What, Hugo Chavez couldn’t have given Barack Obama Noam Chomsky, Bill Ayers or to be really up to date, the new screed by Chesa Boudin? (bitingly and brilliantly dissected in The New York Times by Dwight Garner) Instead, he gave our President a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s late 60’s book, Open Veins of Latin America. (The English translation of which was written by the late British/American KGB agent, Cedric Belfrage.)
Galeano’s book was published in this country by Monthly Review Press, the “independent socialist magazine” founded by the late Paul M. Sweezy and Leo Huberman. It is standard “the US exploits Latin America” fare of the Castro era 1960’s New and Old Left. I think President Obama should have been prepared with an appropriate counter book to offer Hugo Chavez.
There is only one perfect book, and perhaps a reader can send a copy to the White House so next time the President will be ready. It is the book co-authored by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Alvaro Vargas Llosa, with an introduction by the world famous author, Mario Vargas Llosa: Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.
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