MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

To school for reading classes with Karl Marx and Che Guevara

Pte. Chavez launch the “The Revolutionary Reading Plan”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez approved last week a list of books for schools to educate young people on Socialist ideology and the Bolivarian revolution, reported the Caracas press.

“The Revolutionary Reading Plan” includes the works of communist theorist Karl Marx and revolutionary Socialist Che Guevara, which will become compulsory for schoolchildren.

Venezuela’s Ministry of Culture said on its website that the plan will help schoolchildren to get rid of “capitalist thinking” and better understand the ideals and values “necessary to build a Socialist country and society”.

In addition to books on communist ideology, the school program will include the love letters of Simon Bolivar, credited with liberating the Spanish colonies in the 19th century, to “entertain” the children.

“Read, read and read, that is the task of every day. Reading to form conscious and minds”, said Chavez. “Everyday we must inject the counter revolution a dose of liberation through reading”.

The revolutionary reading plan will reaffirm values leading to “the consolidation of the new man and the new woman, as the foundations for the construction of a Socialist motherland, unravelling the capitalist imaginary” he added.

However the list also includes several books written by government officials that remind the “personality cult” that cost the head to so many Communist officials during the Soviet era.

“Venezuelan Socialism and the foundation party” from Finance minister Ali Rodríguez, “Christian ideas and other contributions to Socialist debate” with fragments of Chavez speeches; “Media dictatorship” by Luis Britto Garcia; “Chavez Speeches” by Leonardo Ruiz and the “Chavez Code” by Eva Golinger, are some of the books in the approved list.