The eve of the (mis) Informe

I was supposed to be in Mexico City today, to start a vacation. Unfortunately…. there were complications, and I had to indefinitely delay that trip.

… maybe not being in Mexico City today wasn’t such a bad thing. With Enrique Peña Nieto’s “Informe” (State of the Republic Address) being being first pushed back to the Second of September and moved from it’s traditional location in the Chamber of Deputies to a more “secure” location, it was already assumed that there would be push-back from the citizens to the Administration’s push to “reform” both PEMEX, widely seen as attempts to denationalize the “paraestatal” into nothing more than an oil company (and allow significant access, if not ceding control, to foreign corporate interests) and the educational system — seen not as improving education, but a backdoor attempt to undermine labor rights as well as erode support for secular public education —walking around the Centro earlier today might have been a bit difficult.

Mainstream Mexican ,edia blamed the violence, as it usually does, on “anarchists”… and I don’t doubt there were a few anarchists in the crowd, though the term tends to be applied by the government to any and all “tribus urbanos” whenever there is violence during demonstrations.

(Video from El Universal, via Despierto Mexico.