On our way back from Puerto Morelos on Saturday, we had to stop by the grocery store for some necessities. Well imagine my surprise when coming down the main street (30th) was about 300 people chanting and holding up signs protesting the recent Mexican election results. While
we were waiting at the light, I asked the dread lock, scooter riding guy next to me what was up. He said they were protesting the election and claiming there was fraud in the counting of the ballots. Of course, not really having a clue, I'll have to take his word for it. Any of my Mexican followers, please, correct me if my understanding was off.
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Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Enrique Peña Nieto (WINNER), Josefina Vázquez Mota |
Of course, the blogger in me went straight into action. As soon as we could park, I scooted across the parking lot and "snap, snap, snap!" It was actually pretty cool, and most of the protesters were posing for me. Although I am not a political person even in my own country, I was excited to see so many young people trying to change their country. Just an outside observation but before the election we saw
Peña shirt everywhere worn mainly by the working class. At the protest, I noticed that it was a rather young crowd with a little bit more hip, bohemian style. I'm wondering if this is a generation gap thing? Anyone know?
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| Where there's a crowd, there's an ice cream stand |
What about you? Have you ever been to a political protest or taken part in changing your town, city, or country?
I've been following this for awhile since all my Mexican friends have very strong opinions on it.
ReplyDelete**If you believe everything you read on Facebook/Twitter**, it would seem that the working class people you saw wearing Peña shirts were because the shirts were gifted to them as a sort of bribe, not because they necessarily supported the candidate. Peña's party used the working class by paying them to show up at events, rallies, marches, etc to give the impression that Peña had a huge following. Many votes were also "bought" from the working class by Peña's party, and that's what the fuss is all about.
It also appears that many of the polling station results were botched in the election. There's a lot of evidence of this online, and it mostly seems to be in Peña's favor. It looks like the election officials also fudged some pre-election poll data in Peña's favor, and that considerable $$ exchanged hands.
I won't give my opinion because it's against the law, but that's the info circulating across social media.
Ah! So I'm thinking my noting the difference in the attire and all the shirts was right. It did appear that it was more working class that was at the rallies and marches and wearing shirts. Something to ponder.
DeleteYeah, there's been so many protests here in the city it's hard to keep track of them. People are really not happy with these results.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I was so surprised to hear they were going on down there on the coast though. :)
We've only had the one protest and it was probably smaller than in Mexico City. I haven't really heard anything else about politics since election week is over.
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