Watch this Mexican lawmaker head-butt a city worker and get away with it

MEXICO CITY — Mexicans are used to seeing politicians do ridiculous things, but this display is a shocker. A federal lawmaker was caught on video Monday head-butting a city worker, and then boasting that nobody can punish him for it.

Here's how it unfolds. Mexico City inspectors respond to a squatter situation at a nature reserve. Congressman Fernando Zarate gets irate, accuses the inspectors of intimidating the squatters, and lunges at one of the officials, forehead-first.

He then taunts the city workers, saying, “I’m a federal deputy. Can you arrest me?”

The answer is no. Mexican legislators have immunity from prosecution, known here as “el fuero.” 

It dates back to the Mexican Revolution and was designed to protect legislators from political persecution.

Now it protects many crooked politicians from justice.

Anti-corruption activists have been calling for an end to it under the slogan “Fuera el fuero,” meaning “Out with immunity.” 

The head-butter was a leftist party member but recently joined forces with President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). 

After Mexican media outlets showed the video, Zarate tweeted: “I’d like to clarify that even though there’s no justification for my action, neither is there any for the intimidating actions by borough [employees] toward neighbors.”

The internet couldn’t help but laugh in anger at Zarate. 

One Twitter user joked that the lawmaker had trained with French soccer star Zinedine Zidane. The Frenchman famously ended his career with a stunning head-butt to Italian Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final.

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But Zidane had no “fuero” to protect him. Zidane was expelled. And France lost. Mexico’s Zarate, on the other hand, is running for political office once again.

More from GlobalPost: These are the signs Mexico is finally taking its corruption problem seriously