The article reports on the trial of Sergio Wirtz, a poet and professor of literature, on charges of offending national symbols after he published a protest poem that proposed using the Mexican flag as toilet paper. He will now face trial in his native city of Campeche, in southern Mexico. If convicted Wirtz could be sentenced to a prison term of up to four years. The controversy dates from 2001, when Abel Santa Cruz Menchaca, a former army officer in Campeche, stumbled upon Wirtz's poem in a Mexican magazine Criterios. Santa Cruz was so offended by the poem that he complained to local government officials, who pressed charges against Wirtz in a district court. Soon afterward, the police arrived on the university campus and hauled Wirtz off to court.