Eduardo Galeano, literary giant of Latin America, 1940-2015

Eduardo Galeano, a literary giant of the Latin American left who inspired a generation of student protesters but later disavowed his most influential book, has died in Montevideo, Uruguay, aged 74.

Galeano's 1971 book "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" quickly became a bible for the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist left, published at a time when the region was beset by US-backed rightwing military dictatorships.

But last year, the Uruguayan writer stoked fresh controversy when he panned his seminal work, explaining that both he and the world had changed, dismissing its prose as "extremely boring".

"Open Veins tried to be a book of political economy, but I didn't yet have the right training. I don't regret writing it, but I've moved beyond that stage," Galeano said at a book fair in Brazil last year where the 43rd anniversary of the book's publication was being celebrated. "I wouldn't be capable of reading this book again, I'd keel over," he added.

With its searing attack on European and US economic exploitation and political interventionism in Latin America that he blamed for the region's chronic poverty and underdevelopment, the book has sold more than a million copies and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

As recently as 2009, Venezuela's former president Hugo Chavez thrust a copy of the book into the hands of US President Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas, briefly catapulting the book into Amazon's Top 10 list.

But for many, the economic rise of countries like China, India and Brazil has undermined Galeano's arguments. A group of rightwing critics from the region dubbed the book as "the idiot's bible", boiling its thesis down to a single sentence: "We're poor, it's their fault."

The prolific writer published a diverse collection of works, including football commentary, poetry, political analysis and histories. At 14, Galeano was already drawing political cartoons, and soon became a journalist.

He was forced to flee from Uruguay to neighbouring Argentina in 1973 after he was briefly imprisoned by the recently installed military dictatorship, which banned "Open Veins". When he was blacklisted by death squads following a military coup in Argentina in 1976, he then fled to Spain, where he wrote his renowned trilogy, "Memory of Fire".

After being operated on to treat lung cancer in 2007, Galeano continued to struggle with the disease and was admitted to hospital last week, where he died on Monday morning.

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