100,000 Campesinos Protest in Mexico City's Zocalo on Emiliano Zapata's Birthday teleSUR English
go to original August 8, 2016

Tens of thousands of farmers marched through Mexico City on Monday to demand more economic support and agrarian reforms from the government. (Ruptly TV)

Thousands of campesinos poured into the streets of Mexico City Monday to at once celebrate the birthday of the iconic Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata and to demand more federal government support for infrastructure and development in rural areas, local media reported.

Organized by national Autonomous Front of the Countryside, campesinos from more than a dozen Mexican states, rallied at Zocalo Square at the National Palace, the city's main political hub.

After gathering at midday for a sit-in outisde the federal executive offices in the main square, the march continued toward the Ministry of the Interior, where some protesters planned to set up an encampment.



With some 130,000 protesters in 3,000 buses expected to join the march, the government deployed 3,700 security agents to patrol main protest points, while police helicopters also watched from overhead, La Jornada reported.

Protesters flew banners with slogans such as “They’ve taken everything from us, even fear” and blasted President Enrique Peña Nieto for neglecting rural communities with inadequate budgets and government inattention to land reform, a central tenet of the legendary Zapata's populist platform.

Mexico’s campesinos have suffered the consequences of more than twenty years of the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Launched in 1994 under then-President Bill Clinton, NAFTA has displaced 1.5 million Mexican campesinos as a flood of subsidized, cheap U.S. food imports undermined local markets and adversely impacted Mexico’s agricultural sector and food security.

Read the rest at teleSUR English

Related: Mexican Activist Says NAFTA Should Act as a Warning Against TPP (teleSUR)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!