The Education of Obama

First, He Needs to Read the Book by Galeano and then the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot

What a surprise. Several weeks ago, the secret service of several countries gathered in Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas, to which all the leaders of the continent, except Raul Castro, had been invited. There they discovered that Hugo Chavez had traveled with a book.

Amazing! What was he reading? An old and inane “bestseller” entitled, “The Open Veins of Latin America,” perpetrated by the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano in the early seventies.

Soon it became known why Chavez carried it. He intended to educate President Barack Obama. He wanted to show him why Latin America is poor and why the masses are anti-American.

According to the Galeano book, Latin America’s misfortunes are a result of unjust exploitation of the continent by insatiable imperial powers which draw its blood in the form of raw materials, while at the same time selling its products at unfair prices, all of this in collusion with the wretched local capitalistic class, invariably at the beck and call of exploiting nations.

Who is at fault, according to the book? Affluent exporting nations, international banks, foreign investors, local industrialists, developed societies.

Even the scoundrels who finance birth control plans among the poor are evil (and this is a phrase that I love as an example of the most exquisite “kitsch” art because of its unsurpassed mix of stupidity and affectation): “In Latin America, it is more hygienic and efficient to kill guerillas in the uterus than in the mountains or on the streets.”

Obama cannot win with Latin Americans. Fortunately, Oscar Arias, President of Costa Rica and a Nobel Prize winner, improvised a splendid speech contrary to the ideas of Chavez and Galeano.

But a few days later, quietly, another leader whose name I am not authorized to disclose, sent the North American President a copy of the “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot,” written by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Plinio Apuyelo and myself; with a note suggesting that he carefully read the third chapter, “The Idiot’s Bible,” which was intended to debunk the absurd theories of Galeano.

Our book will not show Obama anything he does not already know. Galeanos’ book, on the other hand, will help him understand what transpires inside the confused minds of our most bizarre and destructive weirdoes.

It is a sad spectacle, but if one is to live with certain wacky neighbors, it is better to know the origin of this curious behavior. That book describes it in full detail. It is the idiot’s Bible.