until independence do us part?

Protests greet Bush... again.

Greenpeace activists met Bush yesterday in Mérida, Mexico to let him know what they thought of the contaminated US rice that is filling their supermarket shelves. They celebrated a mock wedding between Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón, pelleting the pair with the tainted rice the Mexicans don't want to eat.

See the photo currently at www.greenpeace.org/usa

bush offers to help carry lettuce

Yesterday Bush appeared in Guatemala, wearing a jacket made from traditional Guatemalan textiles. His photo op was at an agricultural export facility, where cameras recorded the US president loading boxes of lettuce. Perhaps the destination of the lettuce would be the US.

Agricultural export crops such as lettuce pose significant threats to human health and the environment due to the heavy amount of pesticides and fertilizers used to create those perfect veggies. Still, in one of the poorest Central American countries, the agricultural export industry has helped to keep some peasants involved in agriculture in the beautiful Guatemalan highlands. But many more peasants are migrating to textile maquiladoras in the cities, fruit and vegetable processing plants, or they are migrating to the United States, through Mexico.

The Guatemalan president petitioned the US president to stop deporting illegal immigrants. Something like 10% of the Guatemalan population migrates to the US, most illegally. 80% of the population, half of which is indigenous, lives below the poverty line. Remittances to Guatemala from relatives in the US keep many Guatemalans alive, and help build houses, churches, schools. Meanwhile, Bush keeps building that wall and carrying out extensive raids against those immigrants who are really just trying to keep their families alive.

One of Bush’s messages to Guatemala was to grow more sugar cane to make ethanol so we can keep driving our cars. Funny thing is, the sugar cane industry in Guatemala collapsed a decade or so ago due to US protectionism and subsequent loss of the US market. It probably goes without saying that many of those displaced laborers migrated north to the US to look for work.

The US has just negotiated a free trade agreement with Central American countries, including Guatemala. I’d be surprised if the agreement contained much about sugar sector liberalization, as there is still significant protection of the US sugar industry. No matter, we’ll buy the ethanol made from sugar cane – once those defunct plantations can be brought on line again – at least for now.

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.