LA Times paints demonstrators in Argentina as anti-US

Front page of the Los Angeles Times for Saturday, November 5, 2005 reads, “US a target at summit in Argentina” referring to the protesters this week in Argentina. It couldn’t be the “Free Trade Agreements” for Latin America, which is the agenda for the summit, that has the citizens of Argentina out in the street in protest. You wouldn't see, "Argentineans, a target of ‘free trade' agreements", for a headline, because that kind of reporting would be blasphemous for such cohorts of corporate and state power as the LA Times. As the first paragraph reads, “A hemispheric summit to promote job creation and spread democracy throughout the Americas opened here Friday amid raucous anti-U.S. demonstrations…”. But as the article continues on page 8 with a hint of criticism towards free trade agreement and starts to paint a different picture of the protestors. It reads, “...many in Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere fear market liberalization could lead to the plundering of their natural resources and depletion of national assets by multinational corporations. That, they argue, would result in increased economic woes in a region where poverty is already endemic”. There’s also a quote from a protester acknowledging that “We are a statement…against hunger and poverty”. Not quite the “Anti-U.S. demonstrations” against a “summit to promote job creation and the spread of democracy” that were described on the front page.

A few paragraphs down the front page, the article mentions the presence of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the summit and reads, “Chavez… has repeatedly accused Washington of seeking to overthrow him and invade his oil-rich nation”. The article doesn’t even acknowledge that there was a coup against Chavez on April 12, 2002, which, didn’t last for more than 48 hours because it drew some much unrest from the population. After the coup, then U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said "We do hope that Chavez recognizes that the whole world is watching and that he takes advantage of this opportunity to right his own ship, which has been moving, frankly, in the wrong direction for quite a long time,". No one in the Bush Administration ever expressed the idea that the coup was a violent and disruptive act against democracy. The article also fails to mention that Chavez isn’t the only one “accusing Washington of seeking to overthrow him”. Many observers including U.S. ex-diplomats have been cited that they believe the Bush Administration and the C.I.A. was involved with the coup and some have asserted that Venezuela may still be in danger. The article also doesn’t bring up the fact that the U.S. was quick to recognize the new Haitian Government in 2004 after the brutal overthrow of democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Acknowledging these facts might give credit to the claims of a Washington adversary, who, spoke to protestors at the summit about U.S. imperial interests, and take the focus off the U.S. as a target of “anti-U.S. demonstrators”.