Chavez Gives Obama A History Book

Better than an iPod? On the second day of the Summit of the Americas Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presented President Obama with a book on Latin American history.

Much attention has been paid so far to the interactions between the two leaders, who had never met before the summit. Their first meeting Friday night, which consisted simply of smiling and shaking hands, caused quite a stir. If yesterday's photo-op was all about the handshake, than today's was all about the gift.

More details from the AP:

In front of photographers, Chavez gave Obama a copy of "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," a book by Eduardo Galeano, which chronicles U.S. and European economic and political interference in the region.

When a reporter asked Obama what he thought of the book, the president replied: "I thought it was one of Chavez' books. I was going to give him one of mine." White House advisers said they didn't know if Obama would read it or not.

Later, during a group photo, Obama reached behind several leaders at the summit to shake Chavez' hand for the third time. Obama summoned a translator and the two smiled and spoke briefly.

As ABC's Jake Tapper points out, Chavez's gift was perhaps not as gracious as it may seem, given that the book attacks the US for what it considers its exploitation of Latin America.
Tapper also notes that the book Chavez gave Obama is soaring on Amazon.

The Washington Post has more on Galeano's book and career here.

Interested in checking out Chavez's recommended reading? Check it out on Amazon.

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Comments

[johnbatist]

09:27 PM on 04/20/2009

yaaa. the empire will not learn a thing ever if chavez ives him a library full of history books. the emperor is as always AHISTORCAL

[ENOS]

01:11 PM on 04/21/2009

haha.. your comment is laughable

I bet Obama will read this, and I bet Obama understands many of the points expressed within.

However, I think it's naive to not recognize that this is all just the nature of business. America is a new land, and many of its people are not industrious enough to take matters into their own hands, so they rely on well established foriegn companies to take charge. Sure, there are plenty of cases of people being taken advantage of, but what about the responsibilty their own leaders play in this.

Laws are formed to limit people's AND COMPANIES' rights. Laws are good if used to protect people from greedy industries. Latin American leaders are notorious for selling out their own people for their own gain. The blame goes all around.

[tanwasp]

08:43 PM on 04/20/2009

Bottom line.... President Obama Needs to start acting like he is representing 400 million people. If President Obama is somehow sore about our American past, I guess thats fair on some levels, but overall incredibly narrow minded. The U.S. has been the worlds life raft of sorts since our founding. Have we made mistakes, well yes, we have made many. But more importantly we have been a guiding light for the world. No amount of media highlights on the negative can take away from the spectacular things we have done and are doing in the world for our fellow man.

To put it bluntly I don't appreciate the fact that the leader of 400 million people, and the forbearer of our precious values, would be so flippant with the Office of the President of the United States. Obama you hold a sacred position. Mr. President, please represent us with the nobility we deserve.

Many Thanks.

[LoyalOpposition]

07:31 AM on 04/21/2009

This is a great country, made great by its people, whom George W. Bush and Dick Cheney betrayed by leading us into a misbegotten war, and by making us the laughing stock of the entire world, with his antics, not to mention being hated for our occupation of Iraq for profit, and torture, etc., etc., etc.. Save your patriotic lecture for those responsbile for the past horrendous 8 years.

[folkie]

02:43 PM on 04/20/2009

After Obama gave the book, in English, to Obama, it rocketed from 734th place to 2nd place on amazon.com's best seller list.

Galeano's book gives a true history of our predations in Latin America. For those who might want the carefully documented details, there is a scholarly tome by Colby and Dennett called, "Thy Will Be Done the Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil."

For more recent details see the msnbc 2007 storry, "Chiquita pleads guilty in terrorism probe"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17688439/
"Banana company Chiquita Brands International admitted in federal court Monday that, for years, it paid terrorists to protect its Colombian banana-growing operations."

Another overview can be found in General Smedley Butler's 1935 book, "War is a Racket," or in Naomi Klein's more recent book, "The Shock Doctrine."

We have no right to steal the resources of other countries. For those who consider themselves to be liberal, progressive, or leftist, this should be self-obvious. Only neo-liberals (which we in the U.S. usually call neo-conservatives), consider it our right to use military force to take that which is not ours.

For an economic overview, Ha-Joon Chang's book, "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism," explores the lies.

Obama, in his few short months in office, has given more to the rich than Bush and Cheney did in eight years. Viva Chavez!

[Ira7]

12:22 PM on 04/20/2009

Typical Chavez to give Obama a book in Spanish.

I'm telling you--the guy is just plain STUPID.

[RoastedSmurf]

02:21 PM on 04/20/2009

I'm sorry HE'S STUPID? the book given is the English translation - the original publishing was in Spanish.

Please inform yourself before making a yourself look like a tool

[Ira7]

11:05 AM on 04/20/2009

As usual, Chavez does something stupid and arrogant.

Look, I support Obama and he's no dummy, but I'll be watching closely to see just how much leeway he gives this fascist.

A handshake might just be a handshake to you, but these images matter. If you lived in Venezuela right now and saw what's going on there with "democracy," you wouldn't be so quick to smile and make nicey nicey.

[LoyalOpposition]

08:38 AM on 04/20/2009

Far be it for me to contradict Jake Tapper, but actually, for Chavez to have gifted U.S. President Barack Obama "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," a book by Eduardo Galeano, is a touching way to express the wish to communicate the heart and mind of the Latin American. Based on a history of the people who originally inhabited these Americas, Galeano's book is a love poem which seeks to heal the old wounds and betrayal. But first there must be honesty, and Galeano tells the truth like no other writer. He is a Pablo Naruda of love gone bad between Continents.

[RoastedSmurf]

02:23 PM on 04/20/2009

here here - well said... though some are not fans of open and educated banter. those are the ones one needs to be careful of

[AspenFreePress]

10:19 PM on 04/19/2009

The photo is no great shakes! Remember, Nixon went to Moscow to engage Khruschev after the Russian leader had said to the U.S., "We will bury you." And I don't remember too many Republicans grinding their teeth about it. Furthermore, there wasn't a shot fired in our cold war with the USSR. Sterling Greenwood/Aspen Free Press

[Clayton139]

11:16 PM on 04/19/2009

Well said !

[Jazzman323]

09:59 PM on 04/19/2009

Obama should have given a copy of the US Constitution to Chavez as a gift, to give him a clue as to how a free country works.

[Clayton139]

11:15 PM on 04/19/2009

Obama did not go down there to start any controversy or gain attention as did Chavez !
It was a meeting for all Latin American Countries !

[RoastedSmurf]

02:32 PM on 04/20/2009

maybe you need to be reminded that Chavez is a Democratically elected leader? or is that unconstitutional?

furthermore, Chavez sees Obama as a new hope for renewed and unbiased communication between the two nations - perhaps instead of vilifying the guy for the gift we could see it as just that , a way to communicate Latin America's grievances towards a country that has long tried to own and control the wealth of natural resources in the southern nations.

Or maybe we can see it reversed - Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru etc decide to buy and use US's Resources and funnel them back to the South for their use and consumption for decades on end- Giving nothing back to the US as compensation... Then the US after decades and decades of this decides that their own American citizens have a right to use these resources (since they're on their land) and decides that they'll take them back now to take care of their own people... is that wrong? hmmm not sure but the one way argument doesn't hold much water.

Galeano's argument is a well educated and valid one - read the book.

[Antonio518]

04:45 PM on 04/19/2009

INFRASTRUCTURE. An express highway, new bridges, metros, new highways, and the railways have been nationalized. INDUSTRY. Massive hydroelectric plants, petrochemical plants, cement, industrial zones..FARMING. There have been record rice and corn crops They have imported seminal bulls from Argentina and Uruguay to improve cattle and quality of the meat. The government has confiscated idle lands and turned them over to the peasants. There is a national plan to grow beans so that Venezuela does not need to import them. The aim is for agricultural self-sufficiency in all areas. THE ECONOMY. There have been 13 consecutive trimesters of steady growth.The tax on the debt has been eliminated. The public debt itself has been reduced 47.5 points in 2003 and 25 points in 2006. Venezuela freed itself from the claws of the IMF. , which had caused untold poverty in the Continent. Rather than having a single product, oil, the country has diversified its production so that it doesn't have to depend on one market that could collapse in the future. The Venezuelan rich have always avoided taxes, until Chávez. Now they have to fork over their share.. Minimum wage has risen to 238 dollars a month, the highest in Latin America. Inflation has been reduced from 30 to 9%. The national bank has been created, which is independent of the current world crisis, having its own reserves. The public debt has been reduced by 8.13%. The national reserves are at 38 billion dollars.

[Ira7]

11:09 AM on 04/20/2009

What world are you living in? Not once sentence you wrote is true.

You say inflation has been reduced from 30% to 9%? It's now AT30% and expected to hit 50% in 2009.

What are you smoking?

[Antonio518]

04:38 PM on 04/19/2009

THE MISSIONS. Literacy, college entrance, land refrom, jobs, high qulaity food at rock bottom prices, new homes, retraining programs, free health care, indigenous problems.SELF ESTEEM. The Bolivarian revolution has made Venezuelans proud of their country. Venezuela has achieved better and fairer prices on the world market. Venezuela has acquired an enviable reputation among nations as a team player and on the side of justice. It is recognized as an important presence Latin America, as in the presidency of Latin American Parliament of Presidents. It has proposed a social program for Latin America that was approved by the OAS.ENERGY. Venezuelans now have oil sovereignty. Venezuelans have recovered their petroleum industry, with OPEC on their side to defend the standard in prices. It has recovered 26 billion dollars by virtue of being nationalized Many more citizens now have potable water and electricity than beforeTHE RULE OF LAW. Any conflict of interest is to be settled by Venezuelan courts, not foreign courts as before.DEMOCRACY. The presidency keeps the population constantly informed with state television programs. Venezuela has risen from the least democratic country to second, along with Uruguay, as the most democratic country in the OAS . The Venezuelan government today is the most democratic ever, with freedom of expression and no prosecution due to political ideas.CORRUPTION. Cronyism is being done away with. Functionaries can no longer cover for each other

[Ira7]

11:10 AM on 04/20/2009

You're just FULL of funny stuff!

[dcazal01]

04:07 PM on 04/19/2009

I am a cuban-venezuelian and I have read "las venas abiertas... ".The main cause of the misery in Latin America is not foreign intervention but local caudillos and autocracy; exemplified by Castro and Chaves. It is the need to blame other and the trick of historicism (look in history for fact to prove our thesis while disregarding all episodes that contracit it) that made this book popular among the not too wel educated leftists.

We have the same kind of books here popular among right wing nuts..."we are good the others are bad etc.".

Human history is so long and complex that you can find, if you look hard enough, support for all kind of crazy ideas. By studing our (Latin merican) history from an uncompromising perspective we will find out that boyh Spain and US were beneficial influences in troubled times, and of course the british empire too was a civilzatory and a positive element in a violent and unjust world. Even The Russian influence with all its brutallity made countries like Azerbajan, Turmekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakistan better economicallt, politically and culturally than Afghanistan that was never coquered.

Latin America has to learn that we are part of the western civilization.

[Arrecho]

09:20 AM on 04/20/2009

The local caudillos and autocracy are better exemplified by Batista and the right wing military juntas, not by Castro and Chavez. Refer to the next post for how a country develops once free of the transnationals. Cuba is an exception, because the embargo kills the development of the country, otherwise we would have another Venezuelan story. The corporations, through the IMF, with support from the CIA, have dictated the fate of Latin American countries, eliminating populist governments again and again. The colonialist mentality only has brought prosperity to the white elites, not to the people. The new populist governments, embracing the global market; but firmly rooted in their own people's tradition and mentality seem to be the way of the future (Evo Morales).

[MarlOm]

02:21 PM on 04/19/2009

I can understand why there is serious interest in this book. However, be aware that
Galeano's book has been turned into the so-called adopted "bible" of the resentment born from the Spanish conquest genocide. The stories could very well be true, but they have been used by the most extreme backward leftist movement of the continent to justify rude and old-fashioned attitudes and insist in revenge against the colonial empires, and for extension the USA, as opposed to justice towards Latin American countries. We can therefore deduce that this is "the" book (which by the way I read in the eities in the original Spanish and loved then) of those who insist into looking at the past instead of those who look towards the future.

This attitude is typical of Chavez's favorite ideologues, focused on the past. They are stuck there, and on whose ideas he has built his twisted model of a society he wishes to impose.

[TalentedOne]

12:42 PM on 04/19/2009

Obama you have just disgraced America even more by shaking hands with the enemy. Chavez should have been spat on! I guess this is no surprise since Obama's buddies Rev. Wright and Bill Ayres have been his associates for years. What a DISGRACE!!!!

[mendelcrosses]

10:45 AM on 04/20/2009

If you think making peace with your enemy is disgraceful,then i like to know what is honorable.

[Ira7]

12:19 PM on 04/20/2009

Yeah--the world would be a much better place if Churchill had made peace with Hitler instead of fighting him.

[DrRoberts99]

10:57 AM on 04/19/2009

"As ABC's Jake Tapper points out, Chavez's gift was perhaps not as gracious as it may seem, given that the book attacks the US for what it considers its exploitation of Latin America." This is your MSM at work. Any sixth grader should be aware of the history of "Gunboat Diplomacy" and American Imperialism in Latin America. What you won't read is that the CIA held Chavez captive during a U.S. sponsored coup attempt under G.W. Bush. The coup failed. Even stalwarts of the Left like Adrianna Huffington's good friend Bill Maher think Chavez is the bad guy and rarely misses a chance to ridicule him. This is a man that supplied free heating oil to the poor in our own country. Obama's overtures to Castro and Chavez are incredibly courageous but at the same time common sensical. This is change you can believe in.

[Savanna]

08:47 AM on 04/19/2009

Americans (not Obama) tend to look at the world only one way..their way. They don't want to know or understand how the other person feels. A wise man once said to me that the world is percieved from where one stands. President Obama believes deeply that one must put themselves in another's shoes to find out possible solutions to problems.
The history of explotiation around the world by this country and the Western block is worth a reading.
We can change our additudes and actions. For instances, we over threw the freely elected parliment
and government of Iran and installed our own choice. I wonder how we would feel if that had happened to us in this country. Hence Iran tends to be a bit paranoid towards us. And after all we have
invaded their neighbor and torn that country to pieces one bitter shell at a time.
History is a valuable teacher if one looks at ALL of the issues from many points of view, and you won't get this information on the History Channel.