IRAQ PROTESTS:
Latin American Marchers Jeer U.S., Cheer Its Critics

Diego Cevallos*


MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - Thousands of protesters took to the streets -- and some to the water -- Saturday throughout Latin America to express their rejection of the U.S. government and the invasion of Iraq, and their support for the region's leftist groups.

Although the turnout was less than expected, enthusiasm was running high. Demonstrators chanted slogans against ”imperialism” and in favour of peace, backed by traditional protest songs, marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. and British-led invasion of Iraq.

Many of the mobilisations also heard slogans in solidarity with Cuba and with Venezuela's Chávez government -- both politically on the outs with Washington.

Demonstrators throughout the region carried signs in support of the government-elect of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). Spain's future prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is standing fast behind his pledge to withdraw the country's troops from Iraq.

The Latin Americans expressed solidarity with the Spanish people, who are mourning the Mar. 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed more than 200 people and injured 1,500 others.

”There were fewer demonstrators today, but the positive side is that now we have a clearer perspective,” Mexican activist Oscar Medina told IPS. He is part of the Mexican Initiative Against the Imperialist War, Not in Our Name, a group that organised a rock concert and protest outside the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.

In Uruguay, Nora Brioso, of the group Redes-Friends of the Earth, told IPS, ”More and more people are joining the movement” for peace and against war.

Meanwhile, in the Venezuelan capital, Juan Contreras, of the Coordinadora Simón Bolívar, a group aligned with President Hugo Chávez, told IPS that he thinks a ”rejection of war and terrorism policies” is growing throughout Latin America.

According to political observers, although the Iraq war is a long way from Latin America, the invasion of that country has deepened the anti-U.S. feelings that had existed amongst some segments of the population.

A survey of 18,600 people in 17 Latin American countries, released late last year by the polling firm Latinobarómetro, showed that one-third of respondents had a negative opinion of the U.S. government, twice the portion recorded in 2000 in a similar poll..

In Chile, the anti-U.S. sentiment was forcefully expressed on Saturday in Santiago by at least 3,000 people, mostly from leftist groups. They marched carrying signs and chanting slogans like: ”We are not neutral, we aren't pacifists, we are in the anti-imperialist trenches”, and ”No war, no terrorism!”

”We are expressing our condemnation of terrorism and asserting that violence begets violence, and that peace alone is the means to a more just, equal and sustainable world,” Jenia Jofré, president of Chile's oldest environmental and peace organisations, Pro-Defence of Flora and Fauna, told IPS.

Saturday's marches in cities around the globe were convened in January by the Assembly of Social Movements during the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India.

The Assembly stated that the occupation of Iraq has demonstrated the link between militarism and economic domination by transnational corporations, validating the reasons the social movements were mobilising on the one-year anniversary to protest the unjustifiable invasion.

To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and no evidence has been uncovered that Saddam Hussein's government supported the Islamic terrorist network al-Qaeda -- the two motives that Washington and London gave last year for going to war.

”The war in Iraq is not against terrorism, although that is being used as justification... It was an invasion for natural resources (petroleum),” Cándido Grzybowski, director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis, told IPS.

Last year in Brazil there were numerous colourful protests against the war, but Saturday's marches were muted in comparison.

In Sao Paulo, only around 1,000 people took part in the anti-war demonstration, according to police estimates, though organisers put the total closer to 3,000.

They protested outside emblematic U.S.-based companies, McDonald's and BankBoston, shouting slogans against imperialism, the U.S. government, genetically modified crops and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

In Argentina, the crew of the Arctic Sunrise, a ship belonging to the environmental watchdog Greenpeace, formed the symbol of peace on the roof of the vessel.

Taking part in that anti-war act were 20 activists, from Spain, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Colombia, Ghana, Italy, Ukraine, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and United States.

Socialist-run Cuba also saw anti-war demonstrations, with around 10,000 people gathered in the province of Holguín, 700 km from Havana.

Orlando Fundora, president of the Cuban Movement for Peace, said in an IPS interview that Bush ”has done what a madman would do. He has attempted to put out a fire with a bucket of gasoline. He has gone to fight terror with terror,” referring to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Says Humberto Hernández, director of a Cuban organisation in solidarity with Asia, Africa and Latin America, a year after the invasion of Iraq there is ”more awareness in the world of the great danger weighing over humanity as a result of the war adventure” of Washington and London.

(* With reporting by Marcela Valente/Argentina, Mario Osava/Brazil, Dalia Acosta and Patrcia Grogg/Cuba, Gustavo González/Chile and Humberto Márquez/Venezuela.)