Mica for cartelinsider.com
The sit-in on Reforma Avenue in 2006 was a significant event in the political career of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is currently the President of Mexico. This sit-in originated as a response to the results of the presidential elections in which Felipe Calderón was declared the winner by a narrow margin, sparking controversy and accusations of electoral fraud from the native of Tabasco, his political allies, and his followers.
For several months, thousands of supporters of López Obrador occupied one of the main avenues of Mexico City, Paseo de la Reforma, as well as the city’s main square, the Zócalo, setting up camps and carrying out various demonstrations to demand a total recount of the votes.
This massive mobilization not only had an impact on the daily life of the city, altering traffic and commercial activities, but also marked a before and after in the Mexican political sphere.
Today, 18 years after that event, the demonstration has become a topic of conversation once again after information came to light revealing that the Sinaloa Cartel financed AMLO’s campaign, injecting at least 2 million dollars into it.
Under the famous slogan “Vote by vote, polling station by polling station!”, the sit-in that began with a mega-march called by AMLO in the heart of the capital managed to gather more than one million people in what was at the time the largest protest ever recorded in the city.
Already in the protest, although the official figure is not available, it is said that the number of participants was in the hundreds of thousands.
“I propose that we stay here, in permanent assembly (…) that we stay here, day and night, until the votes are counted and we have an elected president with the minimum legality that we as Mexicans deserve,” said the then member of the PRD party.
The Reforma sit-in in 2006 began in July, shortly after the presidential elections on the 2nd of that month, and lasted for approximately 47 days, concluding on September 14, 2006.
Despite the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary confirming the results of the elections, the movement led by López Obrador managed to remain active and critical towards Calderón’s government, which eventually led to the establishment of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) in 2014, a political party with which he would win the presidency in 2018.
The sit-in demonstrated López Obrador’s ability to mobilize large sectors of the population and consolidate his support base, becoming a central figure in the opposition.
However, this Tuesday an investigation published by ProPublica also revealed that the Sinaloa Cartel gave 2 million dollars to the campaign of the Tabascan candidate and that Édgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie”, attempted to kidnap the then-president of the Electoral Tribunal, Leonel Castillo González. It also provided another detail related to the protest.
And the agency states that “La Barbie” also financed the demonstration, according to the testimony of his lawyer, Roberto Lopez Najera, who became a protected witness for the DEA.
After insisting that he was the rightful winner, López Obrador gathered thousands of his supporters in Mexico City for a month-long sit-in that covered a section of the capital’s colonial center. According to López Nájera, “The Barbie” donated funds to help feed the protesters, it reads.
Previously, other versions, such as Elena Chávez’s in the book The Cash King, pointed out that the protest on Reforma avenue had been financed with public resources and not all were supporters of the current president, as it had allegedly forced street vendors, sanitation workers, and government unionized employees to attend.
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Mica
Email: mica@cartelinsider.com
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