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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2006 
Stripping in Fury in Mexico City
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
| | A man snaps a photo from his cellphone of a protest of nude farmers in downtown Mexico City, Mexico, Friday, April 21, 2006. In recent years, the protests from the group 400 Pueblos - who fight for land rights for poor farmers - have become an anual event for city residents, as the men and women from rural southern Mexico stand naked or nearly-naked along the city's busy avenues. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
Mexico City - Ah, springtime in Mexico's crowded, chaotic and captivating capital.
Blooming jacaranda trees cloak the city in a regal purple. Steady breezes send kites aloft. Sunny afternoons and balmy evenings pull people to sidewalk cafes.
Hundreds of naked peasants parade in protest along the boulevards.
What?
Yep.
As much as anything, the fanny-flashing farmers, their wives and children have come to signal impending summer. They arrive like clockwork each year just before the planting and again in the fall, once the harvest is in.
Members of a movement from the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz called the 400 Villages, the protesters strip with regularity, their nakedness stressing demands that the government resolve a long-running land dispute.
"We are asking for justice," said Alfonsina Sandoval, 54, a leader of the women who disrobe. "Undressing ourselves is an act of desperation and helplessness. We don't know what else to do to get their attention."
It takes a lot to stand out among angry Mexican masses.
Hundreds of demonstrations snare Mexico City's traffic each year. And unresolved land disputes are as common as cactus in the countryside, running into the many thousands.
The 400 Villages movement began in the late 1960s, accelerated after the jailing of about 100 activists in 1992, and first resorted to the Full Monty four years ago, after more staid and traditional pressure tactics failed.
Recent development
The protesters want 5,000 acres they claim as rightfully theirs deeded to them. They want punishment for three former Veracruz governors they accuse of repression, including the slaying of some of their activists.
They say past agreements with presidential administrations have gone unfulfilled. Their protests have outlasted the fall of a one-party system called "the Perfect Dictatorship" and endured under Mexico's democratic transition.
"As long as we don't have responses to our demands, we can't talk about change," Sandoval said. "The president is demanding that Mexicans in the United States be taken care of, but they ignore those of us who have stayed in this country."
"Many of our young people have already gone to the north," she said. "How can you explain that those in the United States are better attended to than we are?"
Undressing was difficult for many of the protesters at first, Sandoval said. Propriety prevails in rural Mexican society.
While public nakedness has long been a worldwide tradition in public dissent, that's not the case in Mexico. Nude protests were introduced in recent years by striking miners, who showed up in Mexico City's main square wearing nothing but helmets and tool belts.
These days the closest thing to the peasants' show is the annual gay pride parade in June, when some participants ride nearly naked on floats.
The gays strip in defiant fun. The farmers do it in fury.
"This catches people's attention," said Rene Gonzalez, 20, a carpenter who has been coming and stripping for the past three years. "We put pressure on the rulers. We'll have effect."
The farmers may be hard-working and hard-pressed. But they're hardly hard-bodied.
"Women come by and scream from cars that we are old and ugly," Sandoval said.
"And we yell back that they are right, we are not beautiful," she said. "Our bodies show the signs of the years of work and poverty."
The peasants marched the other morning to Los Pinos, Mexico's presidential residence, hoping to get President Vicente Fox to take notice.
The men and women lined up in separate phalanxes on Reforma Avenue, which cuts from the city center through the sprawling Chapultepec Park, toward Fox's place.
Determined march
Six abreast and many rows deep, the men pulled off shirts and pants and stood expectantly in their thin, multicolored underpants.
The women stayed dressed for the hike but carried bags to stash their clothing in once they reached the gates of the palace.
A few voices rose from the front of the crowd, their chant taken up sporadically by others, coughing to life like the engine of a timeworn vehicle.
"Justice!" the men cried. "Answers!" women shouted.
And then they were off, police blocking traffic as the parade made its way up Reforma.
The farmers started out past the monument to Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor, who was put to death by Spanish conquerors nearly five centuries ago.
They trudged past Indian beggars, asleep on the sidewalk, alms cups at the ready.
They stomped past Mexico's stock exchange, past the U.S. Embassy, past hotels where a night's stay costs more than a poor farmer earns in a month.
"Justice!" the marchers shouted. "Answers!"
Passengers pressed noses to bus and car windows. Workers descended from skyscrapers to watch. Drivers honked, some in irritation, others in support.
"Unfortunately this is a problem we have here, those who govern don't take care of the people," said Ernesto Sagu, 44, a businessman who watched the march while getting a fill-up at a gas station.
"This is the only strategy people are left with."
dqalthaus@yahoo.com |
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