Peje country

Wednesday, September 13, 2 am. The white, pitch roofed tents huddle under a cloud swaddled moon, like a fleet of sailboats docked for the night. A television hums in the darkented Guanajato state tent, and a light burns in the clinic. Five people sit chatting in front of Sinaloa.

Ángel Cardona carries a walky-talky in his vest pocket. This night is brisk, but quiet. No drunks or troublemakers on the horizon when we return from the bathrooms in the city government building and slip back into camp. Ángel, tall, his curly hair capped with a sombrero, is manning a security shift until 3.

"What I'm going to miss the most is the revolutionary moment," says the 19-year-old from Monterrey, pausing in front of the flag pole. "After that, living in the Zócalo with people from the whole country." Here, he says, you walk three steps and you're in another state.

An industrial chemistry student at the University of Nuevo León, Ángel hopped a PRD bus for Andrés Manuel López Obrador's (AMLO's) second major protest assembly in mid-July, following the July 2 presidential election. He came with a backpack and three changes of clothes, thinking he'd be in Mexico City for a weekend. When López Obrador asked, "Do we stay, or do we go?" Ángel thought, "Well, I'll stay."

Now, 45 days after AMLO supporters first hammered stakes into pavement, camp was winding down. Known to everyone in Mexico City simply as the Zócalo, the Plaza de la Constitución is one of the three largest public squares in the world. On the night of July 30 it became a country within a country. In protest of López Obrador's 240,000 vote loss to Felipe Calderón, tents representing every state in the republic formed the hub of a system of street camps that coursed three of the city's primary arteries, Reforma, Juárez and Madero.

Many believed that their candidate, with his platform combating poverty and inequality, had won and that they had been swindled out of a president. López Obrador contested the results in court, and lost. But his National Democratic Convention would launch the next phase of action, the nueva etapa, on Independence Day, when AMLO planned to take his argument on the road.

Camp would close to clear the way.

Wednesday evening, Sept. 13. Through a stop-and-start drizzle, López Obrador commands his stage in khakis and a brown suede jacket. Umbrellas open and close like windshield wipers.

Throughout the duration of the plantón, López Obrador's sermons drew crowds of people who donated to the cause. Little buckets- botecitos - are used to collect coins from visitors. López Obrador's Sunday morning sessions usually netted each state about $1,500 pesos; they tallied $4,500 a week in total. "308... 328 ... 338 ... 348 ... 352. Did you see? $352 pesos," announces the man counting for Nuevo León. Groceries from a store of donated goods feed the protesters; the money from the boteci- tos pays for soap, razors, toilet paper, shampoo, water and gasoline to go protest in front of the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación - the federal electoral court.

The Nuevo León camp squatted on a 10- by-30 meter patch of paving stones. Seven tents and 10 cots made for sleeping quarters. About 30 people lived in the camp at any one time. Some stayed from Day 1 through Day 48 (a number touted as a badge of honor), while others rotated out. Ángel shared the camp with a mayoral candidate who was contesting his loss in court, a clothing factory supervisor the PRD's Nuevo León youth coordinator and a family with an 8-month-old baby. His tent mate, Juan José Mena, 25, was also from Monterrey. His 16-year-old brother, Alexander, was not interested in politics at all, but needed a place to crash ("It's a long story, compañera," Ángel said), and was bunking in their tent the last few nights of the camp.

Around 10:45 p.m., Claudia Ojeda Quintero, one of the camp organizers, appears at the dining table. No sleeping, she says. Stay alert. Gather your things. Be ready to evacuate the camp just in case. "Está caliente la situación," she says. The situation is hot.

When she's done speaking, I ask Ángel if Claudia is nervous. "Yes," and shakes his hand, as if to say "more or less." "In this country we have a history of repression."

While members of the plantón blockaded the street entrances to the Zócalo, the Policía Federal Preventiva - gray-uniformed federal police forces - have appeared unexpectedly behind the Palacio Nacional.

Suddenly the camp feels claustrophobic. I decide to leave.

Thursday afternoon, Sept. 14. "You shouldn't have left," Ángel says the next day. It was a sunny, breezy afternoon with flags kicking and snapping. The night before there had been no confrontation with the PFP and the Zócalo broke into a big party, Ángel tells me. Bottle rockets, dancing, mariachis, a soccer game in the street. No rules, no schedule. "Most of us slept where we fell," he says.

Jesusa Rodríguez, a well-known performer and the plantón's emcee, announces that tomorrow President Fox will give the celebratory Independence Day Grito in Dolores, Hidalgo. Protesters will have the Zócalo for themselves. "Viva la resistencia civil pacífica!" she shouts. "Hear that, compañera?" Ángel asks me.

During the afternoon, people fold tents, bundle blankets. The white sheet walls come down and the world peeks through. The plaza is buzzing. A man hands out flyers promoting AMLO's candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize. Inside the Chiapas tent-turned-party-salon, guests at a wedding reception sip agua de tamarindo and dance to the notes of a marimba. Earlier, a couple from Durango were married here, and Irma Amezquita Rodríguez renewed her vows with her husband of 31 years. Their anniversary passed on Aug. 31, "but because of the movement," Irma says, "we couldn't do anything."

Friday morning, Sept. 15. The huge tents are gone. Sweepers in orange and yellow uniforms, some listening to headphones, neaten the square.

A man wearing a Jalisco camp badge comes up to me. He seems lost.

"Good morning, joven," he says. "Did they already take down the Oaxaca camp?"

I look around the vacant stretch.

"Yes, everything," I say. He looks blank.

I see Ángel, Juan José and Alexander ambling through the plaza. Ángel, a red-white- and-green jester hat perched on his head, says, "I was living there." He points to empty space. "It's like it's missing something," Ángel says. We find shelter from the sun in the thick shadow of the flag pole cast against the bare stones.

Catherine Dunn can be reached at catherine@insidemex.com.