Remembering Eduardo Galeano, Champion of Social Justice & Chronicler of Latin America’s Open Veins

One of Latin America’s most acclaimed writers, Eduardo Galeano, died on Monday at age 74 in Montevideo, Uruguay. The Uruguayan novelist and journalist made headlines when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave President Obama a copy of his classic work, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.” Since its publication in 1971, “Open Veins” has sold more than a million copies worldwide, despite being banned by the military governments in Chile, Argentina and his native country of Uruguay. While in exile after the Uruguayan military junta seized power in a 1973 coup, Galeano began work on his classic trilogy “Memory of Fire,” which rewrites five centuries of North and South American history. He also authored “Soccer in Sun and Shadow,” “Upside Down,” “The Book of Embraces,” “We Say No,” “Voices of Time,” “Mirrors,” “Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History,” among others. Galeano received numerous international prizes, including the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur. We look back on Galeano’s life and hear from his Democracy Now! interviews in 2009 and 2013.

Viola Liuzzo - Wikipedia

"No Union For Fascists": Why The Sioux Falls AFL-CIO Banned White Supremacists

Editors Note: In May of 2018 the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO passed several amendments to thier Constitution. Among those changes were the words," No individual shall be eligible to serve as an Officer, member of The Executive Board or Committee, or other governing body, or any committee of, or as a delegate from, or as a representative, agent, or employee of this body who is a member of any Fascist or White Supremacist organization. Or who consistently pursues policies and/or activites directed toward the purposes of any Fascist or otherwise White Supremacist Ideology." 

Rhiannon Giddens on Instagram: "So, as I live in Ireland, I have gotten used to the origins of some of the foods I eat coming from different places on this side of the pond. I noticed, after a conversation with a friend, that all of the 'Japanese' rice sold here is actually grown in Italy. It turns out that Italy is Europe's largest rice grower and has been for some time. For a long time, the vast rice fields were weeded by hand, a necessary but back breaking labour that was done mostly by women, called mondine. These fields became a hotbed of resistance, as the mondine sang protest songs about their padroni and held strikes and other actions that eventually won them some concessions. Many of them were connected to left wing political action and were part of the resistance during World War II. The famous song "Bella Ciao", which has been sung since the war as a resistance song but most people think wasn't actually sung during the war, most likely has its origins in the protest songs of the mondine in the early part of the 20th century. From the @theconversationdotcom article in my bio: "As one Italian senator put it in 1953, the labour of rice weeders deserved its own circle of hell in Dante’s inferno. Apart from eight-hour days under the beating sun, rice weeders were tormented by malaria-carrying mosquitoes and malnourishment, and suffered much higher miscarriage rates than other women workers. When the actress Silvana Mangano was shown how to imitate the rice weeders’ labour for her role in cult left-wing film Bitter Rice in 1949, she reportedly said: “Like this, for eight hours? I wouldn’t do this work even for a million a day!” A number of the women in the interviews I’m studying met with Mangano in 1948 as extras on the set of the movie. Knee-deep in protest It is perhaps because of these exploitative conditions that collective and political activism thrived in the rice fields. From the 1900s, rice weeders joined up in their droves to left-wing organisations such as the Italian communist and socialist parties, but also to the Unione donne italiane (the Italian Women’s Union) and working class institutions such as the Case del popolo (People’s Houses) and cooperatives.""

897 likes, 16 comments - rhiannongiddens on April 3, 2025: "So, as I live in Ireland, I have gotten used to the origins of some of the foods I eat coming from different places on this side of the pond. I noticed, after a conversation with a friend, that all of the 'Japanese' rice sold here is actually grown in Italy. It turns out that Italy is Europe's largest rice grower and has been for some time. For a long time, the vast rice fields were weeded by hand, a necessary but back breaking labour that was done mostly by women, called mondine. These fields became a hotbed of resistance, as the mondine sang protest songs about their padroni and held strikes and other actions that eventually won them some concessions. Many of them were connected to left wing political action and were part of the resistance during World War II. The famous song "Bella Ciao", which has been sung since the war as a resistance song but most people think wasn't actually sung during the war, most likely has its origins in the protest songs of the mondine in the early part of the 20th century. From the @theconversationdotcom article in my bio: "As one Italian senator put it in 1953, the labour of rice weeders deserved its own circle of hell in Dante’s inferno. Apart from eight-hour days under the beating sun, rice weeders were tormented by malaria-carrying mosquitoes and malnourishment, and suffered much higher miscarriage rates than other women workers. When the actress Silvana Mangano was shown how to imitate the rice weeders’ labour for her role in cult left-wing film Bitter Rice in 1949, she reportedly said: “Like this, for eight hours? I wouldn’t do this work even for a million a day!” A number of the women in the interviews I’m studying met with Mangano in 1948 as extras on the set of the movie. Knee-deep in protest It is perhaps because of these exploitative conditions that collective and political activism thrived in the rice fields. From the 1900s, rice weeders joined up in their droves to left-wing organisations such as the Italian communist and socialist parties, but also to the Unione donne italiane (the Italian Women’s Union) and working class institutions such as the Case del popolo (People’s Houses) and cooperatives."".