By Duncan Kennedy
BBC News, Mexico City
Dozens of Mexican senators and other lawmakers have gone on hunger strike inside the National Congress building.
The group, who have also started erecting barricades around themselves, are protesting against plans to reform the country's oil industry.
Mexico is a leading world supplier of oil, but the government says changes are needed to get at newer reserves.
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Now they are taking their protest a stage further.
Around 40 senators and lower house representatives from the left-wing PRD are occupying the area around the podium in the lower house.
They have piled up chairs to stop attempts to move them.
Some are holding out banners saying "No to Pemex privatisation" - a reference to moves by the government to allow the state-run oil operator, Pemex, to bring in outside investment.
National treasure
The government says the country needs help in getting at deeper reserves of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, but the protesters say the proposed new laws would threaten the country's sovereignty.
Mexico is the world's fifth largest producer of oil - ahead of Kuwait, Nigeria and Iraq - and it is the third largest supplier to the US.
Yet ever since the industry was nationalised 70 years ago it has had a special place in Mexican minds and hearts.
One hundred thousand people turned out at a rally on Sunday in protest at the government plans.
They believe foreign oil companies will come in and take a share of Mexico's oil profits.
The government insists they will only be offered incentive payments.
Just as in Venezuela and Russia, oil in Mexico is a combustible mixture of politics and economics.
(BBC)
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