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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2006 
Fox Announces End to Revolution Day Parade
 Laurence Iliff - Dallas Morning News
| | Last month, Fox canceled his participation in the Sept. 15 Independence Day celebration in Mexico City's central Zocalo plaza after Lopez Obrador announced his own parallel ceremony there. |
No more bureaucrats marching in sweat suits. No more wrestling exhibitions along the capital's Reforma thoroughfare. No more top athletes up close and personal. Mexico's sports-themed Revolution Day parade is no more, President Vicente Fox's office announced Tuesday.
The 70-year-old tradition of labor unions, government employees and sports groups trundling through downtown in tennis shoes is to be replaced this Nov. 20 by a presidential speech at Fox's residence, Los Pinos, said spokesman Ruben Aguilar.
The sudden death of the sports parade, Aguilar said, had nothing to do with the fact that losing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador plans to hold his own "swearing in" ceremony as the "legitimate president" near the parade route on Nov. 20.
"It has nothing to do with that," Aguilar said in response to a reporter's question.
"The government has wanted to make this change, and it's taken a while, but we have taken a decision that we consider to be an expression of new times," Aguilar said.
"In the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the revolution, the president wants it to be his words that mark the beginning of the preparations for the great national party that all Mexicans will celebrate in the year 2010," Aguilar said.
Lopez Obrador claims that the July 2 election was stolen from him by the government in favor of the candidate from Fox's National Action Party, Felipe Calderon, who won by 0.5 percent. Electoral courts and election observers found no evidence of voter fraud.
Last month, Fox canceled his participation in the Sept. 15 Independence Day celebration in Mexico City's central Zocalo plaza after Lopez Obrador announced his own parallel ceremony there.
The sports theme for a parade that celebrates Mexico's revolution - during which a tenth of its population died - was chosen to express the pacifist nature of the Mexican people, according a 1936 decree by the Mexican Senate.
A spokesman for Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution criticized the decision to cancel the parade.
"Separate from canceling the parade, what's missing is the destruction of the Monument to the Revolution because that's what their final goal is, end it all and build a (shopping) mall on the monument (site)," Sen. Jesus Ortega told radio station Formato 21.
The Monument to the Revolution is a huge arched dome and plaza where Lopez Obrador plans to have his "swearing in" ceremony. |
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