MEXICO CITY —

A Mexican poet has been fined for desecrating the country’s flag by writing a poem about using it to wipe up urine and excrement.

Poet Sergio Witz Rodriguez published the poem in a magazine in the southern state of Campeche in 2000 and could have faced as many as four years in prison under a law protecting the flag and national insignia.

Judge Jose de Jesus Banales said in the ruling that the fine was small, but symbolic: “It will set an example so that people do not abuse freedom of expression, and to discourage anti-social behavior.”

The poet on Thursday described the ruling as an attack on freedom of expression and vowed he would not pay.

“It would be like admitting that I am a criminal,” Witz Rodriguez said.

Stung by centuries of colonialism and the 1848 defeat at the hands of the United States which cost the country half its territory, Mexico has fostered a fervent cult of respect for the flag. At most schools, children participate in weekly drum-and-bugle parades to honor it.

In 2005, a five-judge panel of Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld the law protecting the flag, but Witz Rodriguez can still appeal the fine.

His poem rejects nationalist values, with the opening lines: “I / clean my urine / on the flag / of my country / That rag / that dogs lie on / and that represents nothing.”

“Since the start of the trial, they have been determined to teach me a lesson, and send a message that in Mexico there are still limits, even on thought,” Witz Rodriguez said.

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4 Comments

• 

  SezWho2 at 09:36 AM JST - 9th May

  Utter inanity.

  Flags are symbolic and have no value in themselves. Poems about flags are one step removed from the value of flags.

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  WhiteHawk at 10:52 PM JST - 9th May

  People get Nobel Prizes, Oscars, and NEA funding for doing that to the U.S. flag...

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  SezWho2 at 08:47 AM JST - 10th May

  WhiteHawk,

  I don't think they get the award for doing that to the flag. I think they get the awards for making observations and the flag is one of the symbols they use to express their observations.

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  unscrejects at 11:20 PM JST - 10th May

  "My ode to the flag"

  Flag, flag, oh ugly flag How I hate thee You fluttering rag

  What could be so special To have you wave in such majesty Cinqo de Mayo perhaps Or the death throes of NAFTA I suppose

  Whatever it is that nature's bellows Find so pleasing as to blow you full spread Unabashed o'er the hot Chihuahua sun I say bollocks to both the two of you You misreable mix of cheap nylon and yarn

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