Puppeteers and Protesters

A puppet show at the Peabody Museum celebrating the Mexican Day of the Dead became the scene of protests denouncing the Mexican government last night. About 30 protesters—carrying black crosses and Spanish-language placards—rallied outside the show, calling attention to deaths in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where labor unions, leftist activists, and Indian groups have taken over the capital to demand the governor’s resignation.

The protesters targeted the show at Harvard’s Peabody Museum because one of the event’s sponsors was the Consulate of Mexico in Boston. The consul general, Porfirio Thierry Muñoz Ledo, attended the event, and activists entered a reception after the show with the aim of urging him to sign a letter condemning the actions of his country’s leaders as well as the Oaxaca governor.

The strife in Oaxaca erupted with a teachers’ strike this past May. The strikers and their allies accuse Governor Ulises Ruiz of corruption and want him to resign. The conflict turned violent on June 14, when police tried to evict the demonstrators from the city’s central plaza. At least eight others have died in the conflict, according to the Associated Press.

Yesterday’s protest coincided with the Mexican holiday known in Spanish as “el Día de los Muertos,” when observers honor dead loved ones.

The Peabody event featured a Mexico City-based puppet troupe, ImaginArte, which performed a play about an Aztec god’s journey to the underworld. Members of a Harvard-based band, Mariachi Veritas, provided music.

It was the third time that the consulate and the museum joined to host the event, according to deputy consul Rodrigo Marquez.

The Peabody includes extensive collections of Mayan and Aztec artifacts.

Death was on the minds of both the puppeteers and the protesters. Several of the latter mentioned Bradley Roland Will, an activist-journalist from New York who was killed in Oaxaca last month as he sought to film clashes between demonstrators and pro-government groups.

Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky ’07, a Crimson editorial editor and former opinion columnist who carried a cross with Will’s name written on it, said that he and his fellow protesters demanded “immediate withdrawal of the Mexican army and the paramilitaries from Oaxaca.” The country’s president, Vicente Fox, has sent federal police to the state capital, where they have fought with demonstrators. The human rights group Amnesty International has criticized Mexican authorities for failing to disclose information about the “scores” of protesters who have been detained.

At the Peabody, protesters were barred from entering the reception where the consul general appeared. Kelly L. Lee ’07 and other protesters said that their IDs were confiscated by police.

“This is museum private property,” deputy consul Marquez said. “If you come to have a good time here, that is fine. If you try to interrupt the event, we don’t allow that.”

But Matthew A. Opitz ’10 said, “I just expected to go in rather solemnly and present our case to people of the Mexican consulate in just a very rational manner...I had no intention of taking over, much less shutting the event down.”