This is a Slide share looks through the eyes of Eduardo Galeano and discusses in a dry witty way about the history of Latin America.

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Presentation by Faith Alves, Pierce College, WA

2. Upside Down: A
Primer for the
Looking Glass
World
By: Eduardo Galeano

3. Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015)
◦ Born in Montevideo,
Uruguay.
◦ He began his career in
journalism with
Uruguayan weeklies: El
Sol and Marcha and the
daily La Época.
◦ Has written 6 books, that
are based on Latin
America
◦ He lived in exile in
Argentina and Spain for
many year before returning
to Uruguay.

4. Historical Context
◦ Three or four centuries ago England, Holland, and France practiced piracy in the name of free
trade.
◦ Free trade was the alibi all Europe used while selling human flesh in the slave trade.
◦ United States brandished free trade to oblige many Latin American countries to accept it exports,,
loans, and military dictatorships.
◦ By the 1820s, most of Latin America had gained political independence from its colonial masters(
Becker).
◦ British industry reduced India to the worst penury and helped finance the extermination of
Paraguay, until 1870when it became the first independent country in Latin America.
◦ Nineteenth-century examples of neocolonialism include the export of Peruvian guano and Chilean
nitrates, which fueled an agricultural boom in Europe (Becker).
◦ In 1954, Guatemala practiced free trade by buying oil from the Soviet Union and the United States
organized an invasion to set thing straight.
◦ In 1964 the Brazil Coup began.
◦ The Chile military coup began on September 11, 9173 to March 1990.
◦ Argentina had the first coup in 1966 to 1973. and the worst of the coups from 1976 to 1983
◦ Cuba failing to see that free trade consisted of accepting using prices as imposed, purchase
outlawed Russian oil, which led to the Bay of Pigs invasion.

5. Plot◦ Eduardo Galeano depicts the injustices
and unfairness of several branches In
Latin America.
◦ He mainly talks about capitalism, but in a
witty way to understand that this is real.
◦ Education: Divides the students based on
social class. He explains how rich children
will never experience the country they live
in, they live in sheltered, private version of
it, whereas the poor children are seen as
potential disasters because they are
victimized in child labor and the sex trade.
He explains how the current education
system locks poor children in social grief.
◦ Racism-Galeano explains how racism
limits of who gets to be in control. For
example “White of skin were the kings,
vampires, and the flesh traders who
founded hereditary slavery in the Americas
and Africa, so that the children of slaves
would be born slaves in the mines and on
the plantations(Galeano 44).”
◦ Sexism-Same as racism, sexism limits of
those who can be in power. In Latin
America Women were very degraded. In
Galeano books it says “No woman in free
from suspicion. In Boleros they're all
ungrateful; in tangos they're all
whores(except for mama).”
◦ Poverty-Galeano focuses on corruption,
human rights abuse, and growing poverty
in Latin America. For instance Police
death squads In brazil and Argentina gun
down thousands of homeless children
each year.
◦ Economics- Anew kind of slavery has
taken over, Wage slavery. People have
jobs to keep workers in need of a job,, but
the pay is low enough to put the workers
in humiliation. Galeano explains this is his
book “Power keeps hacking away at the
weeds, but it can’t pull out the roots
without threatening itself.(91)”

6. Plot Pictures From book

7. Point of View
◦ Third person Omniscient:
Eduardo Galenao takes
this novel from Latin
American people’s view
to understand what the
living situation was from
higher to lower class
during the coups, to show
the sacrifices people had
to make for their families
to survive, and other
factors that held people
back from fighting for
human rights.

8. Tone
Witty/Honesty-He adds
point of views to
understand of what he is
saying from another
perspective, for instance
“From the point of view of a
worm, a plate of spaghetti
is an orgy,. From the point
of view of Hippocrates,
Galen, Maimnides, and
Praacelus, there was a
disease called indigestion,
but none called
hunger.(Galeano 33)”
Depressing- People
already keep getting poorer
and more desperate,
Galeano says ”Every year
poverty kills more people
than the entire second
world war, which killed
quite a few.”

9. Themes
◦ Perspectives- Throughout Galeano’s book,
he has boxes of point of views to
understand the social, cultural, and political
context is different in every part of the
world. He put the point of views from a
perspective of everyone around the world
about racism, sexism, injustice, and
poverty. For example “ if Eve had written
Genesis. What would she have said about
the first night of human love?(68)”
◦ Racism-”He talks about the millions of
abandoned children in Latin American
cities and the thousands of blacks and
Hispanics in prison for possession of drugs
(Brussat).” Galeano focuses on how Black
are inferior and the history of racism
throughout the book.

10. Interpretation
◦ This book portrays honesty and the full
truth. In all of Latin America, the
dictatorships tried to hide and erase the
past, but Upside Down By Eduardo Galeano
brings out the truth of what really happened.
Even behind the multiple coups, he talks
about racism, sexism, and poverty in the
dictatorships. He discusses the false idea
of capitalism and how choice is limited by
gender, race, and religion. Galeano opens
everyone’s eyes to the harsh history of Latin
America and how the people were used to
the point of where they were like skeletons,
all dried up and dead.

11. Works Consulted
Becker, Marc. "Anticolonialism: Latin America." New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Maryanne Cline
Horowitz, vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005, pp. 84-87. Gale Virtual Reference Library,
http://ezproxy.pierce.ctc.edu:2085/apps/doc/CX3424300039/GVRL?u=puya65247&sid=GV
RL&xid =25333 2ea. Accessed 12 June 2019.
Brussat, Fredic, Brussat Mary Ann. “Upside Down: Primer of the Looking Glass Review.” Spirituality and Practice,
2019, https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews/view/2490/upside-down
Galeano, Eduardo. “Upside Down: A primer for the Looking Glass World.” Translated: Mark Fried, Holtzbrinck
Publishers, 1998, 1-337.
Lovell, W. George. "A Man and an Island: Eduardo Galeano and the Cuban Conundrum." Queen's Quarterly, vol. 124, no.
1, 2017, p. 72+. Literature Resource Center,
http://ezproxy.pierce.ctc.edu:2085/apps/doc/A488759308/LitRC?u=puya65247&sid=LitRC&xid=9 3c9f4c7.
Accessed 12 June 2019.
Nelson, Anitra. “the Poltical Economy of Space and Time in Eduardo Galeano.” Eds, 2018,
https://mronline.org/2018/03/02/the-political-economy-of-space-and-time-in-eduardo- galeano/.