Maria Hinojosa is one of the most opinionated journalists on National Public Radio. The NPR biography of the "Latino USA" host reports that she "has helped define the conversation about our times and our society with one of the most authentic voices in broadcast."
An immigrant from Mexico, Hinojosa speaks with compassion for the undocumented and clearly believes they should be fully accepted into American society. That advocacy has been a source of controversy. As Hinojosa herself acknowledged in 2006, many listeners who had tuned in to a discussion of immigration protested that she was too biased to have been the moderator.
On last week's "Latino USA" program, Hinojosa gave tribute to the highly acclaimed Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who recently died after a long struggle with cancer. She played excerpts of interviews she had conducted with Galeano as far back as 2001. Hinojosa made it clear that Galeano, a heroic figure of the Latin American left, had been a major influence on her thinking, particularly because of his 1971 book, The Open Veins of Latin America.
The Economist described the book as "a scorching tirade against foreign exploitation". Its sales jumped in 2009 when word got out that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pressed a copy into the hands of President Obama.
Hinojosa told Galeano in a 2001 interview that the book had strongly influenced her thinking. "So many people, so many Latinos and students of Latin America in this country look to you as more than a role model, as someone who is life-changing," she said. "I mean, certainly, reading The Open Veins of Latin America changed my life."
As the Spanish-language service of the Associated Press noted, the book "is considered the bible of leftist movements in Latin America and shaped the conscience of hundreds of thousands of militants of more than one generation."
But critics saw The Open Veins as a polemic that, while powerfully and beautifully written, was a simplistic effort to blame outsiders — particularly the United States — for the problems of the continent.
In 2014, Galeano himself sharply criticized his book. He said he "would not be able to read it today" because it would make him so sick that he would "have to be admitted to the hospital." Galeano said he had intended for the book to be a work of political economy, "but I didn't have the necessary education." Most powerful of all was his statement that, "For me the prose of the traditional left is extremely boring."
Galeano's rebuke of both the book and the old left was big news in Latin America, stunning the continent's political and literary worlds. But old political passions are resilient, as Hinojosa demonstrated with her tepid and disingenuous introduction to last week's tribute.
Said Hinojosa, "Even though Las Venas Abiertas, Open Veins, became his most popular book, in the years that followed Galeano spoke about his writing style evolving, becoming more poetic, and his views on the human condition becoming increasingly more complex." Hinojosa said nothing about Galeano's dramatic rejection of his most famous book, a Marxist tract that changed her life and that she apparently still holds dear.