MEXICO CITY - Tens of thousands of farmers thronged the streets of Mexico City's major boulevard Friday, riding atop horses and tractors, leading burros and waving large banners to demand greater protection against U.S. imports under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"The central objective is to show the nation that there is great discontent in the countryside that cannot be hidden," said Victor Suarez, one of the protest leaders.
At least 25 farm groups in three large coalitions were organizing the demonstrations Friday, which also were backed by several environmental groups, opposition political parties, and major labor unions.
Local newspapers and radio stations warned motorists in the Mexican capital to avoid the march route, which spanned the city's wide historic boulevard, the Paseo de la Reforma, from the independence monument to the city's central plaza, known as the zocalo.
Reforma became a sea of straw hats late Friday as weathered men in boots and jeans gathered in the street alongside tractors, harvesters and the buses that had carried them to Mexico City from various parts of the country.
Organizers said 30,000 demonstrators participated in the march; police put attendance at about half that.
"Today the entire farm movement is marching under a single banner: re-negotiation of the farm chapter (of NAFTA), a new farm policy and a new deal for the countryside," said Suarez, of the coalition known as The Countryside Can't Stand More.
The farmers began intensifying their protests against NAFTA and against dire poverty in the countryside late last year, blockading highways and briefly threatening to close the U.S.-Mexico border on Jan. 1, the day remaining tariffs on many U.S. farm products were removed.
"With the free-trade treaty, our products automatically are worth nothing because the neighboring country (the United States) sells more cheaply," said Teodulo Ortega Delgado, 53, a corn and sugar farmer from the western state of Nayarit.
"We are the motor of the country and they don't help us enough," Ortega said. "We are like cars: If a car breaks and you don't fix it, well, it doesn't work."
President Vicente Fox, an enthusiastic supporter of free trade, had promised an extensive dialogue with farm groups aimed at reaching a national accord to help farmers modernize and become more competitive.
But the coalitions were angered when Fox's aides this week announced hearings on farm issues that seemed to leave control firmly in the hands of Cabinet secretaries. One of the burros that ambled down Reforma had "Fox" painted in bright white letters on its side.
In what seemed to be a related development, the government said Friday it was barring imports of beans from the United States and Canada for an indefinite period, alleging that products from outside the NAFTA area have been slipped in unfairly.
Last week, the government imposed restrictions on U.S. chicken, citing health concerns.
Mexican exports of farm products to the United States rose to $US6.2 billion in 2001 from $US3.2 billion in 1993.
But imports of U.S. farm goods to Mexico also have skyrocketed. Farm groups allege that massive subsidies, cheap credit, better transportation and technology give U.S. farmers an unfair advantage.
They also complain that the main beneficiaries of the rising Mexican exports have been large, corporate farms rather than the small-plot farms on which millions of Mexicans still live.
"We want the government to pay attention to the little farmers, not just the large landowners," said Jesus Celis, 70, a nut farmer in northern Chihuahua state.
Last month, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued a statement rebutting the farmers' claims, saying that many of the problems affecting Mexican farmers existed before NAFTA, including high production costs, poor technology and difficulty accessing affordable credit.
Opposition parties, labor unions and non-governmental organizations lent their support to the march. Large balloons bearing the Greenpeace slogan and a wide banner with the initials of the Zapatista National Liberation Army of Chiapas were seen near the central Independence Angel monument, where protesting farmers planted large stalks of corn in plots of earth.
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