"In at least one instance, a book by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano may have saved a life. In 1997, Víctor Quintana—a Mexican congressman and anticorruption activist—was abducted by paid assassins, brutally beaten, and threatened with death. By his account, he survived by distracting his assailants with stories about soccer—quirky and lyrical tales drawn from a history of the game that Galeano had recently published. After listening to the adventures of Pelé and Schiaffino, Maradona and Beckenbauer, the killers decided to let Quintana live. 'You’re a good guy,' one told him. In another case, a book by Galeano proved less propitious. A battered copy of The Open Veins of Latin America, his seminal history of hemispheric exploitation, was found in the knapsack of a guerrilla who was killed fighting El Salvador’s death-squad government. 'The book was mortally wounded,' Galeano later recalled. 'A bullet hole went from the front cover right through the back.' ..."
The Nation
NY Times: 'There Is a Woman Stuck in My Throat'
amazon: The Book of Embraces
2015 April: Eduardo Galeano (3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015), 2017 August: Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1993)
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