Anti-Bush march shuts down Brazil's Wall Street
Mar 9, 2007 - 4:26:56 PM
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'We asked our activists to attend the demonstration. Bush's policy is harmful for Latin America and for Brazil,' said Valter Pomar, international relations secretary for the Workers Party.
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By EFE,
[RxPG] Sao Paulo, March 9 - Anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 people shut down Sao Paulo's financial district to protest against US President George W. Bush at the start of his five-nation tour of Latin America.
The demonstration, called by groups interested in commemorating International Women's Day Thursday, was rapidly taken over by outfits opposing Bush's presence in Sao Paulo, South America's biggest city and Brazil's business capital.
'We wanted to be here dressed in red to show the blood that's being spilled all over the world by the homicidal policy of the - empire,' a leader of the National Students Union told the Spanish news agency Efe.
Among the demonstrators - who marched to shouts of 'Bush Out!' and 'For the women of Iraq!' - were some black-clad anarchists who confronted the police with stones and Molotov cocktails and were suppressed with tear gas and anti-riot tactics.
At least one person was injured and several were arrested.
Undaunted by the nearly 4,000 police and troops deployed in Sao Paulo for Bush's visit, some of the protesters tried to block Avenida Paulista - Brazil's Wall Street - without respecting the prior accord with the authorities not to do so.
The march, however, occurred in a part of the city where the US president was not going to go.
Brazilian authorities have cordoned off a wide area around the Hilton Morumbi hotel, where Bush will stay and where he will meet Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The march was called by Brazil's CUT labor federation, the MST Landless Movement and the student union, but also included elements from Lula's own Workers Party.
'We asked our activists to attend the demonstration. Bush's policy is harmful for Latin America and for Brazil,' said Valter Pomar, international relations secretary for the Workers Party.
The cry of 'Bush Out!' has united - for the first time in many years - the Brazilian Left, as Workers Party members were joined by leaders of socialist parties radically opposed to Lula, a former Trotskyite who has pursued economic policies hardly distinguishable from those of his center-right predecessor.
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