Why bother with literacy while implementing censorship?
My reaction, when I read this headline, is, Why bother?: Venezuela and Cuba: Illiteracy can be eradicated by 2012

Caracas, Jul 24 (Prensa Latina) About to become an illiteracy-free country, Venezuela is ready to support literacy campaigns in other Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Venezuela's disposition to help other countries will be announced at the upcoming summits of the Ibero American countries and the Organization of American States, Education Minister Aristóbulo Istúriz announced Saturday.

According to the government official, his country has proven that the Cuban teaching method "Yo si puedo" (Yes, I can) can be easily adapted to any country.

Why bother with all this talk of "erradicating illiteracy" when people are not allowed to read freely?

• Chávez has already come out with his version of Don Quijote For Dummies: just this year he took the excellent, definitive Don Quijote de la Mancha 4th Centennary edition by the Read Academia Española, abridged it, removed the essay "Una novela para el siglo XXI" by Mario Vargas Llosa, and replaced that essay with a short preface by José Saramago.


• The essence of Vargas Llosa's censored preface is that Don Quijote's a free men's novel. Saramago, Nobel Prize winner and Portuguese Communist Party member, has gone on the record (link to an article in Spanish) saying he hates democracy.
• Chávez is using the Cuban "Yo si puedo" method -- while Cubans are sent to concentration camps for owning banned books -- the books Fidel doesn't want the people of Cuba to read.
• Investor's Business Daily (via Publius Pundit) reports that Chávez's new television network is designed to put the region’s free press out of business

Yo si puedo, but only if it's what Hugo and Fidel say is OK.

And by the way, "yo si puedo"? Not if it has to do with owning property: Chavez announces mass expropriations

A side note: tell the semi-illiterate literacy campaigners that, if what they mean is "Yes, I can", they should be writing "Yo sí puedo". Otherwise they imply "me, if /when I can". But, on second thought, maybe that's exactly what they have in mind.

More on Cubazuela here.

(technorati tags Venezuela Cuba)