Hundreds march in Mexico to protest rising violence, foreign interventions
Hundreds of demonstrators marched through Mexico City on Saturday to protest rising violence and insecurity across the country, demanding stronger government action while rejecting foreign interventions.
Footage showed protesters waving One Piece anime flags — a symbol of resistance among Generation Z — as they chanted slogans and carried banners from the Angel of Independence to the National Palace.
"To protest against violence, to take action against violence, and also obviously to protest so that right-wing groups, opportunistic parties, and scavengers do not use the rightful anger of the protest," said one participant.
Organisers, mostly young demonstrators, voiced frustration that political groups had adopted the Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger symbol for their own purposes.
"Many times right-wing groups, fascist groups, are the first to criminalise protest, the first to take rights away from the LGBT community, to ignore structural or systemic problems, etc. So it is even incongruent for them to take a symbol that has nothing to do with them," said another protester.
Participants also denounced U.S. anti-drug operations in the Caribbean, likening them to past interventions in Latin America.
"This narco narrative of 'they are narcos, let's kill them,' which is the same one the United States has used for interventions in Venezuela," said one protester.
Police monitored the demonstration, which briefly disrupted traffic along Paseo de la Reforma, but no major incidents were reported.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
