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 Editorials | At Issue | August 2006 
Protesters Learn to Cope with Hardships
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | Tents used by supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), are seen in Mexico City's central Zocalo square. (Henry Romero/Reuters) |
Downtown Mexico City protest camp caps two weeks amid fiery rhetoric and wet bedding.
Portable toilets line one side of Mexico City´s 16th-century cathedral. Wet bedding hangs from tent lines hung crookedly across six lanes of the main downtown boulevard. Protesters sprawl on lawn chairs and fry food on improvised gas cookers.
Nearing the end of its second rain-soaked week, the tent-city set up by supporters of leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the 8.5 kilometer (5-mile) Reforma Avenue has produced misery and anger, as well as moments of grace and inspiration as weeks of indecision in the presidential race drag on.
Jaime Pérez Suárez, 59, an executive wearing a tie, fumed at a McDonald´s counter on the city´s massive main square, which has been converted into a warren of white plastic tents and improvised dining halls.
"This is disgraceful," Pérez Suárez said of the port-a-potties outside the gates of the cathedral. "You only say that because you´ve got money," shot back the female counter clerk.
Class divisions have played a key role in the divisive, disputed race, in which ruling party candidate Felipe Calderón, backed by the growing middle classes and the ruling elite, emerged with a lead of less than 0.6 percent, or 240,000 votes. López Obrador and his supporters are demanding a full recount in the July 2 race, saying previous tallies were tainted by fraud.
The country´s top electoral court has rejected a full recount, but is weighing López Obrador´s allegations of fraud, and must declare a president-elect by Sept. 6.
Electoral authorities have until Sunday to finish a partial recount of the vote. While they have not revealed the results, representatives of Calderon´s National Action Party said Friday no major problems have surfaced with 75 percent of the count completed. López Obrador supporters contend the recount has revealed numerous indications of fraud and negligence.
"We are not going to allow an imposition. We are not going to accept a spurious president without moral or political authority," López Obrador told thousands of supporters in Mexico City´s central square late Friday.
The vote laid bare red-hot political divisions illustrated by the camps, where about 5,000 farmers, housewives and slum organizers have largely paralyzed the city´s financial district and historic center, playing endless games of chess and dominoes and listening to political harangues.
"People weren´t accustomed to seeing farmers on this avenue," protester Juventino Rodríguez from the rural district of Tlahuac, said of Reforma Avenue. "For us, we always felt out of place here."
Now, they´ve taken it over. The broad, leafy thoroughfare lined by banks and gleaming office towers where tourists once sought out museums, cafes and monuments, is now filled with the smell of beans, rice and onions being cooked for camp inhabitants.
Tourist Edvard Obornik of Prague, the Czech Republic, had to weave through the camps.
"The thing I don´t like is that they tie the ropes for their tents at about this height," said Obornik, motioning to his neck. "For a European man, that can really be dangerous."
Officials in Mexico City, which is governed by López Obrador´s Democratic Revolution Party, have done nothing to discourage the protest, despite the traffic chaos and business losses it has created.
Instead, men wearing the uniforms of the local electricity company helped the protesters tap illegally into electrical mains, with improvised cables snaking across the pavement and into the tent encampments to power televisions and light bulbs.
Given the blockade of the main artery, new forms of transport have sprung up. Roving motorcyclists offer helmetless rides as an alternative "taxi" service along the boulevard for 15 pesos (US$1.25), and many have turned to bicycles.
Luciano Veyan, a Mexico City real estate broker, rode his black mountain bike past the protest camps. "It´s a good way to get around," he said. "I use a combination of my bike and the subway to get to work."
The camps also offer entertainment, including a raunchy clown show; an off-key ranchera singer; guitar-strumming protest singers; lots of Cuban revolutionary music; and a workshop where passers-by are invited to paint plaster figurines of López Obrador.
The former Mexico City mayor has promised to govern for the poor first, and gained a nearly cult-like following for his big public works projects and government-funded pensions for the elderly.
Guillermina Ramírez, 55, like most camp inhabitants, rhapsodizes about the leftist candidate and dreams of the day he will be declared the winner of the presidential election.
"The day he is named president, we´ll have caviar and beans!" Ramirez shouted, while cooking caldrons of rice and beans.
Nearby, Juana Álvarez Robles, 60, said, "He is our messiah, our redeemer."
One of the main activities in the camps is concocting images of López Obrador as a hero, a saint or a king, and depicting Calderón, his conservative opponent, as a pig or a ghoul.
Among the paintings, cartoons and sculptures, one depicts López Obrador seated on a sort of throne, holding the severed head of President Vicente Fox, whom the leftist accuses of fixing the election for Calderón.
"We Mexicans have a very deep religious faith, and when we have a leader, that often gets transferred to him," said Víctor Alvarado, 23, a member of an artists collective at the protest.
The rains of Mexico City´s monsoon-like summer have spawned a chant - "it rains, it rains, and the people don´t complain!"
PRD Might Lift Capital Blockades
Claudio Bolaños - El Universal
The Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) might be close to ending their stranglehold on Mexico City, the product of 47 encampments occupying roughly 5 miles of the capital´s most important downtown thoroughfares.
On Saturday morning, the Mexico City Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) issued a decree giving the city government five days to explain what measures were being taken to negotiate an end to the protests that have snarled traffic and inconvenienced commuters for two weeks.
From Chiapas, PRD president Leonel Cota said the left-leaning party would make a decision some time Saturday on whether or not to end the mass protest. The decision will be announced on Sunday, he said.
The CDHDF was responding to over 300 complaints filed by local residents who oppose the blockade and its infringement on the right of free transit in the capital.
On Friday, the city ombudsman contacted the Mexico City government to inform them that a deadline for action would be established.
Cota insisted that any decision to end the mega-protest "does not mean we are abandoning our campaign against election fraud."
"On the contrary, the next logical step is to undertake a nationwide campaign to avoid the imposition of Felipe Calderón (the ruling party candidate who won the uncertified vote count)," he said.
EL UNIVERSAL writer Francisco Reséndiz contributed to this report. |
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