by Evelyn J. Pringle

The FTAA faces widespread opposition in Latin America and for good reason. Ten years of NAFTA's so-called economic reforms have resulted in widespread poverty, high unemployment, massive debt, and a series of other economic crises. Bush is hoping to get the deal back on track while attending the summit, but his prospects look grim. Protests against his visit were already underway in Argentina three days before he arrived there, with the blocking of bridges and streets in the capital of Buenos Aires, and posters bearing the slogans “Stop Bush” and “Fuera Bush,” some of which were superimposed over graphic pictures of wounded children in Iraqi. Argentine Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel recently told a radio audience that Bush is “a torturer, violator of human rights, an assassin, a violator of United Nations resolutions, of international treaties and of the sovereignty of peoples, as has happened in Iraq.”...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Pringle1106.htm