Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The reflection of the times. On June 19, 1982, Mexico City’s Zócalo (Mexico City’s main square) witnessed the first independent mobilization in its history. The Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) occupied the space to celebrate Arnoldo Martinez Verdugo’s candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic. The capital’s Zócalo had not received independent organizations since the student movement of 1968. During those 24 years of interregnum, the Zócalo belonged to the President in office from the PRI. The left was illegal until 1978. The PSUM campaign event opened a new democratic space in Mexico, wresting from the PRI its image of invincibility. From that date until six years later, in 1988, when the National Democratic Front launched the presidential candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the libertarian character of the Zócalo was maintained and strengthened as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
Because of that 1982 mobilization, the Zócalo was given the identifier “Zócalo rojo” (Red Zócalo). Rogelio Hernández and Roberto Rock published the book “Zócalo Rojo”, in 1982, shortly after the event. That book had a tremendous impact at the time, both politically and culturally. The democratic left became a new and vital player in national and capital city politics.
What is relevant about the red Zócalo is that it took away the hegemony of the President of the Republic and the PRI in that neuralgic center of the republic. Years later, the opposition became strong there and won the Mexico City Government’s governorship.
Fast Forward. The President of the Republic is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and he considers the Zócalo to be his power and mobilization preserve. When he moved the presidential house from Los Pinos to the National Palace, he wanted to turn the Zócalo into his private garden. He dislikes sharing that space with the opposition he hates so much. And, when the opposition calls for a citizens’ mobilization in the Zócalo, he trusts in his hate-filled hyenas to run any stranger out of that privileged space.
The opposition has organized itself in an unusually pluralistic manner. Ideologies and opinions of a great diversity of orientations unite to defend the electoral body and, in essence, democracy and freedom of expression in Mexico, now threatened by the successors of the former promoters of the red Zócalo.
The historical clock took a huge and regrettable turn: the defenders of the democracy of yesteryear are now its gravediggers. They insist on keeping the Zócalo as the President’s private preserve.
Today the pink (Mexican) citizen movement is determined to conquer the Zócalo once again for democracy and freedom. On February 26, hundreds of thousands will occupy that space as theirs, with the right to freely demonstrate against the authoritarian powers that want to strangle Mexico. The Zócalo will not be painted red but pink in another historical turn. Of plurality, tolerance, and joy for the good times that will be born along with this new spirit that runs through the nation, of plurality and tolerance.
When the President learned that the opposition was calling for a rally in the Zócalo, he was furious. And he called, reactively because he lost control of the national agenda, for a “great, great, great demonstration” in the Zócalo on March 18 to celebrate the oil expropriation of 1938 and the Federal Electricity Commission ( CFE) for “its extraordinary efforts in favor of Mexicans”. For the second time in recent times, the citizen opposition has managed to corner the President, showing his weak side.
And all because on February 26, the Zócalo will be painted pink.
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