This Tuesday, the Interior Ministry began a dialogue with farmers and farmers after they blocked roads in at least 22 states across the country on Monday to demand an increase in the prices of their crops and show discontent over insecurity, according to national newspapers. It is the new stage in the struggle that the Mexican government and farmers have been carrying out since the end of October, when they began to cut off the country’s main roads to demand answers to the crisis affecting the countryside.
The controversy intensified in the last day, after the Minister of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, disqualified Monday’s demonstrations on the grounds that they had political connotations. The head of the agency also specified that “investigative files” had been opened on the leaders of the protests over the road closures.
The response to those words didn’t take long to arrive. The representative of Chihuahua producers and former federal deputy of the Labor Party (PT), Eraclio Rodríguez, reacted strongly: “To say that there are interests of political parties is the stupidest speech I have ever heard.” President Claudia Sheinbaum assured on Tuesday, in her usual morning conference, that Icela Rodríguez’s statements had been misinterpreted. “We don’t persecute anyone who demonstrates,” he defended.
Reform recorded the disagreement between the National Front for the Relief of the Mexican Countryside and the National Association of Transporters, the two large groups that called for the roadblocks, which they reported to the farmers of Guanajuato, led by Mauricio Pérez, shortly before entering the dialogue table. “Those who entered from Guanajuato do not represent the Front, they are the same ones who agreed with the Government on the 950 pesos of support and the Government came out to say publicly that they had already agreed with them. Those are moving separately!”, declared Rodríguez, also a leader of the Front, in statements collected by the newspaper.
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