While conservatives here in the U.S. sling the word “socialism” around like an insult, in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is leading a crusade for children to learn all about it via books. Chavez’s “Plan Revolucionario de Lectura” (“Revolutionary Reading Plan”) is getting off the ground now, with the goal, according to Chavez, of “constructing the new man”.

Chavez says he’ll be doing this by encouraging the reading of “revolutionary books”, while at the same time ridding libraries of classics such as “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Cervantes’ classic Don Quijote for “ideological reasons”. I wonder what ideology he is referring to. No, I mean really…I don’t get what ideology is espoused in either of those books that he might disagree with. Maybe I need to read them again?

Chavez’s critics say he’s trashing lots of other books as well, citing that they must be thrown out because they are infested with mold or moths. According to La Tercera, among them are Hitchcock’s The Mummy, another one I don’t get. The books were allegedly sold to a recycling company for pennies on the kilo.

First it was RCTV, now it’s library books? Is this a harder push towards a cultural revolution in Venezuela? What do you think of what Chavez is doing? Let us know in the comments.

Via / La Tercera