BUENOS AIRES, March 10: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez led a stadium full of Argentine leftists in screaming “Gringo go home” as US President George W. Bush arrived in nearby Uruguay on Friday on a tour of Latin America.

While Bush is visiting five countries in the region to counter anti-US sentiment, Chavez launched a rival tour to challenge and taunt his ideological rival.

“The little imperial gentleman from the north must be across the river by now. Let’s send him a big shout: Gringo go home,” Chavez told thousands of people at a soccer stadium in Buenos Aires, across the River Plate from the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo.

“We don’t even need to make an effort to sabotage his tour. He’s a political cadaver. He exhales the smell of the political dead, and he will soon be cosmic dust that will disappear from the stage,” he told the crowd of leftist activists.

Bush’s fiercest critic in Latin America, Chavez is using Venezuela oil revenues to help friendly leftist governments and spread his socialist vision.

Dressed in a bright red jacket, Chavez was flanked at the Friday night rally by human rights leaders the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who fought Argentina’s 1970s dictatorship, wearing their trademark white scarves.

Bush started his tour in Brazil, where he signed a bio-fuel agreement with moderate leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who Washington hopes will act as a counterweight to Chavez’s influence in Latin America.

—Reuters