Capitalism is an economic system based on the notion that private enterprises control the means of production. In Open Veins of Latin America, Galeano traces the origins of capitalism back to early colonialism in Latin America where the establishment of free trade and mercantilism began a global economic exchange. This opened the doors for foreign private enterprises to capitalize on production of Latin American exports through establishment of plantations, mining sites, and manufacturing plants. This mode of global capitalism allows for foreign corporations to control production from a distance, which means that the workers always bear the most turbulent effects of business decisions. For Galeano, “The nature of ‘satellized’ industrialization is to exclude […] the development of dependent capitalism […] marks many people more ‘surplus’ than it is able to use” (268). The power of capitalism comes from this remote control by foreign enterprises. In the case of Latin America, the satellized industrialization generates an economic dependency between the region and US and Europe. The result is that the workers bear the worst effects of capitalism’s economic instability.

Galeano explores capitalism in Latin America as the relationship between the state, and US and European multinational corporations. According to Galeano:

Multinational corporations make direct use of the state to accumulate, multiply, and concentrate capital, to deepen the technological revolution, to militarize the economy, and by various means to assure success in the crusade to control the capitalist world (248).