MEXICO CITY: Of all the forms of protest in Mexico, taking over highway toll booths is one of the odder and more lucrative.
Protesters often take over the booths for a few hours and charge motorists a fixed rate, lower than the original toll, to pass. They keep the money for their cause.
But few such takeovers lasted as long as one in Nayarit, where protesters had held nine sets of toll booths for the last eight months.
The National Guard finally moved in Sunday to clear the protesters out of the toll booths, after tens of millions of dollars in lost revenues over nearly 250 days.
The Guard said nobody was injured in the action.
Some of the protesters in Nayarit were farmers demanding more compensation for highways built across their lands, but other appeared to have little connection to any social movement.
Local media…
