Advertisement Through a body of work that blended fiction, essays, and journalism, Mendoza left a lasting mark on Colombian and Latin American culture. Advertisement Published three decades ago, the book was conceived as a direct response to the interpretation of Latin America popularized in Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 classic Open Veins of Latin America. Google ai and Wikipedia lays out its chapters this way:Retrato de familia (Family Portrait): Introduces the profile, mindset, and traits of the archetypal "idiot" intellectual in Latin America. La biblia del idiota (The Idiot's Bible): Targets Eduardo Galeano's famous work Open Veins of Latin America as the blueprint of economic fallacies. El idiota tiene amigos (The Idiot Has Friends): Looks at sympathetic Western and European intellectuals who excused Latin American totalitarian movements.