Another monumental protest greets Bush

GUATEMALA CITY

George W. Bush touched down in Mexico for the final leg of his Latin American tour yesterday, leaving indigenous Guatemalans to spiritually cleanse the sacred Iximche Mayan ruins the US President visited earlier in the day.

Protesters at the site said they would undertake the cleansing ritual to remove "bad spirits and bad energy" left by Mr Bush at Iximche, west of Guatemala City.

About 50 local people evaded a security cordon to reach the entrance of the park around the ancient city founded in 1470 by the Kaqchikel Mayans.

Mr Bush and his wife, Laura, who visited the site with Guatemalan President Oscar Berger and his wife Wendy, were greeted by protesters with banners that read: "Out with Bush, the murderer, invader, fascist, criminal."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, on a tour of his own this week, told supporters in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince that Mr Bush represented the "cruellest, most terrible, most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed in all of history".

Mr Bush received a warmer welcome in the Guatemalan town of Santa Cruz Balanya where residents, dressed in colourful dresses or ponchos and straw hats, greeted him with banners of welcome and a few shouts of "Viva Bush".

Mr Bush told Mr Berger he wanted a breakthrough on US immigration reform by August but defended raids against illegal immigrants.

US immigration policies are unpopular across much of Latin America. Mr Berger, a conservative ally on most issues, made clear he also opposed Mr Bush's stance on immigration.

"Once in a while differences of opinion arise, for example regarding the issue of migrants and particularly those who have been deported without clear justification," he said.

About 18,000 Guatemalan illegal immigrants were deported from the US last year, an increase of 60 per cent from 2005. Most were caught soon after crossing the border but a quarter had been in the country more than a year.

"The United States will enforce our laws," Mr Bush told reporters. But he said he hoped to get the Democrat-led Congress to make significant progress towards an immigration overhaul, including a temporary guest-worker program, in coming months.

Immigration will again be raised today, along with the highly sensitive issue of drug trafficking, when Mr Bush meets Mexican president Felipe Calderon in Merida, in the state of Yucatan. Both are delicate topics between two countries that share a 3200km border and have close commercial ties.

Mr Calderon has compared the construction of a US border fence to the Berlin Wall.

Mexico is the final leg of a Latin American tour that has taken Mr Bush to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia and Guatemala.