South America throws down the trade gauntlet

Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez rallied thousands of leftist sympathisers after a South American trade summit at Cordoba, in Argentina, railing against the US-backed free market policies they blame for many of Latin America’s woes.

Addressing 15,000 people including students decades younger late yesterday, the 79-year-old Castro joined Chavez in an anti-American rally praising Venezuela for its entry into the South American trade bloc Mercosur – a move that gave that group a hard push to the left.