A rchive Date
[ 28-11-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mexico ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/11/27/270359-ap.html
Tens of thousands of Mexicans protest against government
Thu, November 27, 2003
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexican union members, left-wing radicals and farmers marched to the capital's central plaza Thursday for a collective show of opposition to the president's plans to raise taxes on food and medicine and sell state-owned assets.
The march drew tens of thousands of protesters, who packed major avenues from Mexico's independence monument to the city centre. The march was largely peaceful, with demonstrators chanting: "Our country is not for sale!"
Still, authorities dispatched thousands of police to guard against possible violence, arresting at least four people in the afternoon along Reforma Avenue, the capital's main drag. The size of the crowd reflected growing frustration with President Vicente Fox and proposals that have led to increasing political paralysis and a sharp drop in the peso against the U.S. dollar.
"The only solution will be a national strike, to stop them from selling what little we Mexicans have left to the foreigners," said Rosalia Prado, a middle-school teacher dressed in the yellow colours of the leftist Democratic Revolution party.
Speaking Thursday about the marches from Michoacan state, Fox said: "We should all enjoy Mexico's unprecedented new climate of liberty...freedom of expression and the right to protest are never going to be blocked by my administration."
Fox recently commented the country "is doing wonderfully" - a statement that sharply contrasts with the current economy and led one local newspaper to run an ironic headline: "Another Day Here In Wonderland."
Protesters, who converged in three columns to the city's central plaza, are mostly opposed to the president's proposal to eliminate a sales-tax exemption on food and medicine and allow more private investment in the state-run electricity sector.
Ramiro Gomez, a rancher from Chihuahua, showed up riding a chestnut-coloured horse to protest against the government's economic policies. "We have an abandoned countryside," Gomez said. "Nobody is making money, now production is paralysed and many of the producers have emigrated. We want national sovereignty in food and to consume only Mexican corn, beans, wheat and meat."
Marchers included movie-production workers whose jobs are threatened by Fox's proposal to sell off a state-owned movie studio. "We risk becoming a subsidiary of Hollywood, and losing our identity as Mexicans," said German Ramirez, a set-builder at the studio
Juan Molinar, a congressional leader from Fox's rightist National Action party, defended the sales-taxes increases, calling the exemptions for food and medicine "a huge subsidy for purchases by the wealthy, with money that could be spent helping the poor."
Molinar said National Action is willing to compromise on the tax changes but Fox has had little success at lobbying legislators. His party is a minority in both houses of Congress.
Fox's troubles have taken a toll on one major political supporter, congressional leader Elba Esther Gordillo. She is fighting off an attempt by disgruntled members of her Institutional Revolutionary party, or PRI, to oust her from her leadership post for being too close to Fox. "The worst thing is that Fox has lost control," said Rosendo Flores, an electrical workers' union leader and organizer of the march.
"He's isolated and even so he insists on imposing totally erratic policies."
The struggle over policy, which featured Gordillo in a public row with fellow PRI leader Roberto Madrazo, has unsettled financial markets, sending the peso to a record low of 11.355 against the U.S. dollar Wednesday.
"As long as there is no clear outlook on what is going to happen with reforms, volatility will continue," Mexico's central bank governor, Guillermo Ortiz, said Wednesday.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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