When Hugo Chávez first met Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas in April, the Venezuelan leader could not resist pressing one of his favourite tracts into the US president's hands. Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, a staple of student radical literature, tells the story of a continent that has long seen itself as the victim of foreign exploitation. Mr Chávez, though, may have given the book to the wrong leader. It should have been given to the Chinese.
在今年4月的美洲峯會上，當委內瑞拉領導人烏戈•查韋斯(Hugo Chávez)首次見到巴拉克•歐巴馬(Barack Obama)時，他忍不住把自己最喜歡的書之一——《拉美開裂的血管：被掠奪五個世紀的大洲》(Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)，塞到了美國總統的手上。這本書是愛德華多•加萊亞諾(Eduardo Galeano)所著，以學生激進主義爲題材，講述了拉美長期遭受外國剝削的歷史。不過，這本書或許給錯了人。查韋斯應該把它送給中國領導人。