Sao Paulo (Brazil) Riot police fired tear gas at students, environmentalists and left-leaning Brazilians and beat them with batons just before US President George W Bush kicked off a five-nation Latin America tour that includes a push for an ethanol energy alliance with Brazil.
Protesting students also lobbed rocks and homemade explosives called ''potato bombs'' at riot police on Thursday on a university campus in the Colombian capital of Bogota, where Bush is scheduled to visit on Sunday.
The violence in Sao Paulo happened several hours before Bush arrived in South America's largest city, where more than 6,000 people held a largely peaceful march through the financial heart of Brazil. Hundreds of demonstrators fled and ducked into businesses to avoid the mayhem, some of them bloodied.
Authorities did not immediately report any injuries, but Brazilian media said at least six people were hurt and photographers took pictures of injured people being carried away.
Protesters said scuffles broke out when some radical demonstrators provoked officers and threw sticks at them - but said police overreacted. A police officer who declined to give his name in keeping with department policy confirmed that extremists appeared to cause the confrontations.
After the clash, the protest continued peacefully but with far fewer people. The marchers waved communist flags and railed against Bush, the war in Iraq and the ethanol proposal. Almost all had departed by sundown, and the streets were calm several hours later when Bush arrived in Sao Paulo.
At Bogota's National University, 200 masked students clashed with 300 anti-riot police carrying shields and helmets, spray-painting anti-U.S. slogans on walls and shouting ''Out Bush!''
Police fired water cannons and tear gas, and the students hurled back rocks, fireworks, a few Molotov cocktails and dozens of ''potato bombs'' - small explosives made of gunpowder wrapped in foil. There were no reports of injuries or arrests.
The demonstrators called for the scuttling of a US-Colombia free trade agreement signed in November and currently stalled in the US Congress, and accused Washington of meddling in the South American nation's internal affairs by sending it some US$700 million a year in mostly military aid.
In the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, more than 500 people yelled ''Get Out, Imperialist!'' as they marched to a Citigroup Inc. bank branch and burned an effigy of Bush. Protesters also targeted the US Consulate in Rio de Janeiro, splattered it with bright red paint meant to signify blood.
PAGE_BREAK
Asked about the protests, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Bush ''enjoys traveling to thriving democracies where freedom of speech and expression are the law of the land. He has a positive agenda here that we believe the people of Brazil and the rest of the Americas will benefit from.''
Some protesters in Sao Paulo carried stalks of sugarcane - used to make ethanol in Brazil - and a banner reading: ''For every liter of ethanol produced, 4 liters of fresh water are consumed, monoculture is destroying the nation's greatest asset.''
''Bush and the United States go to war to control oil reserves, and now Bush and his pals are trying to control the production of ethanol in Brazil. And that has to be stopped,'' said Suzanne Pereira dos Santos of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement.
Activists from the environmental group Greenpeace warned that increased ethanol production could lead to further clearing of the Amazon rain forest as well as cause social unrest, since most sugarcane-ethanol operations are run by wealthy families or corporations that reap most of the benefits while the poor are left to cut the cane with machetes.
Bush has spoken approvingly of Brazil's ethanol program, which powers eight out of every 10 new cars. The proposed accord is meant to help turn ethanol into an internationally traded commodity and to promote sugarcane-based ethanol production in Central America and the Caribbean.
After forging the ethanol alliance with President Luiz Inacio Luiz da Silva on Friday, Bush heads to Uruguay, where he will meet with President Tabare Vazquez.
Though Bush will not visit Argentina, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will travel to Buenos Aires to lead protests against Bush.
Comments
0 comment