Hugo Chavez : The "Perfect Latin American Idiot"

It is a pity that not all idiots realize their mistakes.

Readers have probably seen by now the video and photos of Hugo Chavez explicitly approaching Obama, the highest representative of what he calls the empire, in order to present him with a copy of the book “Open Veins of Latin America” by the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano. Most ironic is that Obama originally believed that Chavez had written the book, without knowing that Chavez has never written one. Obama thought about giving Chavez one of his own books, without realizing that Chavez also does not read English.

“Open Veins of Latin America” is an outdated, Socialist book from 1971. It contains significant errors that can clearly be seen today. Nevertheless, it is still a widely read book by the one who is known today as the “perfect Latin-American idiot.”

Now then, who is that perfect Latin American idiot? The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa clearly answers that question in the foreword to the “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.”

“He believes that we’re poor because they are rich and vice versa, that history is a successful conspiracy of evil against good, where they always win and we always lose (he is always among the poor victims and the noble losers). He has no objection to surfing through cyberspace and being on-line, while at the same time—without realizing the contradiction—loathing consumerism. When he speaks of culture he boasts, ‘What I know I learned from life, not from books, so my culture isn’t academic but pragmatic.’ Who is he? He is the perfect Latin American idiot.”

The Colombian Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, the Cuban Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Peruvian Alvaro Vargas Llosa are the authors of the popular “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot” which was originally published in 1996 as an intelligent alternative to the idiocies of Open Veins of Latin America upon its 25th year celebration.

It is also worth remembering that the Guide was dedicated to the memory of a great Venezuelan, Carlos Rangel, for spreading intelligent ideas of freedom through works such as “Del buen salvage al buen revolucionario” (1976), translated and published in 1987 under the title “The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States” and “El Tercermundismo” (1982), translated and published under the title “Third World Ideology and Western Reality—Manufacturing Political Myth” in 1986. Equally fascinating is the knowledge that the three authors, and the prologue writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, acknowledged that they were “perfect idiots” in their younger days, but that they fortunately had matured and learned from their own mistakes and those of others.

It is a pity that not all idiots realize their mistakes because it appears that some of them proudly show off the title of “perfect Latin American idiot.”