In an absolutely astounding development for the defense of democracy everywhere, Mexico's liberal coalition has led a presidential-vote-recount protest today centered around Mexico City's downtown central plaza (the "Zocalo") and has apparently bested the previous record for the largest demonstration ever in Mexico by a million people.
A bit more under the fold, obviously a still developing story.
An estimated 2.4 million people turned out in downtown Mexico City from across the nation. The last biggest demonstration was when the liberal presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or "AMLO" for short) brought an estimated 1.5 million out to fight a federal government's weak charges to prevent the former Mexico City mayor from running for President.
Beat the last demo by a MILLION people. A MILLION MORE PEOPLE THAN THE LAST PROTEST 2 WEEKS AGO. (Mexico's population is about 106,000,000, so for a simple comparison's sake, if this were a sample of the entire nation, then the liberals just brought about 2.3% of the entire nation's population to Mexico City's downtown for a Sunday peaceful protest. Probably the majority of attendees are from Mexico City and nearby, however states farther away are reported to have mobilized tens of thousands as well.)
The two posts linked below explore the protest's goals and justifications in more detail, but basically in Mexico there is a Constitutionally-empowered electoral tribunal (court), the TEPJF by its Spanish acronym, which has the authority to investigate elections and order a fairly wide range of solutions if it so decides, from certifying the election (which is not due until 06 September), to annulling the election and ordering another, or perhaps anything in between.
2.4 MILLION PEOPLE.
Think it'll make the evening news here? Who knows, but let's do what we can to make sure it's noticed.
My earlier diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And the diary from Ourobouros, a Mexico City resident and Mexican citizen who will be posting more tomorrow or, who knows, perhaps tonight.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Here's a link to the La Jornada article (in Spanish) reporting the SSP (Mexico City's security force) estimate.
Note that in some coverage, numbers are split between marchers and rally-goers. The structure of the protest / meeting was divided, like that of two weeks ago: approximately 350,000 people marched the 14km across Mexico City from a famous monument, who then joined the remainder of the crowd already assembled in the central square and its completely filled side avenues. If the estimates are accurate, then there must have been around 2 million people awaiting the marchers' arrival.