There is a beautiful cruelty in Galeano’s diagnosis. By naming the monster uselo y tirelo, he invites us to refuse it. He asks us to become archaeologists of the present, to dig through the landfill of modern life and retrieve what is still breathing. To resist the throwaway is to embrace duration: to buy the shoe that can be resoled, to write the letter that will be kept in a drawer, to tend to the garden that will outlive you.
In his later works, particularly Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, Galeano offers a counter-history of those who refused to be disposed of: the heretics, the rebel slaves, the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo who kept searching for their disappeared children long after the world told them to move on. Those grandmothers embody the ultimate rejection of uselo y tirelo. They refuse to throw away the memory of the lost. They insist that a human being is never used and, therefore, can never be thrown away.
The original text, translated from Spanish, reads roughly as follows:
"Used to be that people lasted: houses lasted a hundred years, things lasted a long time, they were repaired, they had a long life. Today we live in a civilization of the disposable. Everything is designed to be thrown away, to become garbage quickly. We are users, not owners. We use and throw away. The planet is becoming a giant garbage can. And the human being? Also. He is used and thrown away." uselo y tirelo eduardo galeano pdf
Though short, the text operates on three devastating levels:
If you find yourself repeatedly searching for "uselo y tirelo eduardo galeano pdf", consider buying the full books:
Owning the physical or digital book gives you context: the passages before and after "Úselo y Tírelo" illuminate its meaning. In El libro de los abrazos, this fragment sits alongside stories about love, memory, and resistance—reminding us that critique without affection is sterile. There is a beautiful cruelty in Galeano’s diagnosis
Galeano’s “Usélo y tirélo” is not truly available as a free PDF because it was written as a critique of disposability — to be shared human-to-human, not file-to-file. Searching for the PDF is the first joke of the fable. The lesson is: some things are meant to be used, not consumed. And the most useful things are the ones you pass along.
If you want to read the original text, look for El libro de los abrazos (The Book of Embraces) by Eduardo Galeano. Then lend it to a friend.
Report: Úselo y tírelo by Eduardo Galeano Úselo y tírelo "Used to be that people lasted: houses lasted
(Use It and Throw It Away) is an influential anthology by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano . Subtitled
"The world at the end of the millennium, seen from a Latin American ecology,"
the work offers a critical, poetic, and urgent analysis of the environmental and social crisis. Core Concept and Themes Úselo y tírelo Eduardo Galeano libro PDF - Slideshare
I'm assuming you're referring to the famous essay "Use and Abuse of History" (original title in Spanish: "El uso y el abuso de la historia") or possibly "Uselo y Tirelo" which could be a colloquial or incorrect reference to a work by Eduardo Galeano. Eduardo Galeano was a Uruguayan journalist, writer, and historian known for his critical and poetic writings on history, politics, and social issues. One of his most famous works is "The Open Veins of Latin America" (Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina).
However, without a direct reference to a specific work titled "Uselo y Tirelo" by Eduardo Galeano, I'll provide a general piece on the use and abuse of history, inspired by Galeano's style and thoughts: