ARGENTINA: Protesters set fire to foreign banks and attack police in Mar del Plata as IV Summit of the Americas opens

Record ID: 449004

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Protesters set fire to foreign banks and attack police in Mar del Plata as IV Summit of the Americas opens
  • Date: 5th November 2005
  • Summary: WIDE FIREMEN PUTTING OUT FIRE (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 20th November 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA5JV5KII2BPO73I8DZ4WWRIMLX
  • Story Text: As Latin American presidents officially opened the IV Summit of the Americas within the heavily barricaded city of Mar del Plata on Friday (November 4, 2006), outside the barriers protests were turning violent, with demonstrators setting fire to foreign banks and companies and attacking police with rocks and home-made bombs.
    Argentine President Nestor Kirchner welcomed the 33 presidents to the opening of the summit, calling for them to unite and look for points of agreement and resolution for the well-being of the people they represent.
    "If this collective construction . . . must integrate a central theme or agenda to produce results that help the well-being of our people, this theme has to be the slogan of this fourth summit, where the presidents, the representatives of the various countries should stop speaking in whispers and speak out loud, and look for points of agreement and resolution that our hemisphere needs," he told the leaders gathered a the opening ceremony, among them US President George W. Bush.
    But as the host-country head of state addressed his counterparts, protesters were already on their way to the barricades just blocks from the opening ceremony.
    As the demonstrators burned US flags and chanted anti-Bush slogans, some attacked the barricades and police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse the protesters.
    The violent confrontation, involving several hundred unemployed militants, came hours after a large-scale peaceful march by thousands of anti-Bush demonstrators. Protesters coming from the mass rally at the city's World Cup sports' stadium, where they were addressed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, marched as far as the barriers separating them from the official summit.
    Demonstrators moved on to attack foreign banks in the area, breaking windows and hurling molotov cocktails into one bank to set fire to the premises. Masked protesters also set fire to the office of the Argentine subsidiary of US company CTI. Flames rapidly took hold, and firemen were summoned to the scene.
    The protest had been expected from more radical 'piquetero' groups - militant unemployed who rose to fame during the 2001 economic crisis, although most of the day's mass rally which closed the anti-summit passed off peacefully far from the summit site.
    But as if oblivious, the presidents left the opening ceremony, secure inside the barricaded area as outside Mar del Plata blazed.
    "I feel two things, two things: I don't like to see what I see because violence has never been an answer because we never came here about the violence," said one Canadian protester.
    "We have been here part of the summit for the people and this has never been a part of it. What I like today: there was a march of over 300-thousand people that went to the stadium today and they went to the stadium today and there was such a sign of solidarity about Latin America, about America. This is not part of it and this only leads to violence. It leads to hate. It leads to fear," he said.
    The so-called anti-summit convened tens of thousands of protesters, running parallel to the official summit of Western Hemisphere leaders, which was expected to be a showdown over differing views over free trade between Bush and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
    Anti-Bush feelings run high in Argentina, with many Argentines blaming the country's 2001 economic collapse on policies backed by the United States and the International Monetary Fund.
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