Tens of thousands of people are attending the six-day gathering held to protest the simultaneous World Economic Forum in Switzerland, railing against the spread of corporate-sponsored capitalism.

While the economic forum ended Sunday, the social forum's final day is Monday, the same day the United States was supposed to close a deal to create a 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to Argentina.

Though the deadline will be missed, officials plan to restart negotiations this year amid bitter opposition from leftist activists. They consider Chavez their strongest voice against the U.S.-sponsored spread of liberalized trade in Latin America, a move they say benefits multinational companies at the expense of workers.

"The imperialist forces are starting to strike against the people of Latin America and the world," Chavez said in a 90-minute speech in which he denounced President Bush for conducting foreign policy with bombs and the United States for attempting to dominate the global economy.

At one point he switched from Spanish to mostly English, denouncing the FTAA trade proposal, called ALCA in Spanish and Portuguese.

"Where is the ALCA, mister? The ALCA is dead," Chavez said to roars from the crowd.

Chavez, a self-described revolutionary, is mounting an aggressive land reform campaign and funneling profits from Venezuela's oil riches to the poor as part of a political movement loosely based on the ideas of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Social Forum activists also denounced Sunday's Iraqi elections and called for worldwide protests on March 19-20 to demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Contrary to U.S. claims that the elections went well despite scattered suicide bombings and mortar attacks, activists said no one should trust a government elected while the country is under occupation by 150,000 American soldiers.

The call for renewed worldwide protests "marks the revival of the anti-war movement," said Walden Bello, executive director of the Thailand-based Focus on the Global South, a group opposed to war and the spread of corporate-sponsored globalization.

"These stage-managed elections are illegitimate to the core," said Bello. "The world will not fall for this ploy."

While Chavez was cheered at the social forum, some participants jeered Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva when he spoke Thursday, accusing him of failing to come through on promises of social reforms to eradicate Brazilian misery.

Chavez, greeted like a rock star by 15,000 activists packing a sports stadium, came to Silva's defense as he finished speaking against globalization, corporate greed and American foreign policy.

"I love Lula!" he yelled. "I respect him. Lula is a good guy with a big heart. He's a brother and a comrade." Silva is popularly known as Lula.

Brazilian activist Gledson Oliveira, who lives in the country's impoverished northeast, called Chavez "an icon of the struggling classes right now from a socialist perspective."

"I think the Brazilian public was expecting from Lula something like Chavez is providing in Venezuela," he said.

© 2005 The Associated Press

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