There is a lot written about the history of relations between the United States and Latin America; from fact-filled books and essays to politically-charged poems and songs. It is a tumultuous and complicated history, one that is given to many different interpretations.

While any honestly written book on the subject would provide a good understanding, one of the most famous is Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, written in 1970 by Eduardo Galeano, a renowned Uruguayan journalist.

Recognized instantly by the yellow cover and symbolic lion with teeth and claws bared, Las venas abiertas - as it is known in Spanish - is one of the most widely read books in Latin America. Since its first publication in 1973, a time when many Latin American countries were embroiled in political turmoil, it has been like a Bible of sorts to revolutionary-minded thinkers throughout the Western Hemisphere. Over thirty years and twenty five editions later, it is still being read by people of all generations.

As the title indicates, the book spans a 500-year history, beginning with the arrival of Europeans to the New World and the following oppression of the indigenous populations and rape of their resource-rich lands. As the centuries pass, little changes. With the U.S. later in the position of power over economic development and political policy in Latin American countries, the people remain poor, hungry and forced to watch their land turned into billions of dollars on the international market.

Galeano provides a good summary of the issue on the second page:

"Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European - or later United States - capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural and human resources... For those who see history as a competition, Latin America's backwardness and poverty are merely the result of its failure. We lost; others won. But the winners happen to have won thanks to our losing: the history of Latin America's underdevelopment is, as somone has said, an integral part of the history of world capitalism's development."

Although Galeano predominantly cites examples from Chile, Brazil and his own Uruguay, he touches upon issues throughout Central and South America. Indeed, the main idea has been repeated time and again in most, if not every, Latin American country.

Far from being a long, mind-numbing tirade by an angry political activist, it's surprisingly fast-paced and interesting. The facts are detailed, but concise enough to keep one from being bogged down in political and economic jargon. Written predominantly in the third person, Galeano nevertheless succeeds in speaking directly to the reader. This might be due to the passionate, and sometimes sarcastic, tone adopted throughout the book. With section titles such as "Mankind's Poverty as a Consequence of the Wealth of the Land" and "Development Is a Voyage with More Shipwrecks than Navigators", Galeano presents a wry understanding of the Latin American situation.

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