Hugo Chavez's gift to Obama is a Latin leftist's bible

L.A. Times ^ | 4/20/09 | Tracy Wilkinson

[Nachum]

Reporting from Mexico City -- The book that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, has long been regarded as a bible for the Latin American left, found on the bookshelves and university reading lists of a generation of students in the region.

"Open Veins of Latin America" recounts, as its subtitle says, "Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" -- the harvesting of the region's cotton, rubber, coffee, fruit and other resources by U.S. and European powers. It argues, from a Marxist viewpoint, that such exploitation is the root cause of Latin American poverty.

[Nachum]

Everybody likes to study the Bible...

[Nachum]

The List, ping

[mylife]

According to reports, the Chavez-Obama exchange, the book offered by the Venezuelan leader was in Spanish, a language the U.S. president does not read. Why Chavez didn't give him an English version is anyone's guess.

Kinda like those DVDS Barama gave Gordon Brown

[tobyhill]

This will fit nicely in Obama’s Marxist collection.

[Jim Robinson]

Obama’s never met a Marxist dictator he didn’t like.

[Ezekiel]

"Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent"

Obama's aiming for five months.

[Free ThinkerNY]

Comrade Obama will give it five stars in his Amazon Customer Review.

[Knute]

Required reading in all US public high schools by 2012

[mathurine]

As usual, the friggin apologists for the aborigines figure they should have had a pass on progress and would be blissfully living in a pristine paradise. Of course archaelogy suggests that their lives, on average, were cruel and brief, and even for the ruling class, not so hot.Most of the Americas were lucky they were overrun and exploited by the Europeans, and another dose or two of western civilization would do them a great deal of good.

[goodnesswins]

I figure it was public schools that were buying it up on Amazon....

[HiTech RedNeck]

Even now, why does Chavez have so little to say about American Indians?

[Carl LaFong]

President and Laura Bush were fluent in Spanish.Stoopid Bush.

[Fiji Hill]

Obama should have reciprocated by giving Chavez a copy of Milton Friedman's Capitalism & Freedom, Rose Wilder Lane's The Discovery of Freedom, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, or Max Eastman's Reflections on the Failure of Socialism.

[mylife]

Barama wouldnt know a chigalera from a chimichanga

[Knute]

I figure it was public schools that were buying it up on Amazon....

The Revisionist History Curriculum Committees. They will reprint the special education edition with Baracko & Hugo on the cover

[Nachum]

How about a copy of The Gulag Archipelago.

[posterchild]

Is this the book that, among other things, credits the USA’s prosperity to the ‘stealing of the cotton gin?’ Hadn’t read it but a FARC supporting marxist once told me about it.

The works of Hernando De Soto (the Peruvian economist not the explorer by the same name) would be a better choice.

[lacrew]

Written on the inside cover: Dear Bambi, you stupid useless lapdog, you’ve been punked.

[MantillaMilitant]

Did Billy Ayers ghost-write it?

[Allegra]

People like Chavez and Ahmadinejad are delighted to have one of their own in the White House.