(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Uruguayan writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano, a noted anti-capitalist in Latin America, died Monday in Montevideo after battling lung cancer. He was 74.
His death was confirmed by Brecha, a weekly publication where he was a contributor.
Galeano had been ill for months after lung cancer returned following a successful operation to remove it in 2007, and he was admitted to the hospital Friday, the El Pais newspaper reported.
Born in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, Galeano began his career in journalism in the 1960s and went on to write "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," his best-known work that was published in 1971.
In the book, Galeano took a deep look at the history of Latin America and the impact of European and U.S. economic and political influence, becoming a distinguished anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist voice in the region.
But with the arrival of a right-wing military dictatorship in 1973, Galeano imprisoned and later fled to neighboring Argentina.
"Open Veins of Latin America" was banned in by the military in Uruguay and subsequently in Argentina and Chile.
In Argentina, Galeano continued his work but found his life at danger again after a military coup there in 1976.
He fled to Spain, where he wrote his other famed work about the history of Latin America, "Memory of Fire Trilogy," which was published between 1982 and 1986.
Galeano returned to Montevideo in 1985 and "Open Veins of Latin America," a classic in leftist literature, surged in sales in the U.S. after Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez handed a copy to U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009.
In one of his most famous sayings, Galeano said he is obsessed with "remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America," a region that he said "is condemned to amnesia."
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