MEXICO CITY -- The SUV carrying Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was stopped and surrounded by a radical teachers group Friday, preventing him from leading his daily morning news conference.
The incident occurred in the southern state of Chiapas. Lopez Obrador's vehicle was allowed to proceed after a couple of hours.
The president sat in the vehicle and refused protesters' demands that he meet with them then and there. In a livestream from inside the SUV shown at the news conference, Lopez Obrador said he could not let himself be held hostage by special interests.
"I cannot allow myself to be blackmailed by anybody," the president said. He was stopped just a few miles from the site where the news conference was to be held, and other officials already present carried on with the briefing in his absence.
But Lopez Obrador also stressed that the incident was an example of his policy of nonviolence and avoiding the use of force. He noted that he was stopped on a road in front of a military barracks, but would not call out the army to disperse the protesters.
"This is what [Nelson] Mandela did, this is what [the Rev. Martin] Luther King did, this is what [Mahatma] Gandhi did, nonviolence," Lopez Obrador said.
But the brief holding of the president also was an instance of how some of his own policies have backfired on him.
Lopez Obrador has been kinder to radical teachers than any of his predecessors, endorsing their demands for less-stringent teacher evaluations and better conditions. Past administrations had cracked down on the radical teachers union, which has been known for blockading roads, railways and entire cities.
By Friday, even Lopez Obrador admitted that the union leadership in some states had gone bad.
"In Chiapas state, and also in Michoacan, the leaderships have become special interests," he said. "I cannot surrender to any special-interest group."
Lopez Obrador also has refused to use the presidential jet, preferring to travel with a small unarmed security detail and using commercial flights and ground transport wherever he can.
His instructions to police, soldiers and the National Guard to avoid confrontations whenever possible also have given freer rein to drug cartels, vigilantes and other groups in some areas.
It was one of the few times that Lopez Obrador has been absent from the unprecedented morning news conferences he has held almost every weekday since he took office Dec. 1, 2018.
When the president caught covid-19 in late January, he handed over the news conferences to then-Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero for a couple of weeks.