We Say No: Chronicles 1963-1991

This exceptional and important collection of 35 articles, speeches and essays by the author of the acclaimed Memory of Fire trilogy covers the tumultuous past three decades of Latin American history. Galeano is a classic example of the advocacy journalist; by his own admission, he ``neither believes in objectivity nor pretends to practice it.'' His candor, coupled with passionate moral indignation and superb phrase-turning (helped immeasurably here by a group of excellent translators) make this book exciting. Galeano looses a withering sarcasm on the enemies of progressive social change in Latin America: multinational corporations, military dictators, the U.S. government, racism, illiteracy and poverty. His tone runs from the wry irony of his encounters with soccer great Pele and Juan Peron to the bittersweet romanticism of his meetings with Che Guevara to the almost hallucinatory in his reports of oil and diamond boom towns. But the book is strongest when it is most polemical. Galeano's essays on the ``discovery'' of the Americas by Columbus and a succession of conquistadors should be required reading in this quincentennial year. (July)