Bush Told “Gringo, Go Home”

In an effort to smooth over North-South American relations and to highlight American aid to the regions, George W. Bush recently went on a tour of six Latin American countries.

Uprisings began when the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, began shadowing the President and spurring large demonstrations. In Nicaragua on Sunday, Chavez triumphantly declared that Bush’s tour was a failure with his announcement “Latin Americans are telling you: ‘Gringo, go home!’

Although Chavez said that his parallel tour of the area was by chance, the up rise in anti-American sentiment in the area questions his true motives. Chavez clearly sees Bush as a threat to his attempts to revive socialism throughout Latin America. Throughout his speeches, he claimed that Bush, the “head of the empire himself,” was leading an attack. He incited the crowds continuing “we have resisted for a long time but no one wins a battle always staying on the defensive. This is no longer time for defense, this is time for attack, let loose the charging cavalry!”

Declaring himself as a member the anti-American bandwagon and loudly declaring anti-American sentiment could easily gain Chavez quick political points in his home country and with his socialist allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina.

George W. Bush had no more luck in Guatemala, where Mayan priests quickly preformed a sacred ritual to eliminate the “bad spirits” Bush left on Iximxhe after he publicly visited the archeological site. Juan Tiney, director of a Mayan non-governmental organization asserted “that a person like Bush… is going to walk in our sacred lands is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture.”

Noting that anger towards U.S. policies is not aimed at the American people and instead solely aimed towards George W. Bush, journalist Jacob Hornberger wisely concludes that Bush’s trip to Latin America to “make friends” is as “doomed as his escapades in the middle east.”