Chavez to Obama: Read Galeano

by Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES, April 18 — When Barack Obama was elected president last November, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman interviewed Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano on the significance of his victory.

Now, 90 days into his presidency, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez took advantage of the Americas Summit in Trinidad and Tobago to give Obama a copy of Galeano’s book: “The Open Veins of Latin America” as a way of summing up the history of European colonization and later US dominance of the continent.

Chavez, an avid reader and lover of history, first became a book promoter on a global scale when he recommended “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance” by Noam Chomsky at the UN at that UN General Assembly session in September 2006.

It was that same meeting where he coined George W. Bush as the “devil” who had left the UN podium smelling of “sulfur.” Obama and Chavez met for the first time on Friday shaking hands with big smiles.

The Americas Summit in Port of Spain is providing a forum for the US president to hear a chorus of Latin American and Caribbean leaders encouraging him to change the course of history by ending the half-century US blockade on Cuba and mending relations with the Caribbean island.

To read the Amy Goodman interview with Eduardo Galeano on Obama click on http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1562/68/