The unpopularity of the United States' President is no secret, not here, not in China.

The USA has been directly involved in Latin America's history ever since it's independence. Guatemala's geographical position has condemned it to a permanent intervention from all mighty USA. The Monroe Doctrine became the justification for it: protecting Latin America from any kind of imperialistic attempt- to do precisely that.

Panamericanism took the Doctrine Monroe's shape, except for that short period when leaders such as Simon Bolivar attempted to build the Latin America that all Latinamericans deserve. No- I mean he visioned the kind of country everybody deserves: a free independent one; one that makes decisions based on it's own interests, needs and possibilities, not someone else's.

The USA has always tried to keep a pretty strong bond with Latin America, but Mr. Bush's administration overlooked the region, mainly because it was focused on the"War Against Terrorism".

An anti-usa sentiment emerged inside Latin America, encouraged by politicians such as Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Ignazio Lula da Silva, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Nicaragua's Manuel Ortega, Argentina's Néstor Kirchner, and specially, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

So, Bush decided to come to his -still faithful, albeit possibly not of long- backyard and demonstrate his commitment to the Latinamerican development. Hm. He visited Brazil (Lula), Uruguay (Vásquez), Colombia (Uribe), Guatemala (Berger) and Mexico (Calderón). People expressed disapproval and dislike: protesters in all five countries called Bush a murderer and fascist. Harsh. True? No comment.

I like to think that Mr. Bush's visit could actually help improve life conditions for Latinamerican undocumented immigrants, and as much as it hurts to admit it: we definitely need help to prevent countries like Guatemala and Colombia from becoming narco-states.

We'll see what happens.