policing more difficult than the Zócalo. A Day of the Dead parade has been held at the square since 2016 after the James Bond film Spectre featured a parade there. As political hub The Zócalo is the center of government of both the nation and of the capital, where the powers-that-be are. This makes it a popular place for protests, and it is often dotted with protesters in makeshift camps and banners. As the plaza can hold more than 100,000 people, it is also the scene of major political rallies. Thousands rallied here in protest when Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas lost against Carlos Salinas in a presidential election widely believed to have been rigged in 1988. In 2001, followers of Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos, mostly poor Chiapan indigenous people, marched into the Zócalo to support a bill that would give them greater political autonomy. Following Cárdenas' lead, Andrés Manuel López Obrador staged major protests here after the 2006 Mexican presidential elections as well as a rally with thousands of participants against President Calderón's initiative to allow private and foreign investment in Mexico's state-owned energy company, PEMEX. On 30 August 2008, a peaceful protest against crime and violence filled the Zócalo to capacity. The plaza is also home to regularly occurring political events. Just before 11 pm on each 15 September, the president of Mexico comes out onto the central balcony of the National Palace to perform the Grito de Dolores to the crowd gathered in the plaza. Even this is sometimes subject to the political winds of the country. For the 2006 Grito, the crowd in the Zócalo was addressed not by then-President Vicente Fox, who had gone to Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato to deliver the Grito, but by Alejandro Encinas, then-mayor of Mexico City. This was done to avoid mass protests in the Zócalo following the disputed presidential election between Felipe Calderón and López Obrador. Under the unpopular rule of Enrique Peña Nieto, the ceremony has been subjected to widespread criticism —mostly from left-leaning sources— for the government's notorious use of acarreados (people who are literally carried into the square by bus and paid for with food or other minor goods) in order to boost attendance numbers and simulate popular enthusiasm. An alternative expression of Mexican pride is the celebration of the spring equinox on the Zócalo. This is done by groups looking to reassert the superiority of indigenous ethnic bloodlines (La