Perspective

The author Eduardo Galeano relates the history of the pillage of Latin America from the historical data and what his research has discovered. One would have to conduct one's own research to properly evaluate the veracity of the detailed depiction of the pillage of Latin America as presented by Galeano. It is part of most everyone's history education that Columbus discovered the Americas and that Cortes conquered the Aztec civilization. That the Spanish conquistadors continued their invasions and the Portuguese oppressors took claim to modern-day Brazil is not disputable. That is all fact as much as anyone knows.

The cruelty and abuse of the land and the people of Latin America as framed by Galeano perhaps is not fully known. The attempts at the "invaders" to bring Christianity to the Latin American inhabitants is mentioned by Galeano but dismissed as opportunistic and superficial. Without a doubt Galeano comes...