On Sunday, huge crowds of demonstrators streamed into Mexico City’s main square, making a powerful statement against a plan that they convincingly argue would undermine the country’s young democracy.
Organizers say some 500,000 people joined the protest at the Zocalo, as the plaza at the center of the city is known. Officials claim a lower number, but either way, the gathering, one of scores of demonstrations held in more than 100 Mexican cities, marks a startlingly strong rebuke to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO.
Paraphrasing the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, opponents of AMLO’s controversial changes to the electoral system and the National Electoral Institute, or INE, call the overhaul the “chronicle of a fraud foretold.”