MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina — A hemispheric summit to promote job creation and the spread of democracy throughout the Americas opened here Friday amid raucous anti-U.S. demonstrations and deep divisions among participating nations over the Bush administration's free-trade agenda.
A group of about 200 protesters attempting to breach the security cordon around the meeting site clashed with riot police about six blocks from the hotel where President Bush and other heads of state were meeting.
The protesters hurled rocks; set fire to a bank, apparently using a Molotov cocktail; and broke windows on more than a dozen shops, authorities said. Some of the protesters covered their faces with clothing to conceal their identities.
Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and more than 50 demonstrators were arrested. No serious injuries were reported. The protesters were unable to enter the cordoned-off security zone, which includes much of the downtown beachfront area of this seaside resort.
Earlier in the day, tens of thousands of protesters marched peacefully, if boisterously, through the streets calling for Bush to be expelled from Argentina. The demonstrators later cheered Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez when he labeled Washington's free-trade proposal dead and buried during a lengthy address after an alternative "people's summit."
"Mar del Plata is the tomb of ALCA," Chavez said, using the Spanish acronym for the Free Trade Area of the Americas plan backed by the White House.
"We brought our shovels to bury it," declared the fiery populist, who has emerged as the administration's leading antagonist in South America.
All eyes here were on the two rival presidents: Bush, suffering setbacks at home and unpopular in Latin America, and Chavez, the firebrand friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro who has repeatedly accused Washington of seeking to overthrow him and invade his oil-rich nation. But by Friday evening, the two leaders had not met face to face.
"I will, of course, be polite," Bush said when asked how he would react if confronted by Chavez. "That's what the American people expect their president to do -- is to be a polite person. And I will -- if I run across him, I will do just that."
The White House and its leading free-trade allies here, Mexico and Chile, are pushing for a resuscitation of the hemispheric open-markets plan, which would create a unified trade bloc from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.
