity
This resource was uploaded by: Venancia Shirley