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Chavez turns old book into bestseller at summit
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-19 13:30

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago -- One of the biggest winners at the ongoing fifth Summit of the Americas turned out to be a decades-old book about Latin America's colonial past.

The "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano rocketed to bestseller status Saturday night on the online bookstore Amazon.com after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez approached US President Barack Obama and handed him a copy of the book Saturday morning.

Chavez turns old book into bestseller at summit
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gives US President Barack Obama a copy of "Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina" by author Eduardo Galiano during a meeting at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad April 18, 2009. [Agencies]

Both Chavez and Obama were in Port of Spain to attend the three-day summit between April 17 and 19.

The copy had a Chavez handwritten dedicatory that stated: "Para Obama con afecto"(To Obama with affection).

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The publicity about the gift helped propel its English version from relative obscurity to No. 10 on the Amazon.com list of bestsellers on Saturday night.

The book also topped Amazon's "Movers and Shakers," a list of the biggest gainers in its books sales rank over 24 hours.

After receiving the gift, Obama jokingly said he thought it was a book written by Chavez.

Asked if the encounters with Chavez were paving the way for a meeting, Obama responded, "I think we're making progress at the summit."

However, Jeffrey Davidow, the former US ambassador to Venezuela and adviser to Barack Obama at the summit, said that "a shake and a smile does not constitute a new relationship."

"The president was in a meeting with 33 other heads of state," he said. "He shook hands and smiled, I think, with all of them."

First published in 1971 and reissued in several new editions since then, the book is called  by one reviewer as a "passionate account of 500 years of Latin American history, written with drama, humor, and compassion."