Concerning William Haige's "Letter to the Editor," there are some things I would like to say.

Mr. Haige, real, human history is being written and made right now!

* Chavez didn't "take office" or "take power" in the 90s; he attempted a coup which failed and was sent to jail for two years and was pardoned by President Caldera under popular pressure. Chavez took office in 1999 after winning a democratic election monitored by OAS and the EU, among other NGOs from around the world. I don't recall Stalin winning an election of this type. At last Mr. Hage recognizes that Chavez "is now a legitimate President."
* When a President executes a policy or administrates the State, everybody says it's the government doing so, they don't differentiate between the President or the government. Please enlighten us by making clear what you mean by "your government, or I should say, Chavez."
* Poorly informed as you seem to be, allow me to illustrate to you that it was the old rulers (AD, Copei, all good capitalists) who plundered Venezuela's wealth by stealing it and giving it to the IMF, who never developed a basic industrialized economy in 40 years of total non-Marxist hegemony.
* Marxism will not work in Venezuela because Marxism isn't present in Venezuela yet, so you and your pupils can sleep deeply and don't worry for us. If it shows up, be sure it'll be the first time that it will happen, because you seem to forget that until now there were no real, true Marxism anywhere ... not even in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, currently there's no Marxism in North Korea or China.
Furthermore, Socialism would be a real revolutionary human experiment, because here in Venezuela, the realization of a possible Marxism or socialism would really be a novelty, be innovative, would be the real New. There are no books written about it as yet, since real, human history is being written and made right now.
* Come ask Mc Donald's if Chavez is telling them how to make their happy meals; or if he's telling BP to retire from oil wells; or if he's telling Caracas-based cable channels to broadcast his weekly show. Come to Venezuela and ask the people if teaching the illiterate how to read and write is to remove their rights; if opening a small food store with fair prices in every village is to remove their rights. You should ask your students about who they admire the most: their parents or Eminem, their teacher or Britney Spears before talking about capitalistic cult-like figures.
* Russia has not been Marxist since Lenin and Trotsky died ... and neither has China since Mao died ... so they moved away from Marx a long time ago, and not because they are knowing the heavenly advantages of capitalism today.
* "International community" is realizing now US mass media are very good at turning lies into truths, as they've learned from Goebbels (another capitalistic historical product, unless you think Hitler's "nazional-sozialismus" was Marxism).
* Please inform us about a capitalistic country without poverty to quickly move over there!
* Capitalistic democratic presidents don't control the media? What then is the Patriot Act? An attempt to control consuming patterns by the media? Concerning Venezuela, a former President named Lusinchi used foreign currency controls to manipulate the media by suppressing their access to US dollars to buy paper, ink, computers, import movies, etc; and I don't recall anybody calling him a Marxist dictator.
Today all the media is open ... and the only time they were closed between 1999 and 2006 was during the April 2002 coup against Chavez when the Governor of Miranda closed VTV (state TV channel). Months previously Caracas' mayor Alfredo Pena shut down Catia TV (community TV channel) ... all good, trustable capitalist leaders. Go figure.
* Your letter has allowed me to make a contrast study with people who think and people who refuses to do so. Letters like that convince me more there's a lot of revolutionary work to be done and that capitalist indoctrination has done a very fine job, since not all will be able to open their eyes and many are already sentenced to perish in their artificial paradise.
* Opposing political parties banned themselves by withdrawing their candidates from the last election. They just didn't want to show the world they were going to get a real thrashing, a declining process that started before Chavez showed up in the political scenario.
Finally, as you can see, teacher (if you are really a teacher, I think I know what you really are though) I didn't brush off arguments with a few words.
You'll need more than a book to really comprehend Venezuelan and world reality.
The only thing I regret is those poor students of yours, maybe one of them could really become a good teacher, which only pre-requisite is to consider oneself a student for life.