MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Vicente Fox celebrated Independence Day on Saturday with a giant military parade while supporters of leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador massed at an outdoor gathering and acclaimed him leader of a "parallel government."
Fox, accompanied by Defense Secretary Gen. Gerardo Cle-mente Vega, reviewed thousands of military personnel from a vehicle that rolled through the capital's enormous Zocalo square, just one day after López Obrador militants agreed to permanently remove squatter camps from the center and from the city's main Reforma boulevard, which, like the Zocalo, had been blocked for nearly seven weeks.
Small groups of López Obrador supporters pushed up against metal barricades separating the crowds from the parade holding signs reading "Fox, crook" and "vote by vote," a reference to their call for a full recount of the July 2 election that López Obrador lost by a margin of less than 0.6 percent.
People are also reading…
Others showed up to cheer on the president and the new president-elect, Felipe Calderón, of Fox's conservative National Action Party. A military band played loudly over the conflicting protests and members of the president's security guard stood by to prevent any violence. No major incidents were reported.
On Friday night, when Mexico kicked off the holiday celebrations, Fox agreed to stay away from the square, issuing "el grito," or the cry of independence, from a town hundreds of miles away to avoid possible clashes with López Obrador supporters who announced they would hold their own party in the Zocalo.
López Obrador claims the election was tainted by fraud and refuses to accept Calderón's victory. He blames Fox for illegally spending government money to help Calderón win, a charge Fox has vehemently denied.
Just minutes after the parade left the Zocalo to march down Reforma on Saturday, López Obrador's supporters moved in, carrying the large yellow flags of his leftist Democratic Revolution Party and setting up temporary meeting places for the thousands of delegates expected to attend a "National Democratic Convention." Shouts of "Obrador! Obrador!" were interspersed with organ-grinder music and the loud squawk of plastic horns blown to celebrate Independence Day.
After a series of daylong meetings among various state delegations, convention members, voting with a show of hands, elected López Obrador as Mexico's "legitimate" president and formally refuse to accept Calde-rón's administration. Calderón is scheduled to take office on Dec. 1.
López Obrador said he hoped to mass as many as 1 million people for the event. The Zocalo is only large enough to accommodate about 100,000 people, however, in addition to another 50,000 or so who can squeeze into the surrounding streets.
Historic bank vault now new Tucson speakeasy
