Students, Cantabrigians Protest Treatment of Mexican Presidential Candidate Accused By Incumbent

In a rally scheduled to coincide with a large-scale march in Mexico City, around 35 students and local community members gathered in Harvard Square on Sunday to protest the prosecution of the popular leftist mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The embattled mayor, who has declared his candidacy for the 2006 presidential election, is facing charges leveled by Mexican President Vicente Fox’s conservative government that Obrador ignored a court order to halt construction of a city road in a disputed location.

The conflict is heightened due to a Mexican law that bars those under prosecution from running for president.

However, some, including the protestors, believe the allegations to be more about politics than justice.

Graduate students from Harvard, Tufts, and MIT, along with other local community members, assembled in front of Au Bon Pain holding handmade signs protesting the actions of Fox’s government.

Marusia Musacchio-Farias, a graduate student in the East Asian Studies Department who organized the protest, said that the group had gathered to oppose what they said was an undemocratic ploy by Fox’s government.

“We’re not supporters of Obrador at all,” she said. “Some people actually oppose him.”

Instead she said the group was expressing its concern with the state of Mexican politics.

“Fox is spitting on democracy by not allowing people to vote for the most popular candidate,” she said. “There are going to be elections and people will be able to vote, but the president is going to choose who the acceptable candidates are. That’s not democracy, obviously.”

The Fox administration maintains that it is simply prosecuting the mayor’s illegal behavior.

“From our point of view it is a provocation and a breach of the law,” presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters on Sunday.

However, many have questioned the gravity of the accusations. A Los Angeles Times editorial on April 10, 2005 wrote that “this charge is the equivalent of a traffic violation; hardly the type of high crime that should trigger a process akin to impeachment.”