The walls of Oaxaca tell much of the story, from graffiti like "Stop the terrorism of the US," to the posters, "Imperialist troops out of Iraq--Down with Bush!" to the red paint spattered facade of the US consulate.

"Mexicans are an angry at the gringos and at Bush," as one person put it. Continuing, she said what appears obvious to many people here--"Bush is insane. Did you see him dressed up in a military uniform climbing aboard a war plane?"

Polls say that 80% percent of Latin Americans are opposed to what the US is doing in Iraq. The numbers seem to hardly tell the story. I have only been here a week, but I've yet to find one person who does not revile George Bush--many of whom were, when I was here only a year ago, expressing admiration for the man. The strength of the growing anti-American sentiment is made evident by the refusal of habitually authoritarian Latin American governments, notably that of Mexico's president Fox, to support Bush's war. Fox's natural inclination would, as usual, lie in supporting the Norteamericanos in their foreign adventures--but this time he simply didn't dare.

***

The day after I arrived in Oaxaca in southern Mexico I was walking through a neighborhood on the edge of town. Keeping close to the shade of slowly crumbling buildings to avoid the lethal tropical sun, I passed two men lounging in a doorway. Already drunk by midday, they latched onto my passage as a brief diversion from an otherwise mundane afternoon.

"What is your name?" one called out after me, in English.

I turned and told them--"Troy," I said. Then in Spanish, I asked, "what are yours?"

"Do you speak Spanish?" One asked. "A little," I replied.

"Where are you from?," asked the first one.

I paused and considered my options before replying. "I'm from the United States."

"We don't like Bush at all." Was the immediate reply, followed by a litany of the crimes of George W.

As they described to me pictures I had already seared into my brain--of a little girl whose feet were blown off, the boy with his arms ripped away, of bombs and horror dropped thoughtlessly on third world neighborhoods not that much different from where I was standing--I could feel the pressure build up behind my eyes. "Jesus," I thought, "I'm going to cry."

I'd seen the pictures, and hated them, I'd marched and written and spoken against the war, but suddenly here, as a American, it was different. No one was accusing me, but I'm implicated in the crime in a way that I could avoid at home--by blaming the government and the media. But as a de facto representative of Bush's America, I could feel welling up both my own responsibility and my helplessness to do much about it.

"Bush just wants the oil," said one. The other followed on with "We use oil too, but we have our own."

They both said they had lived and worked in the US, but had recently left because of the racism, the lack of respect, the tightening cordons of fear. "Here we are free," said one, opening his arms wide in a gesture both proud and resigned.

They are not the only ones who have left shining America. An American acquaintance who lives here told me that he has met many Mexicans who, despite having acquired US citizenship after years of hard work, have recently washed their hands of Bush's America and returned to Mexico, universally disgusted with what the USA is becoming--or simply unable to live there.

***

Subcomandante Marcos aptly summed up the general sentiment in a letter published in La Jornada on April 12. "If the current United States government is to be recognized for anything, it is that it achieved in a few weeks what took Hitler years: awakening the condemnation of millions of human beings on the entire planet."

And there it is again, the comparison of George Bush with Hitler that in America is seen as, at best, overstating the case. But from here, apart from the superior fashion sense of the Nazis, there seems little difference.

As a friend of mine here put it--"Of course Hitler and Bush have different ideas, different styles, but the result is the same. The difference is hardly worth talking about."

Meanwhile, the local US Consulate can barely clean the symbolic red paint that spatters its walls before a fresh load of indignation arrives, leaving chants, copies of Picasso's Guernica, prayers for peace and graffiti of repudiation. I hear news from other cities and other countries that this is repeated over and over again throughout Latin America and the world.

Looking back on my own country, and the apparent acceptance of Bush's war, and his "victory," I voiced my discouragement with my fellow Americans. "We sleep while our leaders are devouring the world."

"But many Americans are against this war, and against Bush," was the reply. "In San Francisco, in New York, in Washington DC thousands of Americans have protested against the war--isn't that true?"

"But those against the war are so few in comparison," I started to say, but then stopped myself. How the fuck would I know how "few," we are, when I still see the world through the eyes molded for me by the omnipresent US media. We are few because the media giants tell me so. But by now I should know better than to believe what they tell me.

Bush had his war, to be sure, but it certainly wasn't easy--the invasion itself was simple compared to what it cost to get there. And now, having declared victory, the real war in Iraq appears to be only beginning. And with Saddam Hussein and his statues finally deposed, the people of the world can now be completely clear about whose side they are on.

We are, in the end, only "few." so long as we forget to look past the borders of CNN, MSNBC and the Seattle Times and take a good look at the world. We are a lot, actually--more than we can imagine.

And it occurs to me that, while we in America debate tactics and strategy, we hamper ourselves so long as we fail to look to those who can teach us--those who have been fighting American Hegemony longer, and more desperately, than we have ever had to. So far as I can see, they aren't giving up yet.

And if we in the American opposition fail to notice, fail to ask for the help of the wider world in our struggle, we are not so different from those Americans who, according to the polls, support the war wholeheartedly--that is to say, isolated and ill-informed. Americans, even the American left, no longer leads the world in the struggle for peace and justice--instead, I think, we have a lot of listening and learning to do. It's past time for us to join the world, as simply one people among many.