Obit

Eduardo Galeano, 74

Uruguayan journalist and writer Eduardo Galeano died last April 13. He was 74.

A prominent anti-capitalist and anti-globalization icon in Latin America, Galeano started his career in the 1960s as a journalist and editor for Marcha, one of the region’s top political and cultural weeklies, and for the daily Epoca. Following the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded Crisis, a cultural magazine. But political unrest in that country that posed threats to his life prompted him to flee to Spain, where he gathered materials for his famous trilogy Memory of Fire. (The Guardian)

He returned to Uruguay in 1985 and founded another publication called Brecha. He also put his passion for football into writing. Along with other left-wing intellectuals, Galeano joined the advisory committee of the Venezuela-based pan-Latin American television network TeleSUR in 2005. (TeleSUR)

An admired South American writer, he expressed unwavering dedication to Latin American culture, history and struggles. Galeano’s five-decade career produced about 35 books, including his most renowned work Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which was published in 1971. The book became a US bestseller after the late Venezuela President Hugo Chavez presented US President Barack Obama a copy in 2009. (LA Times)

Barbara Strauch, 63

American journalist and author Barbara Strauch died last April 15. She was 63.

A long-time science and health editor at the New York Times, Strauch was a former senior editor in New York Newsday, her team winning the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news for its coverage of the 1991 Union Square derailment in Manhattan. She transferred to the Times in 1995, working as business and media editor.

Strauch joined the paper’s science department as assistant editor in 2000 and was appointed health editor in 2004, supervising coverage of issues involving the health care industry and pharmaceutical research. Named science editor in 2011, she was at the helm of numerous projects such as the 2014 Pulitzer finalist Chasing the Higgs, a race between two rival teams searching for the elusive Higgs- Boson particle.

She published two books, The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids (2003), and The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind (2010). (New York Times)