Tens of thousands in Mexico protest against energy reforms
1 Feb AFP
Tens of thousands of people marched in Mexico City Friday to protest
constitutional reforms pushed through by President Enrique Pena Nieto
that open the oil and gas industry to foreign investment.
An estimated 65,000 people gathered for the protest in the Zocalo,
the main square in capital city, an official at the Secretariat of
Public Safety told AFP.Some 2,500 police officers were deployed but
there were no incidents of violence, the official said. The march was
organized by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the leftist
opposition to the president's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI).
The reforms, which open Mexico's oil industry to foreign investment
for the first time in 75 years, were approved in Congress and ratified
by a majority of Mexican states in late 2013.The rule changes are
supported by two of the country's leading parties, the PRI and the
conservative National Action Party (PAN).But the third party, the PRD,
vehemently opposes the reforms. Many in Mexico look back with pride at
the expulsions of foreign oil companies in 1938 by then president Lazaro
Cardenas.
One of the PRD's founders is the late leader's son, Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas.
"All types of protest are valid" in opposing the reforms, Cardenas
told the crowd in the Zocalo, "including civil disobedience." The
foreign investors "will be interested in extracting the largest amount
of petroleum possible in the shortest amount of time," Cardenas claimed.
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