Visit by Bush Fires Up Latins’ Debate Over Socialism

[cal04]

President Bush has portrayed his trip to Latin America this week as a “We Care” tour aimed at dispelling perceptions that he has neglected his southern neighbors.

But fresh graffiti on streets here in São Paulo, where he landed Thursday night for his first stop, calls him a murderer. The smattering of protests and the placement of military vehicles around the city, South America’s largest, also present an alternate interpretation of his visit: as a clash between the open capitalism that Mr. Bush espouses and the socialist approach pushed by leftist leaders who have grown in power and popularity.

And as the administration prepares to use the president’s five-nation tour to highlight a new ethanol development deal with Brazil, the most efficient producer of the fuel, and American health care and education programs elsewhere, much of the tour attention is focusing on what may best be called “the Rumble on the River.”

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Mr. Bush’s chief nemesis in the region, will be leading a protest against him in Buenos Aires, as Mr. Bush arrives Friday in Montevideo, Uruguay, across Rio de la Plata from Argentina. “Our planes will almost cross paths,” Mr. Chávez said this week, though he denied any intention to sabotage Mr. Bush’s visit.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/americas/09latin.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[orwell]

1. Did anyone check...

...Air Force 1 for arms shipments to right wing death squads?

I'm just sayin'...

[Vidar]

2. Bush brings nothing but debt & death. Chavez provides hope.