Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda. Photo: Facebook

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

No stranger to controversy, Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda courted nationwide condemnation on Monday, Nov. 29, when she offered a press conference in the city of Iguala, seated in front of a modified Mexican flag with a giant, green snake in the form of an “S,” apparently referring to her surname.

Technically, it is against the law in Mexico to deface or change the national flag, which bears the image of an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its mouth, a reference to a Mexica (Aztec) myth of that ancient civilization’s origins.

But Salgado Pineda, a member of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party who at the 11th hour replaced her father, Felix Salgado Macedonio, in the 2021 race for the governorship after he had been accused of multiples rapes and alleged financial corruption, seemed to be oblivious of the law.

The images of the event were circulated on Salgado Pineda’s social networks and led to an immediate backlash of public anger.