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Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office last Saturday in a day of inaugural festivities punctuated by violent clashes between police and protesters in the streets beyond the steel wall erected to shield the Legislative Palace from anticipated unrest.
Hundreds of protesters smashed windows of stores and banks in Mexico City and threw Molotov cocktails over the barricades, denouncing the election, which was tainted by allegations of massive fraud, as illegitimate. Police attacked protesters with tear gas, water cannons and rubber-coated bullets. At least 76 people were injured in the mêlée, 29 of them hospitalized, according to the Associated Press, including one student protester who was in critical condition.
Inside the legislative chambers, the new president was greeted with jeers from some members of Congress. Before an audience that included U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Peña Nieto ushered in a restoration of political rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, a party with a seven decade-long history of corruption, fraud and authoritarian control of Mexico before its hegemonic rule over the country was first broken twelve years ago.
Here are two videos of the protests from Emergencia Mx:
Photos: Eneas, CC 2.0
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3 Comments
I’d like to know what the real vote was. People in Mexico know in far larger numbers than people here that their political class is a sick joke.
Checkpoint global, for all intents and purposes.
Leaving aside the question of what percentage of those who took to the streets (all over the Republic, not just in la capital) were those “hundreds of protesters” who allegedly threw molotov cocktails, broke windows, etc. there is the larger question of whether police agents or paid provacateurs (or both) were responsible for the violence. Several reports have surfaced here that SUGGEST (nothing more than that) that police agents were among the vandals, and several of those arrested say they were paid to create violence… by whom? being the big question.
Also, it should be noted that vandals and petty thieves attaching themselves to major demonstrations has been a problem — both for demonstrators and Mexico City police — for several years.