SAO PAULO - US President George W Bush - biting the dust in Iraq, contested at home, despised around the world - is taking a break and heading south on a five’stop tour of Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. He is not visiting the 100,000-hectare family ranch his daughter Barbara bought last autumn in the Paraguayan chaco. He might be tempted to stay in.

The Bush reception won’t be exactly of the Rolling Stones variety. Massive protests are scheduled everywhere - even in countries where he is not showing up. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - Bush’s continental nemesis - will address a huge crowd in Buenos Aires, probably in a soccer stadium, as US Secret Service paranoia turns Sao Paulo into an immense Green Zone.

This had to be, fundamentally, a Bush-against-Chavez tour. Inevitably, it is also a Bush-against-Ahmadinejad tour. Last month, strengthening ties with Latin America, the Iranian president visited Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, which in the neo-con scheme of things qualify, along with gas-rich Bolivia, as the southern “axis of evil”.

For the Bush visit, the White House/State Department tactic is once again imperial “divide and rule’. Mercosur - the South American common market that is evolving as a true, indigenous integration model - will be actively bombarded, via different strategies targeting Brazil and Uruguay. Venezuela became a full Mercosur member last year.

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