bush in latin america

US President George Bush is on a whirlwind tour of Latin America this week and next, desperately trying to win back hearts and minds. It's a thinly disguised attempt to counter the growing influence of left-wing leaders in the region, prominent among them Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. But Chavez is not alone; his group of colleagues in the region seems to increase with every election and now includes Nestor Kirschner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the returned Sandinista Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Good luck George.

Bush has been greeted throughout his journey by expected protests, as well as the unexpected. Tomorrow Bush visits the ancient Kaqchiquel Mayan city of Iximche in Guatemala. The Mayans have planned a cleansing ceremony to purify the site after the US head of state departs.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," explained a representative of a Mayan NGO.

From Guatemala, Bush travels to Merida, Mexico, a country where US agricultural policies have had a particularly devasting effect on domestic agricultural production and prices. The opening of the country under NAFTA has led to massive imports of subsidized, dumped maize, beans, rice, you name it. Campesinos in Mexico are demanding that corn and beans are taken out of NAFTA, as the dumped commodities destroy their livelihoods. In a surprise announcement last week, the Minister of Agriculture told US Secretary of Agriculture Johanns that Mexico would be joining Canada in a WTO complaint against illegal US corn subsidies. Things must be pretty bad.