{"id":42,"date":"2018-08-01T17:27:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T16:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/?p=42"},"modified":"2018-08-14T16:34:42","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T15:34:42","slug":"through-the-looking-glass-in-the-spirit-of-eduardo-galeano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/2018\/08\/01\/through-the-looking-glass-in-the-spirit-of-eduardo-galeano\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the looking glass … in the spirit of Eduardo Galeano"},"content":{"rendered":"

The remarkable Uruguayan essayist and journalist Eduardo Galeano was a relentless dissector of what Serge Halimi of Le Monde Diplomatique<\/em> has called \u2018the inequality machine [that] is reshaping the planet\u2019<\/a>. \u00a0Here is an example, written about Caracas circa <\/em>1971.\u00a0 Even before the 1973 quadrupling of oil prices, Venezuela\u2019s oil production had made it one of the least poor economies in Latin America.\u00a0 However, most of the revenues were extracted by transnational corporations like Exxon, Gulf Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, and what wealth remained in the country was highly concentrated.\u00a0 \u2018While the latest models flash like lightning down Caracas\u2019s golden avenues\u2019, wrote Galeano, \u2018more than half a million people contemplate the wasteful extravagance of others from huts made of garbage\u2019.\u00a0 The relation between automobiles and social exclusion, both symbolically and by way of transport infrastructure choices that are literally cast in concrete, was a consistent theme in Galeano\u2019s work.\u00a0 \u2018[T]he city is ruled by Mercedes-Benzes and Mustangs\u2019, he wrote.\u00a0 \u2018In Caracas, enormous and expensive machines abound for producing pleasure or speed or sound or light. Like poor frightened ants we face these machines and wonder: \u201cJesus, is each of these really worth more than me?\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

This sounds like a rhetorical question, but decades later, it provides a useful window into twenty-first century inequalities. \u00a0At the start of this decade, the best available research<\/a> suggests that the median household <\/em>wealth of the UK population was around \u00a380,000.\u00a0 In other words, half of all UK households \u2018were worth\u2019 less than that.\u00a0 A knowledgeable petrolhead can stand on a kerb in London, and many other major British cities, and in ten minutes or so point out numerous cars and SUVs that cost more than \u00a380,000.\u00a0 (Non-petrolhead readers who doubt this should pick up a copy of Evo<\/em> or Octane<\/em> at their local newsagent\u2019s.)\u00a0 So the answer to Galeano\u2019s question, in the UK context, is clearly affirmative.\u00a0 Such grounded comparisons arguably tell us more about the real world of inequality than abstractions like Gini coefficients.<\/p>\n

Galeano\u2019s Open Veins of Latin America<\/em> appeared in English in 1973, just before the US-supported coup d\u2019\u00e9tat that turned Chile into a bloody showcase for neoliberal policies.\u00a0 It was a text in the undergraduate development studies course that forever transformed my provincial outlook on world affairs. \u00a0I have been re-reading his more recent Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World<\/em>, which appeared 20 years ago \u2013 and, chillingly, reminds us that a 1997 New York Times<\/em> article<\/a> praised the coup as beginning \u2018Chile\u2019s transformation from a backwater banana republic to the economic star of Latin America\u2019.\u00a0 The book swings between savagery and satire (on the media and Monica Lewinsky: \u2018I think something else happened in 1998, but I can\u2019t remember what\u2019) and I find myself wondering how Galeano \u2013 who died in 2015 \u2013 would regard the era of Brexit, Trump, and a decade-long retreat<\/a> from the always fragile institutions of democracy into the authoritarianism that repeatedly forced him into exile.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

He noted that Saudi Arabia\u2019s role as one of the world\u2019s largest customers for the arms trade appeared to confer immunity from criticism of its deplorable human rights record.\u00a0 Plus \u00e7a change<\/em> \u2026 Already, Galeano was concerned about the spread of surveillance. \u2018Is there an eye hidden in the TV remote control?\u00a0 Ears listening from the ashtray?\u2019 What would he make of Alexa?\u00a0 Or of the fact that it is possible to access detailed personal information about almost 300,000 people (contacts of contacts) through a single Facebook account, as the New York Times<\/em> has shown<\/a>, and few users seem to care?<\/p>\n

Galeano memorably described globalisation as \u2018a magic galleon that spirits factories away to poor countries\u2019, noting that the resulting \u2018[f]ear of unemployment allows a mockery to be made of labour rights.\u00a0 The eight-hour day no longer belongs to the realm of law but to literature, where it shines among other works of surrealist poetry,\u2019 as \u2018the fruits of two centuries of labour struggles get raffled off before you can say good-bye\u2019.\u00a0 Here is one of several sobering reminders that key understandings of how the inequality machine operates were in place two decades (or more) ago; many social scientific advances since then involve refinement and body counting.<\/p>\n

Galeano was similarly eloquent about\u00a0 the dangers of finance capitalism, as it shifted power and accountability towards \u2018the markets\u2019 that often dictate terms to national governments, and spawned a proliferation of tax havens and obliging facilitators seeking to protect kleptocrats\u2019 looted billions. \u00a0How would he now regard the revelations in the Panama Papers<\/a> and Paradise Papers<\/a>?\u00a0 Or look back on the financial crisis starting in 2007 that turned into a US$14 trillion hostage taking<\/a> that debilitated many national economies, ratcheted up inequality and created the political opening for the destructive post-2010 trajectory of UK austerity?\u00a0 Galeano correctly notes that Margaret Thatcher \u2018ran a dictatorship of finance capital in the British Isles\u2019; this was the start of a rapid rise in inequality \u2026 but what would he make of Danny Dorling\u2019s recent argument<\/a> that the situation worsened on New Labour\u2019s watch?\u00a0 And how would he respond to an inequality in male life expectancy at birth in the small local authority of Stockton-on-Tees, where I live, that by 2015 was comparable to the difference in national averages between England and Tanzania?\u00a0 This is another one of those important grounded comparisons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health reminded us a decade ago<\/a> that health inequalities are underpinned by \u2018the inequitable distribution of power, money and resources\u2019.\u00a0 Reducing those inequalities first of all demands speaking truth about power.\u00a0 Galeano excelled at this, sometimes at considerable cost to his own safety; scathing description of the impunity enjoyed by the powerful was a consistent theme in his writing about Latin America, both during periods of dictatorship and after transitions to democracy.\u00a0 He might have been pleased by today\u2019s partly successful challenges to the massively corrupt Odebrecht combine<\/a> , while simultaneously appalled by the failure to act on the continuing scandal of tax havens<\/a> and by the alliance of big data and big money in the dissemination of disinformation and \u2018fake news\u2019<\/a> through social media.\u00a0 This is a new form of coup d\u2019\u00e9tat that social scientists are still learning<\/a> to take seriously.<\/p>\n

In these times of cynicism and resignation, the example of Eduardo Galeano\u2019s courage and moral imagination is more valuable than ever.<\/p>\n

Key references<\/strong><\/p>\n

Galeano, E. (1973; Spanish publication 1971).\u00a0 Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent<\/em> [tr. C. Belfrage].\u00a0 New York: Monthly Review Press.<\/p>\n

Galeano, E. (1992). We Say No: Chronicles 1963-1991 <\/em>[tr. Mark Fried and others]. New York: W.W. Norton [this is the source for the Caracas description].<\/p>\n

Galeano, E. (2000; Spanish publication 1998). Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Gla<\/em>ss World <\/em>[tr. Mark Fried]. New York: Picador.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The remarkable Uruguayan essayist and journalist Eduardo Galeano was a relentless dissector of what Serge Halimi of Le Monde Diplomatique has called \u2018the inequality machine [that] is reshaping the planet\u2019. \u00a0Here is an example, written about Caracas circa 1971.\u00a0 Even … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1834,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,4,10,8,13,7,9,12],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-arms-trade","tag-austerity","tag-automobiles","tag-chile","tag-democracy","tag-eduardo-galeano","tag-neoliberalism","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}