Central America:President George Bush visited Guatemalan hill towns yesterday to promote US efforts to fight poverty in Latin America, where Washington's power is increasingly being questioned by leftist leaders.
Mr Bush watched US and Guatemalan military doctors and nurses give healthcare to locals in the town of Santa Cruz Balanyá near the capital.
Residents, many dressed in colourful flowing dresses or ponchos and straw hats, greeted the US leader with banners of welcome and a few shouts of "Viva Bush". But elsewhere in Guatemala, where many remember US support for military repression during a long civil war, street protesters told Mr Bush to go home.
Guatemala is the second-to-last stop on the president's five-nation, Latin American tour, a trip in which he has been dogged by thunderous denunciations from his leftist nemesis in the region, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
Worried about Mr Chávez's growing influence, Mr Bush has used the tour to try to improve ties with leaders of the right and moderate left in Latin America, where the Iraq war and US trade and immigration policies have made him deeply unpopular.
Guatemala, ruled by conservative president Óscar Berger, joined the Central America Free Trade Agreement with the US last year. Washington says the pact will help alleviate poverty in the region.
Mr Bush visited a farm co-operative and ancient Mayan ruins yesterday, to the chagrin of Mayan leaders who promised to spiritually "cleanse" the site afterward because they consider the US president an aggressor.
Brief scuffles broke out between riot police and indigenous farmers opposed to Mr Bush's visit to the Iximche ruins, the capital of the Kaqchikel Mayan people before the Spanish conquest five centuries ago.
"We are protesting against the world's biggest murderer stepping on to our sacred place. For us it is painful and an enormous offence," said indigenous leader Jorge Morales Toj.
Mr Chávez shadowed Mr Bush on Sunday, visiting Nicaragua for talks with president Daniel Ortega, an old US foe from the cold war.
"The battle between the US empire and the great Latin American people is taking place again," Mr Chávez said in a speech in Nicaragua's colonial city of Leon.
White House officials accused reporters of turning Mr Bush's tour into a Bush vs Chávez trip instead of concentrating solely on Mr Bush's agenda.
Mr Bush, on the first visit by a US president to Guatemala since Bill Clinton came in 1999, will offer support for president Berger, considered a US ally in the war on drugs.
Guatemala will ask the president for more support to fight drug traffickers who have infiltrated its police and may be involved in the murders of eight politicians and policemen last month. "Guatemala is in urgent need of helicopters and modern ship navigation systems to track down groups that have more advanced technology," Mr Berger's adviser Richard Aitkenhead said.
The annual US state department human rights report released last week highlighted corruption and impunity in Guatemala's security forces, citing complaints of kidnappings, rapes and murders carried out by police in 2006.
Interior minister Carlos Vielmann offered to resign last month after the opposition accused him of turning a blind eye to death squads in the police that killed rivals in the drug trade, and street gang members.
Mr Berger has not accepted the resignation.
- (Reuters)