President Bush’s whirlwind tour of Latin America is proving that his legion of Secret Servicemen really can’t take him anywhere (exasperated sigh!). Yesterday, the President of Guatemala welcomed Bush with criticism of the US’s deportation of migrant workers, while demonstrators burned American flags and hurled stones at riot police. And at a Mayan spiritual site that Bush visited, hundreds of indigenous protesters attempted to block the road with boulders. Said a Mayan leader, “We can’t have a man who represents war come to this place.” That’s our Bush: Turning Mayans into peaceniks.
The Bush Administration asserts that nemesis Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (who famously called Bush “the Devil” in front of the United Nations) is organizing the protests that have plagued Bush’s weeklong trip. Maybe so, but a detail in the NYTimes article makes me wonder if Guatemala’s anger needs coercion: “Local people picked up the kernels of corn that had been thrown on the ground as part of the welcome of Mr. Bush… they did not want the food to go to waste.”
