By 10.30am all Mexican television stations showed President Fox passing over power to incoming elect, fraud - depending on who you ask – the new “sweeping reform” president Filipe Calderon.

What the Mexican people did not see was the midnight secret ceremony some 10 hours before where Fox passed over his authority to Calderon behind closed doors.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6199356.stm

An hour before the aired ceremony of the right, leftwing officials again stormed the Congressional stage, the second time in one week, and fought live on air, declaring the entire election a fraud and this green, white and red ceremony a farce.

Self-elected leftwing and legitimate president, or defeated leftwing president, Lopez Obrador – it depends on who you ask – stated his people would march peacefully on the national auditorium, where Calderon is due to give his first public presidential speech.

Calderon swept in with reform, deploying thousands of riot police have in Mexico D.F.

Here, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the scene was a downright weird one.

No sooner had Calderon donned his green, white and red sash when several hundred protestors marched along the main road into the centre, Insurgentes, declaring the election a fraud, under the close watch of uniformed police.

But the political march was preceded by a colourful musical street parade of the Fiesta de Guadalupe. Children and adults dressed in bizarre costumes and demonic faces and danced along the street on their way to one of the churches situated high on a hill over-looking the town.

The two marches seemed to be intertwined into one to the unsuspecting tourists who cheered and clapped both the fiesta and the pro-PRI march. Police officers watched them all with suspicion.

The undercovers were there too, some with cameras, others just in the protest and in the crowds of on-lookers.

But the filming myself and a colleague did was cut short when two uniformed state police followed us and started noting down our details. We moved out fast to avoid any trouble.

It is now 3pm, the Fiesta de Guadalupe is still roaming the streets, accompanied by the Virgin Mary, although she’s lost a few years since I last saw her, and she is followed by three bikini-clad girls throwing sweets at the heads of unsuspecting tourists.

State police are patrolling the streets in ever-increasing numbers, more today than ever, in huge pickup trucks, and explosions are everywhere from fiesta fireworks that tend to blow up prematurely.

For now, here in base camp, José, the gum and cigarette seller – he is only ten years at most, but is wiser and more grown up than many adults I know in the UK – he teaches me street hand shakes and I give him an orange, a pen and some paper, bringing a little light relief in these strange, threatening and tense times in Mexico.