After two quiet months, demonstrators filled the capital´s central square Wednesday, protesting high food prices and clearly showing President Calderón his honeymoon is over.
By Kelly Arthur Garrett/The Herald Mexico El Universal Jueves 01 de febrero de 2007
After two quiet months, demonstrators filled the capital´s central square Wednesday, protesting high food prices and clearly showing President Calderón his honeymoon is over.
Rally organizers, primarily labor and campesino groups, issued a statement calling for more government action in balancing wages and prices, as well as more involvement by the social sector in that action.
"Those who assure us they won the election have no right to monopolize public decisions," said Verónica Velasco, the television journalist chosen to read at the rally the "Zócalo Declaration" signed by the participating organizations. "What we´re demanding today is sovereignty, both nutritional and energy, and the defense of salaries and jobs."
Wednesday´s march and rally grew out of widespread public anger at the suddenly skyrocketing prices of tortillas, the nation´s staple food. The Calderón administration took belated action by forging an agreement among suppliers and manufacturers to hold the line at 8.50 pesos per kilo, with uneven success.
The tortilla crisis has re-focused attention on the same ideological divide that embittered last year´s presidential election. Calderón, who won by less than a percentage point, prefers market solutions to economic problems while most of the opposition has urged direct government action.
Calderón´s press office issued a statement after the rally Wednesday, saying the president shares the demonstrators´ concern about shrinking purchasing power, but indicating the administration will stick to its current market-oriented approach.
"The federal government reiterates its firm commitment to combating poverty and generating the conditions that will permit our economy to create more and better jobs for everybody in a context of greater workplace competitivity and productivity," the president said.
Wednesday´s statement by the protesters also called for renegotiating the agriculture sections of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and enacting an emergency minimum wage increase to offset the recent hikes in food and gasoline prices.
Central Bank Gov. Guillermo Ortiz nixed the wage hike idea hours before the march started. "It would be counterproductive for workers," he said.
Wednesday´s rally at the Zócalo took place under balmy, clear skies, and divided itself into two acts.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the speakers´ stage was cleared, but about half the crowd stayed to hear presidential runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador speak. The former candidate had agreed to delay his speech until after the main event when some of the participating organizations complained about the injection of party politics into a nonpartisan citizens event.
But López Obrador´s famed drawing power was evident as tens of thousands of his supporters marched down Madero Avenue even as other protesters were leaving in the opposite direction on parallel streets.
"It´s obvious that we must insist on changing the current economic policy," López Obrador told the crowd. "Not just for ideological reasons but because it simply hasn´t worked."
