Dozens of farmers protested this Monday at the main entrances of the foreign-owned Grupo Modelo – AB InBev brewery, the largest in the country, demanding “concrete results from the government regarding the problems facing Mexico’s agricultural sector.”
The farmers’ demonstration was tense, with clashes between farmers and truck drivers, as brewery executives attempted to prevent the protest by blocking the highways to the complex, located north of the city of Calera de Victor Rosales, with the support of their contracted truck drivers.
More than a hundred trucks were positioned across the road to prevent the arrival of tractors and harvesters, but the farmers used shoulders and dirt roads to reach the company gates.
“They shot themselves in the foot,” warned Alberto de Santiago Murillo, leader of the Irrigation Well Users Association in Zacatecas, who stated that the farmers’ intention was not to block access to the brewery—which produces 24 million hectoliters of beer annually—since they had demonstrated there on previous occasions without disrupting operations.
For a couple of hours, Zacatecas producers of staple grains and vegetables demonstrated there before heading to protest at the toll booths on the Zacatecas-Fresnillo and Zacatecas-Aguascalientes highways.
There, they demanded federal authorities “protection against the unfair competition we face from imported foreign products,” as well as an “urgent reduction in gasoline and diesel prices, which are suffocating us.”
Source: jornada
