immediacy and even though we started out with a piece and we're going to read many more pieces that as of the beginning of everything when man beats a woman in utah about of the wars, all the cultures, the development of humankind and the, the scope is amazing and daunting. i thought we would do a little bit of biography before we go on with the book. of course, your name has been in the headlines in the united states because the president of venezuela chavez mad our president barack obama and as a gesture and sank a friendship he gave barack obama this book "open veins of latin america", he gave it to him in spanish which, of course, was a little difficult because obama doesn't read spanish but i think the intention was to give him a book

once and then if he were to read and it would open his eyes about america. there was a lot of discussion about that -- what was your reaction when you hear that and don't bet that chavez had taken your book to barack obama? >> guest: it is a general fact , it is better to be -- how is the proverb -- young and healthy that old and sick. well, obviously i was happy about death, but i was quite unhappy when i was walking in my neighborhood on the seashore and everybody was saying, and you are selling so well one -- this was terrible for made. we are living in a world in which each one of us is becoming a commodity and merchandise.

>> host: the bbc i think in that to you because they mentioned that after the game your boat to barack obama it rose to number two in the amazon frank ainsworth and i chided because originally it was about 57,000. in my books are in the 100 or 200 thousands, with but they bounce up and down every day. i notice this week is around 17,000 so you can be a little bit more humble than you were then when the attention was on new. >> guest: id is not important that off. in lima, there are some fields of life in which quantity and quality may be closely related but not in literature.

you may be very successful in the market to the quality of your books, it doesn't depend on it. the best-selling author and all the history of spanish-language is terrible. he wrote something like 500 soap operas, books like soap operas, and shoes of a much more than one that. in. >> host: bet i think it is significant because of this book affected me so much when i was a young man and it turns out that i thought you were such a man of such stature so much new then me but it turns out we're almost the same range. >> guest: the book of the beginning 11, i china to manage

the prius beware and perhaps it was not serious and not because at that time in as 1917. but left-wing intellectuals used to believe and then if you are not boring than you were not serious. to be serious you should be boring and this is not a boring book would -- i suppose, i don't know. mw in the first year it was a disaster. nobody bought the book. it was a complete disaster. with one but later in the military dictatorship became my marketing and angels because they burned the book won and so

the book got wind when publicity you will then stood a good general people in uniforms except in uraguay and during fibre six months want they could go freely in the military prisons because they thought it was a textbook on anatomy. ming "open veins of latin america", a textbook on anatomy. in the books of venison and not forbidden with back after this short time they realized it was not exactly this. >> host: apropos of of being burned i wanted to on anecdote that i read the book soon after it came out one and my recollection is that i have the book with me when i was in chile

in 1973 when the military coup overthrew the government of salvador and i stay on for six years to write about the pinochet who dictatorship. in him that a buck, your book, i think this is a distinction, would have been among the books now have to burn in order to same chilly along with all the books about the government, the democratically lintas socialist president of chile who was overthrown with and introduced 17 years of dictatorship by the right wing pinochet that regime. one and that was an amazing new experience that books for our and america and the like me would that books would be burned and that an honor to staining country you had to perjure library so i think that is a

distinction that of the books that were so good that they were threatening to pinochet with the ones that had to be camp here at the memory and not in my book shows inures was among them. >> guest: it is not an innocent to book. with is an honor to be guilty from of a point of view of pinochet or anyone of them. >> host: you have been accused of being a pamphleteer because of that. there is a lot of criticism here which i was offended by because i know the book re well, i know your book very well and i know that it is as compelling literature. you definitely make you're point to be very clear but i wanted to

quote from a mexican writer who weighed in on this year ago he said you can see many things about this goldwork of the let american left that it is manichean, that it is extremist, and distorts or inside trades but nobody who reads it comes out of the fact and. the spanish word was indemnity. and i think that is exactly true why would that when you start reading this book for this book wong here are carried forward and downrange 12th and you learn so much. but let's do the biography, you're born in uraguay. >> guest: montevideo. >> host: what happened at the time the military took over when security and a tear of a march when i was a young man. in march was a left-wing weekly

publication fax very famous and let america and the time line. >> guest: perhaps the best one and, yes, i was in jail for a brief time and then i went to argentina where i began a cultural magazine called crisis which was a very him success: experience. as a cultural magazine we were selling, i said before it was an imprint, but it was important here because usually cultural matters are concentrated entirely to a cultural subjects one so 1,000 copies and the best of cases and resold mw 75 would

or 40,000 which approved the evidence that a rumor in touch with people with whom are not the usual clients with this sort. we were reaching the bone -- reaching people aside from the usual space for you can find them and serve them bookstores and sun. one and this was because we tried to go from this magazine, that culture was not only the productions of books or films are paintings were play is kind but of the export collective expressions of identity in iowa -- and all the ways people trying to communicate with each other. one so for us culture was a sort

of communion and that was why the same importance that to we gave and one to some unknown thompson was also given to the said days in coming to the letters from the prisons, and so we were there record in the dreams. or we went to the factory is in to talk to the workers and will who never saw the sun because their time working was from

eight to eight so the sun was not visible for them except on sunday. >> host: lawyers for you in argentina? >> guest: three years but then i was obliged to name. >> host: ulin there in the years prior to the coup in argentina this rack of chorus and a little month after one mchugh, but i was obliged to leave uraguay because i didn't want to be in prison and i was obliged to leave argentina because i didn't like to be dead in. death is pine and i was obliged to go out, to go away.

you can't discourage the difference between courage and then as soon as leaving in such a way that i had to leave. >> host: i was like to bring some background about that because one of my books is called the condor years, it is about operation condor and it describes in great detail the time when you're in living in argentina won in the amazing thing, there is absolutely no incentive nation in your feeling that it was madness to stay on in argentina. at least 22,000 people were killed and that time the the military reticulate after the military coup have been. operation condor was this operation to kill people from other countries who have sought exile, people like you and i wanted to ask you and most of the uraguayan who were killed in

this time by the military regime were actually killed in argentina -- more uraguayan died in argentina then in space three is my most of them in argentina in the was like to say in your book some sort of a common market's of death. of latin-american countries have not been able to create a real market economy, but in the repression it was quite successful. >> host: so you must have known it after maris who are prominent exiles from uraguay who were both murdered in this time in 1976. >> guest: was both lists, the uraguay list and argentina list, so staying there was .

>> host: it was lucky for all of us that you got out this mack item number for me it was. >> host: because you continue to write. >> guest: yes i went to spain in barcelona and there i wrote to the long years of exile almost 12 or 13 years. >> host: would to other books are translated in english? >> guest: a lot of them but for instance "memory of fire" was written in this time things to the military dictatorships that gave me time want to write. it was a very difficult experience. all american history in three volumes and through short-story telling the flesh and bone that could touch not ideas but human touching of history when it is

realized. >> host: in "mirrors" it you create this tapestry of stories. been there is a flow from one aspect, sometimes you cover a thousand years of page. other times you go back and forth a little bit. >> guest: but there is a continuity led the river running, not below we the land have. how is it called in english? like some guys. >> host: an underground river. >> guest: and underground river, there is some music uniting all these different pieces that may turn into a mess of something, absolutely crazy that is not. i hope it is not.

they articulate. >> host: and one inevitably leads to another. i found that reading "mirrors" sometimes i would start in the middle just pick it up and start reading and then i would be carried forward and then because i had to prepare for this i read all the way through that there is so is with beckham is almost like a push rather then a paul. i can't stop. i have to -- the thing i am reading now makes me read the next story of paranoia on you create your stories? but i think we should take to bring now and then we'll come back and talk about that in the second part i am john dinges and

i am talking with eduardo galeano and we're talking about his book "mirrors". in he is particularly important in that line america because he has captured the long history of oppression and exploitation and of immigration and one conquests. and done this in a number of books one and that wasn't enough just to talk about america.

he is not taking on the history of the world with this new book "mirrors". i wanted to as we broke we were talking about your way of putting these stores together. one of the people to that i guess was an interview that i read in which you are talking about your way of writing and you used the word -- healing lamp -- feeling thinking. >> guest: a feeling thinking language. you express that wants the mind and heart to. >> host: so how do you collect your story is so that to ensure we have those opinions of 30 or 40 lines? >> guest: well, trying to unite the is the worst parts of ourselves, the mine and the hard

to and of the horrors and the marvels of life because it i would be just to write one about repression and death in this terrible life of so many people who are leaving in this plan and to like leaving it and how, and then i would be betraying reality because reality includes another side fortunate enough. each day we have evidences' that of not only the start science we may look at the results one "football in sun and shadow". >> guest: for instance of a present leader arrived.

the states, but when i was coming month the day before i was walking as usual. i am a walker and i was very cent because one my companion and my comment, my friend, morgan, my dog, he was supposed to be a don and i did. so i was very sad and this was the dark side of retention of -- reality. one then date for r5 days before arriving here i was feeling like everything was terrible and i crossed a little girl who was perhaps two years old and she

was alone walking in jumping in celebrating life when i was walking with all my sadness in signed morning morgan in. and then i realized that she was stopping and then walking again and stopping and she stopped each time we issue u.s. hearing birds singing in the trees. i looked up there with more attention and issue a stop to hear the birds and flowers. so when she applauded the birds mine in a part is still alive and able to celebrate life.

in unwed it woke up. in the same happened with the sources of "mirrors" and on the books i have written things. a long list of books. if you allow me just one tax bill to tell you clearly we now one of these 600 stories came to life. it is called the origin of the a. whew first of italian this story inbox. and there they are being on the walls and ceilings of caves.

bison, elk, birds, horses, neagle, women and men -- of these figures are ageless. the repoire and thousands upon thousands of years ago, but they are born in new every time someone looks at them. how could an ancestor of long ago paid so dedicated? how could a brute who fought the wild beasts with his bare hands and create images the so filled with grace? hounded he managed to draw those flying lines that to break free of the stone and take to the earth? when -- how could he? or was she? or was it she? whether, this question or was it she, i came from a conversation

ahead in santa fe and the museum -- a marvelous museum of popular aren't they have incentive pay with sue and john, we were the three visiting the museum and at the end that we were talking about the so called for historic art but in this question arose. one not? perhaps that artist unknown artists or women one and that is one and thought this is a good story that deserves to be written and later on i went on writing a story for me, it implies writing 10, 12, 15 times the same story and cutting and cutting until the moment

indigenize think they feel think that the words deserve to exist or they try to be better than silence. >> host: fess story and directed me a lot because i have always been blessed by the cave paintings into mean was struck me most of but that made me think was, of course, of the beauty but i was thinking of the intellectual capacity because often we think of pivotman as if his brain were not as good as harm brain, he wasn't as smart as we are and i was thinking approximately 40,000 years ago that these people were doing these works of art with their brilliant powers of creativity that are really probably known different than any powers of creativity that we have today. >> guest: perhaps they were

women. >> host: of course, this matter and this is not a possibility open in any of the books about prehistoric art that i have read and i have read a lot of books. they are always thinking of these artists, they were artists, indeed, as men but perhaps they were women. >> host: i wanted to know that your book "mirrors" is probably one of of the most will use the word feminist books i have ever read in. the overwhelming number of portraits of women are favorable and miring and during. men come in for much more criticism in your book one. >> guest: but we are half of humanity, we are not all of humanity, just half of it so it is time to recover so many important the whose time may for

a thousand years ago before it was written down and the men rode down the history women have that kind of a quality and were drawing the cave drawings. >> guest: y not? it is perfectly possible in the them booked trying to recover, trying to rediscover the memory of the despised, the invisible, the scorned. for instance, blacks, not only women. for me is very important that meant that the united states have a black or have black president. there are a lot of stories about blacks, not only in the united states but even in one of the first race here i began asking it adam and eve and were black because of the experts: the plan

to that we all came from africa. we are all african immigrants because the human beings began insisting there in africa so perhaps adam-and-eve were blacks. and i tell and the books some stories for me that we're very relevant especially because they happen in 15 minutes ago. obama is now the president and these are stories that are very recent. for instance, in 14 -- 1942 the pentagon and national david studies of black blood and went into that estes was entering the second world war and at that time the director of the red cross doing blood