MIAMI (Reuters) - Police in full battle gear huddle under every tree, patrol cars block each intersection, armored assault vehicles lurk under highway bridges and a black fence snakes through the ghost town that has become downtown Miami.
The Florida city was taking no chances on Wednesday as up to 35,000 protesters gathered to demonstrate against a meeting on linking 34 nations of the Americas into the world's biggest trade zone.
In the five blocks around the upmarket InterContinental hotel, where the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks are taking place this week, a no-go zone brought an eerie calm to usually traffic-clogged streets.
Bank branches were shuttered. Stores anti-trade protesters see as symbols of capitalist greed and have targeted in the past, such as Starbucks, were closed and heavily guarded.
Shopkeepers who stayed open to brave what city officials promised would not be a repeat of the 1999 Seattle trade talk riots guessed that they should have done the same.
"Who's going to come?" said Electromart owner David Banon, sweeping his arms around his desolate electronics store.
"Even the tourists, when they see so many cops, they turn around."
Police would not say how many officers were on the streets of the city that hopes to be named the headquarters for the future FTAA, cementing its status as gateway to the Americas.
Lt. Bill Schwartz of the Miami city police said seven "suspected anarchists" were arrested after being found squatting in an abandoned seafront mansion that once belonged to the Burdines department store family.
Schwartz said the squat was filled with makeshift weapons such as crowbars, heavy chains and bicycle inner tubes that could be used as slingshots, and had targets drawn on a wall and "literature" on anarchist plans.
"We think this represents the type of hardcore troublemaker that we've been preparing for," he said.
But the environmentalists, union members, civil rights activists and anarchists planning to take part in a mass rally against the FTAA on Thursday said police had gone overboard.
OUTNUMBERED
SWAT teams in body armor waited for a call to action, rubber pellet guns at the ready, convoys of patrol cars and police motorcycles drifted through the streets, sirens wailing, and police patrol boats cruised the rivers and waterways.
When around 200 protesters rallied peacefully at the fence around the no-go zone on Tuesday night, they were outnumbered two to one by police. Police helicopters hovered overhead and armored cars with water cannons were on hand.
"We're peacefully protesting. For them to have police officers at every street corner is ridiculous," said steelworker and anti-FTAA marcher Steve Schneider, from Iowa.
At a city center warehouse rented by the protesters, the hordes Miami has spent millions protecting itself and the trade meeting against did not appear particularly threatening.
In tie-dyes, shorts or paint-splattered jeans, they make banners and puppets, fix bicycles and prepare free food.
Declaring "free trade is not freedom" and denouncing "a nation under surveillance," they say a handful of arrests to date for crimes like "obstructing a sidewalk" or disorderly conduct indicate the police aim to stamp down hard on dissent.
A "check-in" table offers information on housing, and a tray full of "police misconduct" reporting forms.
"We are trying to give the activists a different welcome than the city of Miami is giving them, which is arresting them and harassing them," said activist Cory Fischer-Hoffman.
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