1 million Mexicans demand recount

By Kevin Diaz
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Photo by Marco Ugarte / the associated press

MEXICO CITY — Blaring horns and beating drums, an estimated 1 million protesters from all over Mexico converged on the capital Sunday to call for a recount in the country's still-undecided July 2 presidential election.

The outpouring was by far the largest demonstration yet in support of former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-leaning populist who cites fraud in his narrow loss to conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderón.

The Roman Catholic Church canceled Mass at the downtown cathedral as protesters overwhelmed the massive central plaza and spilled for blocks down nearby streets, The Associated Press reported. Protesters filling the Zócalo square and side streets numbered about 1.1 million, making it the second-largest protest in the city's history, Ricardo Olayo, the chief spokesman for Mexico City police told Bloomberg News.

Organizers of López Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, known as the PRD, distributed copies of newspaper editorials worldwide calling for a recount, if not for López Obrador then to affirm Mexico's nascent democracy and Calderón's victory.

López Obrador asked his followers to continue a campaign of "passive civil resistance in the defense of democracy." The protests will end, he said, when there's a recount.