BRAZIL:Protests continued across South America yesterday on the second day of US president George Bush's week-long tour of the region. After a day in Brazil, Mr Bush arrived late last night in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, where earlier marchers had filled the city's main avenue protesting his presence.
Many marchers were from groups affiliated to the ruling left-wing Frente Amplio (Broad Front) alliance, unhappy at their government's efforts to build closer trade ties with the US.
José Mujica, a former Marxist guerrilla commander turned agriculture minister and whose Movement of Popular Participation is the biggest bloc in the coalition, said that if his ministerial duties didn't oblige him to be part of the delegation meeting Mr Bush, he would have joined the protesters.
Yesterday's most anticipated rally was in Argentina, a country that Mr Bush is not even visiting on this tour. An estimated 40,000 people turned up in a football stadium in the capital Buenos Aires, to hear Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez denounce US influence in the region.
Mr Chávez, one of the US's most vocal opponents, is on what he is calling a "counter-tour" to coincide with Mr Bush's presence in the region. Local critics of Argentinian president Néstor Kirchner have attacked the government for needlessly provoking the US by allowing Chávez lead an anti-Bush rally on Argentine soil.
But interior minister Aníbal Fernández defended the decision saying Mr Chávez "extended a hand to Argentina when it was not well". He provided Argentina cheap loans and fuel oil as it sought to overcome the impact of its 2001 economic meltdown.
He has assiduously sought to use Venezuela's oil wealth to build alliances and extend his influence in the region since coming to power in 1999.
The Venezuelan president told local journalists ahead of the rally that Argentina and Venezuela were two countries that had suffered "to the bone" from the "imperialist and neo-liberal model".
"We are the antithesis of Bush and we have to be [ because] Bush is the empire, the symbol of imperialism, the imperial eagle. We are the shout of rebellion and of freedom."
The Buenos Aires rally was organised by a radical breakaway group of Argentina's Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organisation, which has demanded since the late 1970s that authorities reveal what happened to their children who disappeared during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Sharing the stage with Mr Chávez was the group's leader Hebe de Bonafini, another virulent critic of the United States. She gained notoriety in Argentina when she said she was "happy" when she heard of the 9/11 attacks on the US and that she expected the then dying John Paul II to "rot in hell".
Earlier yesterday in São Paulo Mr Bush visited a plant owned by Brazil's state energy giant Petrobras where ethanol derived from sugar cane is blended with petrol. There he made a veiled reference to Mr Chávez when discussing his plans to cut the US's dependence on oil from countries like Venezuela by promoting the use of more biofuels such as ethanol.
While Brazil and the US signed an agreement to help develop technologies to produce more biofuels, there was no concession on Brazil's main demand that the US cut its tariff on ethanol imports.
On Thursday there were violent skirmishes between anti-Bush protesters and police in the financial district of São Paulo. Masked protesters threw rocks at police who responded with pepper spray and tear gas while workers scrambled to avoid the trouble.