A LEFTIST Book Fair--in Venezuela!
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Venezuela Celebrates 6th International Book Fair, Awards Critical Thinking Award
By JUAN REARDON – VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM
Mérida, November 17th 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela is celebrating its 6th International Book Fair (Filven) this week, hosting special guest countries Argentina, Colombia and Mexico who presented a series of books, films, cultural exhibits and dance performances.
Themed, “The Great Homeland Writes its History,” Filven 2010 has made available hundreds of books to readers at subsidized prices, including texts by Latin American revolutionaries Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Fidel Castro for the “socialist price” of one dollar.
Five days into Filven 2010, more than 25,000 books published by the Venezuelan government have been picked up by readers.
Cultural Fair
“We are very happy to be here,” said Patricia Miranda, advisor to Colombia’s Ministry of Culture. “This is the first Colombian event in Venezuela since our two countries re-established relations. We celebrate the cultural union between us,” affirmed Miranda.
On opening day, Venezuelan performers presented music from the state of Miranda while Mexican mariachi bands played their traditional sounds and Argentine tango dancers performed their national dance. Venezuela’s Andrés Eloy Blanco Poetry Society also read poetic works to fairgoers as they passed one of the 132 book stands present at Filven 2010.
“This is a profoundly revolutionary event,” affirmed Venezuelan Minister of Culture Francisco Sesto. “Ours is a cultural revolution, and in particular, an editorial revolution,” he said.
According to daily newspaper El Nacional, Venezuela now ranks fourth among Latin American nations in terms of books published. Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, honored guests at the book fair, are the three countries in the region which publish more.
Venezuelan writer and journalist Modesto Emilio Guerrero, who presented his book, 12 Dilemmas of the Bolivarian Revolution, referred to what he called the “democratization of thought, of access to culture.”
“(There is a) giant variety in themes, titles, authors, opinions that contradict one another – always within the pursuit of the best objectives for our peoples – but opposing opinions that make writing and publishing worthwhile, avoiding the crazy monologue, the speaking to oneself,” affirmed Guerrero.
According to the Venezuelan News Agency (AVN), over 100 titles are available on environmental issues alone, including a dictionary of ecological terms, a field guide of Venezuelan flora, books on climate change and sustainable agriculture.
The Cuban Book Association and Cuban Institute for Books brought over 3,000 titles to fairgoers.
With almost 15 books under his arms, Venezuelan social worker Sergio Lares spoke to the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA). “At these prices it’s worth buying these books and giving them as gifts,” said Lares. “I’m taking with me The Paris Commune, this book by Che, one by (Venezuelan independence hero) Sucre and another one by Mao,” Lares said.
According to Minister Sesto, Venezuela has printed close to 100 million books during the 10 years of the Bolivarian Revolution. The government’s goal is to print 30 million books per year.
Politics of Liberation
As part of Filven 2010, on Monday Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez presented the annual “Liberator Critical Thinking Award” to Latin American philosopher and writer Enrique Dussel Ambrosini for his work entitled, Politics of Liberation, Volume II.
Dussel is one of the founders of the Latin American Philosophy of Liberation Movement and was exiled to Mexico by the military dictatorship of his native Argentina.
According to AVN, of the 60 works submitted from 15 different countries, Dussel’s book was selected for having “described the historical moment and the current political culture of our time, focusing on a perspective of the problems faced by the Global South, in particular, Latin America.” The book, in short, is a critical history of the historical development of political ideas with special attention paid to Latin American thought.
Last year’s award went to Hungarian Marxist Istvan Meszaros for his book, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in the 21st Century.http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5793(Creative Commons License)
(My emphases.)
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Whoa! No wonder our corpo-fascist establishment wants to shut the Chavez government down! Providing nearly free books on leftist subjects! Time-Warner execs must be tearing their gray hairs out!
Here, we don't have enough books for the children in our schools; we're shutting down public libraries; we're firing teachers and librarians; we have a child population zonked on violent video games and TV crapola; good writers literally starve to death, can't get published, are shut out by the 5 "entertainment" moguls who control everything, and if they're leftist political writers, they're probably on government "terrorist" lists. And legions of our people are too demoralized and disempowered to participate in the political life of our nation.
I love this idea of the government publishing LEFTIST books and holding Book Fairs and encouraging reading. The government should step in where private enterprise fails and providing useful, provocative political ideas in book form is something that the moguls have quite deliberately failed at. Reading is so much better for human minds than being spoon-fed 30-second political commercials! You can take Marx or leave it. You can take Che or leave it. You can take Enrique Dussel Ambrosini or leave it. Your choice. Open the book, don't open the book. Read, think, evaluate. A book gives you a choice. It, by its very nature, encourages you to think for yourself.
And I do believe that that is a purpose of the Chavez government--for people to think for themselves. It's why they have put such effort into wiping out illiteracy in Venezuela. It's why they have poured resources into education. It's why they print the Venezuelan Constitution on grocery bags! It's why they hand out tiny blue books containing the entire Constitution to anyone who wants one. It's why they handed out millions of free copies of "Don Quixote." It's why they do Book Fairs and publish books. Yeah, they have their political perspective on things, and I don't imagine that corpo-fascist writers had much cache at this Book Fair, or get published by the Chavistas. But so what? You can read a book or you can go watch TV. Your choice. The government is open and unambivalent about where it stands. They aren't sneaky, like our corpo-fascist rulers are, slipping rightwing propaganda into entertainment, or treating news and political discussion AS "entertainment" and thus trivializing it and turning it into a sickening spectacle with no reality. The Chavez government is OUT FRONT with its socialist ideas, take it or leave it.
You want to read Milton Friedman, or Ayn Rand, or blivet's 'auto'-biography, or read about vampires and serial killers, or read romance novels, you are free to do so if you can afford the stiff prices, or can find what you want in a used book store. If you're in the U.S., though, don't count on finding a library open. Don't even count on finding a book store, used or otherwise. And don't count on being able to find what you're looking for in this very, very controlled book market--and especially don't count on it for downloading to your "Kindle." You might be able to find the obscure and the out-of-print at Amazon.com, if you're willing to pay high shipping costs. But don't fool yourself that the U.S. has anything like "freedom of the press." We don't. The U.S. "marketplace of ideas" is DYING. And how delightful that alternative political ideas are alive and well in Venezuela--and subsidized by the government!
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