MEXICO CITY (El Universal).— Peasants, mainly sugarcane growers, and transporters carried out a day of protests and blockades in different parts of the country to demand from the federal government urgent measures in the face of insecurity in the countryside and roads, the economic crisis of the sector and its abandonment by the authorities.
The demonstrations, which spread across Mexico City, Veracruz, Tabasco, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Morelos, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Chiapas and Pueblathey united agricultural producers and freight transport operators under the threat of calling a national strike and taking over highways on pnext Monday the 24th in case of not achieving “economic justice and security for those who support the supply chains.”
In the morning, at the president’s conference Claudia Sheinbaum, contingents of the National Front for the Rescue of the Mexican Countryside (Fnrcm), of the National Transportation Association (ANT) and the Democratic Sugar Cane Unit (UCD) mobilizations began in front of the National Palace and with road blockades.
In the country’s capital, groups of farmers, with machetes and corn stalks, spread a blanket on the Zócalo plate with the demand “that corn imports be stopped and the Mexican countryside be taken care of.” They demanded from the federal government greater safety on roads and the end of corruption within the police corporationsto which accused of extorting drivers with arbitrary violations and unjustified arrests.
“Before, five or seven trailers were stolen a day, today they are stealing between 55 and 60 vehicles a day. The data presented by the ruling party on the fight against insecurity is false,” denounced David Estévez, president of the ANT.
In the south of the city, sugarcane farmers marched towards the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (It fits) and of the Ministry of Economy. With canes on their shoulders, producers demanded to completely stop imports of corn and sugar, and double tariffs on foreign products, arguing that the free entry of industrial sweeteners plummeted national prices, left several mills bankrupt and put the income of more than 180 thousand rural families.