The American Spectator

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Raised in a family of teachers, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias loved to read, especially biographies of his heroes Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro and Joseph Stalin...

It's a familiar story. The hero is convinced he is a revolutionary, the likes of Bolivar and Che, and so sets off to save the world. Two unsuccessful coups later he founds a socialist party, and with the backing of his idol Castro, terrorism-sponsoring states like Iran and Libya, and a sharp economic downturn, he manages to stir up enough resentment against the rich to get himself elected.

And everywhere he turns he finds giants disguised as windmills...or oil wells.

"We're still oppressed by giants," Culture Minister Francisco Sesto tells the BBC, "so we want the Venezuelan people to get to know better Don Quixote, who we see as a symbol of the struggle for justice and the righting of wrongs."

Don Quixote is an early 17th century satire of a dying medieval society that was being quickly pushed aside by the Renaissance and the Reformation. It tells the tale of a deluded old man lost in a romantic fantasy. So perhaps it is a fitting metaphor for today's leftist leaders who remain frozen in the past -- 1917 -- to be exact, long before the socialist experiment had come a cropper.

On the 400th anniversary of its publication, Chavez's government is handing out a million free copies of Don Quixote, as a novel way of inspiring the masses. The poor will read the book -- well, a few chapters anyway -- and think, "See, he cares about us. He gives us a free book. The old regime would never do that." Not that Chavez is interested in increasing literacy rates or promoting the love of classical literature. Rather he is using Cervantes' masterpiece for propaganda purposes.

"Don't be left without your Quixote," says Chavez. "We are all going to read Quixote to feed our spirit with this fighter who came out to get rid of injustice and fix the world. To some degree, we are followers of Quixote." Few critics can resist commenting that in that case Venezuelans are followers of a foolishly idealistic and hallucinating knight errant.

Venezuela (which means "Little Venice") is a picture book country. Beautiful white beaches on the Caribbean, snow-capped mountains, Amazonian jungles in the south. Ideal weather. It has the kind of natural resources most countries envy, including one of the largest known oil deposits in the world, as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, and gold.

Yet most Venezuelans live in poverty, many of them squatting in shantytowns controlled by gangs of armed thugs -- supporters of the regime known as the Bolivarian Circles. In the seven years Chavez has been in power, little has changed, despite the highest oil revenues in a decade. The people are as poor as ever. Chavez blames this not on the impossibilities of socialism, but on menacing giants.

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Taxes, Trade, Television, Satire, Law, Supreme Court, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Socialism, Oil, Unions