Tense debate in the Mexican Senate: ‘He hit me and said, ‘I’m going to kill you’’
A lawmaker for PRI assaulted the chamber leader and a cameraman after he was denied a chance to speak in a session where members of the ruling party were described as ‘Morenarcos’
A debate inside the Mexican Senate ended with shoving and punching on Wednesday. Alejandro “Alito” Moreno, the national president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), confronted Senate president Gerardo Fernández Noroña at the close of the session. Videos show the leader of the upper house defending himself from the former’s shoves, only to receive more blows. Alito Moreno also attacked one of Noroña’s aides, the cameraman Emiliano González González, who was fitted with a neck brace by medical services minutes later.
The tension had been growing throughout the afternoon after Moreno demanded to participate in the floor debate, but was denied the opportunity. When the session ended, he went up to the podium to complain. The Senate leader reminded him that they were singing the national anthem, and the senator maintained his composure until it was over. Afterwards came a heated confrontation: Moreno pushed and threw punches at the Senate president, who took steps backward to avoid the attacks.
In the midst of the scuffle, Noroña was on the verge of falling, and the cameraman Emiliano González González was knocked down by Alito and another PRI member, Carlos Gutiérrez Mancilla, who stepped forward and punched both him and the Senate president. Morena representative Dolores Padierna tried to intervene, but had to step aside to avoid being hit. Shouts to stop the fight could be heard in the Senate.
The session, which Noroña later described as “a heated debate,” became more intense when Lilly Téllez took the floor to ratify the statements she had made to Fox News, where she called on the United States to provide “assistance” to Mexico in the fight against organized crime. The PAN member claimed to have “a clean record” compared to what she called “the Morena mafia,” and said that her faith in God and the people gave her the strength to “make the Morenarcos tremble.” She also called members of Morena, the ruling party, “narcopoliticians” and “narcosatanics,” and was met with cries of “traitor” and “sellout.”
After the incident, Noroña said at a news conference: “What confrontation? He hit me and said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’” Noroña and his aide will file complaints for the assaults and damage caused to the cameraman’s equipment, the Senate president said. Noroña mentioned his own age, 65, comparing it to the youthfulness and physical fitness of his attacker, and underscored that it was not him who started the fight, but rather the PRI member.
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