Chavez vs. Bush: Fourth Summit of the Americas

President Bush arrived in Mar Del Plata, Argentina Thursday for the fourth Summit of the Americas, where he was greeted by a crowd of 10,000 protesters. Just hours before the hemisphere's leaders sat down to debate free trade, immigration and job creation, protesters were chanting "Fascist Bush! You are the terrorist!"

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez used the time to taunt Bush about his proposed FTAA agreement. Mr. Chávez, who has repeatedly accused the Bush administration of trying to assassinate him and invade his oil-producing country, is using the international summit meeting here to protest the administration's free trade message and to attempt a showdown with Mr. Bush, the man the Venezuelan government calls "Mr. Danger."

In a speech he gave this morning Chavez said he "brought the shovel" to bury the FTAA.

According to the today's New York Times, the White House Strategy is to simply ignore Chavez.

"President Chávez has been pretty vocal about how he sees the summit and what he hopes to achieve at the summit," Thomas A. Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday as it headed for Argentina. "I mean, he's going to behave the way he wants to behave."

The US and Venezuela will be butting heads many times during the summit. One of them will be the issue of job creation. The US proposes that a statement say "the 96 million people who live in extreme poverty" in Latin America and the Caribbean, subsisting on $1 a day or less. However Venezuela wants to add "while in the United States there are 37 million poor."

At a parallel "People's Summit" in Mar del Plata on Thursday, organized by a coalition of left-wing, indigenous and antiglobalization groups.The "antisummit" began early in the week and is expected to culminate today in mass protest marches, led by Alfonso Pérez Esquivel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Diego Maradona, the soccer idol. Mr. Chávez, with a foot in both of the gatherings here, is expected to be the main orator at a closing protest rally to be held at the main soccer stadium.