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Friday, May 5, 2006

Flower Power

Posted by on May 5 at 8:37 AM

Mexican florists are made of tougher stuff than their American counterparts. You see, florists—florists!—are rioting in Mexico. It would be funny if, uh, people weren’t dying.

Mexican Police Quell Florist Riot

SAN SALVADOR ATENCO, Mexico—Thousands of riot police stormed the town square early Thursday to subdue machete-wielding protesters who had beaten two officers into unconsciousness, dragging them through the streets in attacks televised nationwide.

Violence exploded in the area Wednesday when police tried to evict unlicensed flower sellers from a market in a nearby town…. A 14-year-old boy was reported killed and dozens more injured in the confrontations.

Rioters first blocked a stretch of federal highway about 14 miles northeast of Mexico City, turning back police with rocks, Molotov cocktails and large firework rockets.


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Perhaps if Mexico had decriminalized the green "flowers" as planned, mayhem wouldn't have ensued.

It would be funny, I guess, to reduce this news story about the continuing struggle between the repressive Mexican state (Mexican papers are saying 3,000 federal and state riot police marched into San Salvadoe Atetenco---3,000!) and working people to a joke about florists. I guess.

We laugh,

to keep from crying.

Although the events were touched off by the arrest of some unlicensed flower vendors, the main riots ensued when a militant opposition group from outside San Salvador intervened in support of those arrested - the People's Front for the Defense of the Land.
The response in San Salvador seems mixed. While there is a general sense that the government response went too far, there is also a lot of distrust with regard to the activists. They seem to be perceived as outsiders and trouble makers.
You can't take that at face value though. There is so much racism in Mexico that oftentimes "oustisders" just means "indians" as opposed to the mestizo stock that makes up most of the locals.
There is a sad truth lurking there though, that the violence that often accompanies conflicts over racial aligned economic issues tends to hurt others on the lower end of the economic scale rather than hurting anyone really guilty of the injustices that are the focus of the violence.

While we stickle on in the Slog about grammar and such, may I take this opportunity to potentially save you (Deborah Brandt, you listening?) some mexi-embarrassment. HIS NAME IS VICENTE FOX, NOT VINCENTE.

Geez, Lloyd, let 'em screw up before you correct their spelling, why dontcha?

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