Upon learning that Hugo Chavez was the second-most followed world leader on Twitter (with 3.8 million followers), I naturally felt inclined to scroll through some of the Venezuelan strongman's social media handiwork. It's all in Spanish though, and quite beyond the decaying vestiges of my high school Spanish education. So Google Translate it was.
And what a fine surprise I uncovered. Robbed of grammatical correctness, molded by Google's confounding vocab substitutions, slathered with misjudged slang and replete with more exclamation points than an episode of Adam West-era Batman, Chavez's tweeted propaganda takes on a whole new life. It's mezmerizing. It becomes socialist sloganeering in a teenager's diary. Cereal box Leninisms. It's just, here:
See? After a Google translation, Chavez rivals Horse ebooks for best surrealist Twitter feed, no?
I'm sure it's all perfectly sensible in his native tongue, so if anyone speaks Spanish out there, drop us a line and let us know what he's actually saying.