Emir Olivares Alonso
La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, November 14, 2025, p. 8
The political opposition in Mexico is now trying to gain followers by “appropriating” a pop culture symbol that is identified above all by generation Z: the pirate flag from the manga and anime One Piece, in which young people see an emblem of resistance and the fight against injustice.
Specialists in studies on youth, Internet culture and political analysis pointed out that there is evidence that the so-called Generation Z March – scheduled for this Saturday, November 15 in different cities of the country – “has not been organic (spontaneous)”, but rather orchestrated and promoted through a series of content from digital platforms and traditional media.
Despite this first analysis, other content on social networks has distanced itself from this attempt at “appropriation”, and as young people they claim that they will come out that day under their own demands.
“Opposition groups, of a civil and political nature, have carried out a very clear attempt to appropriate the symbols of generation Z to try to summon young people to a confrontation against the government based on foundations that, far from responding to the needs of youth, actually represent the interests of these groups,” says Cristhian Ascencio, an academic at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The emblem of a smiling skull with a straw hat – recognized by the followers of One Piece, the creation of the mangaka Japanese Eiichiro Oda – appeared for the first time as a symbol of struggle in the student protests in Indonesia at the beginning of the year.
In September it went global when young people from Nepal brandished it when they stormed Parliament, which they set on fire, within the framework of the mobilizations against the regulation of social networks by the government, which led to the fall of the prime minister. These demonstrations left 72 dead and about 2,000 injured.
Since then, the symbol has been taken up mainly in youth mobilizations in Morocco, Madagascar, Serbia, the Philippines, Peru and Paraguay.
In Mexico, in mid-October a call was launched calling for the “revocation” of President Sheinbaum from an X account called ZMX generation – created in August 2024 – and which was one of the first to claim the pirate flag. Also last month, accounts emerged on Instagram and TikTok with that emblem and linked to opposition figures.
Manifesto linked to former PRI deputy
Ayax, a young Internet culture analyst and independent reporter, took on the task of investigating the origin of the call for this Saturday’s march.
On the Discord server of the supposed movement he found the “Generation Z Mexico Manifesto” that calls itself a “civic, realistic and non-partisan movement that was born from the collective fatigue of Mexican youth” and in which they call to “open the way for truly prepared, ethical people without partisan ties to come to power.”
He verified that the metadata of the “manifesto” showed that the author was not a person, but a company called Monetiq Agencia, “linked” to the former substitute deputy of the PRI in the last legislature, José Alfredo Femat Flores.
Likewise, the content related to the accounts that have called for this Saturday’s mobilization gained greater strength after the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Carlos Manzo, on November 1.
Given this, Sandra Vanina Celis, feminist and volunteer trainer at the Morena Political Training Institute, points out that generation Z is not a sector that lacks political participation, since many young people have joined protests against the genocide in Palestine, against gentrification, in favor of reducing the working day and for affordable and pro-feminist housing.
