"AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to our guest in Mexico City, John Ross. John Ross is a regular contributor to Counterpunch, to the Mexican daily La Jornada and to The Nation. His latest book, Making Another World Possible: Zapatista Chronicle 2000-2006, will be coming out in October. Welcome to Democracy Now!, John.1.5 million people. apparently the AP described it as "thousands". did anyone even notice this gathering of one million people? i didnt see it on my tv screen. apparently the media is again suppressing the 'election stealing' story. i wonder why that is.
JOHN ROSS: How are you doing, Amy?
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the events of yesterday?
JOHN ROSS: Quite impressive. A march of variously between 1.1 million, which is a police estimate, and 1.5 million, which is the party estimate, which is Lopez Obrador’s estimate. It was impossible to tell whether it was 1.1 or 1.5. I was locked into the Zocalo, the great central plaza here, and you couldn't move in any direction, so it was impossible to judge what was going on outside the Zocalo. But there was a 15-kilometer length march all the way from the edge of town into the center of the city.
Andres Manuel -- and it’s interesting to note, the 1.1 and the 1.5 million are kind of up for grabs, because if it is 1.5 million, it is the largest political demonstration in the history of Mexico. If it’s only 1.1 million it’s 100,000 short of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s previous record of 1.2 million, when they tried to keep him from the ballot.
And indeed, there will be another march in two weeks, and I think that will definitely settle whether or not this was the largest or not. I think it’s really important to understand that just eight days ago after the election, Lopez Obrador called the rally for the Zocalo and put a half-million people in the Zocalo. Yesterday's rally doubled that, a little bit more; if we accept the PRD figures, it tripled it. And, you know, when they tried to prevent Lopez Obrador from being on the ballot in the spring of 2005, he held a rally on April 7, 2005 that brought 300,000 people to the Zocalo, a little bit more, and then just two weeks later he tripled that with the 1.2. So what’s important here is the growth in the numbers of people that are coming together around this issue."
smell the democracy
the following pix are from the sydney morning herald and aljaz. are there any equivalents in the am.press?
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