Something is afoul in the Revolutionary Socialist Republic of Venezuela. Despite food shortages, blackouts and the terrible violence, El Comandante's iron grip is stronger than ever. Newly decorated Lieutenant Juan Marco Machado lovingly caresses his shiny AK-103 as he thinks about his promotion and what he would be willing to do to defend his revolution, and his position. He is about to find out it's more than he ever would have believed.

Dona Esmeralda is in trouble. Ordered to demonstrate her solidarity for the revolution and open her colonial mansion (in which she carefully protects her dead husband's ghost) to the barrio dwellers, she decides she is left with no choice but to plot a counterrevolution. Meanwhile, Freddy, an American high school student is propelled by his parents to attend a socialist youth summit in Venezuela, pitting him against Pancho Randelli, a freedom activist and leader of the struggling student movement. And so the fates of four people are about to be intertwined within a country plunged into revolution.

"The Lieutenant of San Porfirio" is the compelling story about four people seeking to find themselves under the chilling pall of socialism.

People from different backgrounds and across the hemisphere will find something to love, as well as something deeply disturbing, in this new magical realism twist on a South American classic genre, the dictator novel.

Something is afoul in the Revolutionary Socialist Republic of Venezuela. Despite food shortages, blackouts and the terrible violence, El Comandante's iron grip is stronger than ever. Newly decorated Lieutenant Juan Marco Machado lovingly caresses his shiny AK-103 as he thinks about his promotion and what he would be willing to do to defend his revolution, and his position. He is about to find out it's more than he ever would have believed.

Dona Esmeralda is in trouble. Ordered to demonstrate her solidarity for the revolution and open her colonial mansion (in which she carefully protects her dead husband's ghost) to the barrio dwellers, she decides she is left with no choice but to plot a counterrevolution. Meanwhile, Freddy, an American high school student is propelled by his parents to attend a socialist youth summit in Venezuela, pitting him against Pancho Randelli, a freedom activist and leader of the struggling student movement. And so the fates of four people are about to be intertwined within a country plunged into revolution.

"The Lieutenant of San Porfirio" is the compelling story about four people seeking to find themselves under the chilling pall of socialism.

People from different backgrounds and across the hemisphere will find something to love, as well as something deeply disturbing, in this new magical realism twist on a South American classic genre, the dictator novel.

Few topics are more hotly debated in the Americas today than what is Venezuela's Hugo Chavez's Socialism of the 21st Century, the Bolivarian Revolution, and Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). Joel D. Hirst's pathbreaking study examines the Chavez phenomenon and ALBA, crisply documenting the political and economic ideology behind Chavez's petroleum-driven alliance of nations. Heavily committed to a collectivist, authoritarian, and anti-American future, ALBA in its present confi guration challenges U.S. democratic values, economic liberty, and hemispheric security cooperation. It should be a matter of concern, not just to Washington policy makers, but to all friends of freedom throughout the Americas. Ray Walser, Ph.D., Senior Policy Analyst, The Heritage Foundation