Documentary: 400 Pueblos

Twice a year since 1992, The Villagers from the State of Veracruz who comprise the “400 Pueblos Movement” have been coming to Mexico City to protest what they believe was an unfair land grab by the government, seizing public lands they had been living and working on for over a decade.  

Camping out in temporary tents that surround the nearby Monumento a la Madre for upwards of two or three months at a time, the protestors take to the streets twice a day for two hour long protests to make their cause heard. But It didn’t seem the government was hearing them so, in 2002, they decided to start protesting naked. Now, twice a day at noon and during the evening rush hour the farmers of the "400 Pueblos" organization demonstrate on the main Paseo de la Reforma, a grand boulevard in downtown Mexico City, wearing little more then a photo of Mexican Senator Dante Delgado Ranauro, who is also a former Veracruz state governor, the signs read "Corrupt and Oppressive". Dante Delgado was the interim Governor of Veracruz in 1992. According to the farmers He’s the one who ordered the destruction of their villages – Alamo Temapache, Poza Rica, and Martinez de la Torre. Then he invented charges and jailed 300 people. As they tell it, early on a 1992 morning, hundreds of farmers and their families in several pueblos in Veracruz were shaken awake by the rumbling of caterpillars and heavy earth moving equitment. The drivers were accompanied by uniformed officers who ordered everyone to clear out. The farmers were granted a few minutes to grab a few belongings before the caterpillars rolled in to destroy their homes, schools and churches. For more than a decade these people had lived on “ejidos,” public land they had farmed and believed should be theirs to use forever. Now, right or wrong those days were over. They’ve been protesting ever since.