Massive Protests Greet Bush in Argentina

President Bush, faced with a foundering presidency and record low popularity, ran into new protests abroad at a Western hemisphere summit in Argentina last week–a gathering that theoretically focused on trade but instead served to highlight the battered image of the US across Latin America. The president went into the 34-nation "Summit of the Americas" intent on promoting traditional US doctrines of free trade and liberal market economics, with the goal of a giant free trade area, building on the existing agreements, that would stretch from Alaska to the tip of South America. But not far from the sealed-off, massively protected hotel where the leaders met, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the resort city of Mar del Plata. "Get Out Bush" they chanted, in protest not only at the free trade proposals but at the Iraq war and other US policies. Before dawn on Nov. 4, the first day of the summit, thousands greeted a train bringing the last group of fellow demonstrators from Buenos Aires, including Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona, who donned a T-shirt accusing President Bush of war crimes. The demonstrators soon took to the streets, heading toward a stadium where Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was to make a speech before joining the summit. Many railed against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) trade pact, the still-pending trade agreement that became the main point of contention during the summit negotiations. Heading up the morning march, under a steady rain, were Argentine Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the president of the local human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, as well as indigenous Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales of the Movement to Socialism and other social and political leaders. Also taking part in the protest was Francisco Dos Reis, president of the Association of Small and Medium Companies of Argentina, who commented that the FTAA would have a "brutal" effect on that sector of the economy. "All you have to do is take a look at what happened in Mexico as a result of NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement]," which links Canada, Mexico and the United States, he argued. "With the FTAA, the United States wants to do the same thing it did with the Alliance for Progress in the late 1950s, when the number of poor in Latin America climbed from 100 to 200 million," he added. The protest, which according to the organizers drew at least 50,000 demonstrators, also included members of social and political movements that support the center-left Argentine government of President Néstor Kirchner, like the Party for the Democratic Revolution and organizations of unemployed workers known as piqueteros for their strategy of mounting roadblocks. Indigenous leaders from a number of countries also took part in the march. The march was called by the organizers of the third Peoples' Summit, held in Mar del Plata Nov. 1 through Nov. 4 by civil society organizations from Latin America, North America and the Caribbean to discuss alternatives to the FTAA.