MIAMI -- For a brief moment, it looked as if Miami had dodged the rubber bullet.
Then they began to fly.
Following a morning of tense police standoffs with protesters at the Free Trade Area of Americas summit in downtown Miami, a large union-sponsored march of about 10,000 people Thursday went off peacefully in the afternoon.
"This is the first time in my life I've done this," said West Palm Beach retiree Barbara Walker as she left the rally at about 3:30 p.m. "I came because I'm against the decisions being made in this country."
But less than an hour after Walker and her group boarded their bus for home, protesters on Biscayne Boulevard turned against police.
Demonstrators lit protest signs and a Dumpster on fire. They hurled rocks and bottles. At one point, they collected wooden signs and pallets and formed a barricade, but riot squads quickly pushed them back towards a warehouse district where activists had established a headquarters.
Numerous protesters, some just caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, were injured as police used tear gas, pepper spray, smoke bombs and rubber bullets.
As of about 5 p.m., police said they had arrested 36 people.
Miami has resembled a city under martial law this week as trade representatives from 34 countries and representatives of anti-globalization forces gathered for the FTAA talks. Corporate interests held a three-day America's Business Forum at the Hyatt Regency, while the AFL-CIO had days of rallies at the Gusman Center that culiminated in a Wednesday night concert and Thursday's march.
The FTAA would create a free-trade bloc throughout the Americas and the Caribbean, excluding Cuba.
Proponents say the FTAA would mean cheaper goods for American consumers and bring the benefits of free trade to countries throughout the hemisphere. Opponents say the agreement will cost Americans jobs, hurt the environment and exploit workers in Third World countries.
Demonstrators blamed the police for the violence, saying 2,500 officers from 40 departments created an atmosphere of fear and then needlessly used pepper spray and tear gas just as the union rally was winding down.
"People of Miami should be outraged," said Naomi Archer of the Stop FTAA movement. "The Miami police created a military situation. They incited this violence."
Police said they responded only after protesters started throwing bottles and rocks at a barricade fence protecting the Inter-Continental Hotel, where diplomats struck a deal on the FTAA on Thursday and brought the conference to a close a day early.
Miami Police spokesman Lt. Bill Schwartz said police responded after protesters started throwing rocks and bottles at the police line. They also tried to take down a security fence, set several fires on the street and threw what appeared to be smoke bombs, he said.
With clouds of pepper spray still in the air, protesters dragged a Dumpster into the street and set it on fire a block west of Biscayne Boulevard. Two other protesters pulled down a large wooden "Office Space Available" sign to use as a shield.
The Dumpster fire was put out quickly but rioters set smaller fires in trash cans as police moved them west, said Ignatius Carroll Jr., spokesman for the city's Fire Department.
Violence has marred earlier trade talks in Seattle and Cancun, Mexico. Miami police for weeks has said anarchist groups such as the "Black Bloc" would try to disrupt the FTAA.
Not everybody caught in the line of fire was a college-age activist.
Two AFL-CIO executives said they were pepper-sprayed and shot with rubber bullets as they did nothing more than try to help senior citizens onto a bus on Biscayne Boulevard.
Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO's chief international economist, said she and Marilyn Sneiderman, the AFL-CIO's director of field operations, were caught between two lines of advancing police in black riot gear. Lee was sprayed with pepper spray, while Sneiderman said she was hit twice in the arm with rubber bullets.
"It was just a terrifying experience," Lee said. "There was nobody in the crowd who was in any way defying the police."
The situation was tense from the outset on Thursday when police squared off with demonstrators at 6:30 a.m. in an unauthorized march at the entrance to the downtown area.
SWAT teams in riot gear detained about 100 of the demonstrators for about 90 minutes in front of Miami Police headquarters after promising them they could proceed.
"Get out the tasers!" ordered one officer as dozens of police, some carrying 3-foot wooden bats, surrounded the group.
"Are you crazy? Are you insane?" a protester yelled back at the officer who made the order before other demonstrators pulled him back.
Despite police on bikes barricading every available route to the morning protest, a number of the anti-FTAA protesters made it into downtown in cars and in a rented truck. They waved banners, homemade puppets and chanted anti-globalization slogans in front of the county's government center.
"It's a shame the violence here will overshadow the real violence of the day at the Inter-Continental Hotel," said environmental organizer Ben Tevelin, 26, of New York.
John Pacenti, Gariot Louima, Jeff Ostrowski and Alexandra Navarro Clifton write for the Palm Beach Post.
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