The uncomfortable and intolerant reaction of the ruling party confirms the ability of citizens to pressure the government and opens the possibility that these interclass alliances will continue to grow. If the mobilizations persist and articulate demands from different groups and regions, they could force adjustments in government policy or even unblock the opposition stagnation.
Up to this point I summarize the arguments that I put forward in my delivery from last week. Some colleagues (many of them with visions similar to the ruling party) questioned me because I did not mention that the march was not organized organically by young people from Generation Z, but rather encouraged by political and business groups linked to the organizers of the Pink Tide during the past six years and disseminated through the use of bots and expensive digital strategies. They also questioned me for not clarifying that not all of the Hat Movement participated in the protest and because in the end such large groups of young people did not march.
Although some of these questions were motivated by the good faith of journalistic rigor and many others by political insidiousness and the official urgency to minimize and discredit the march, I agree with all of them. Indeed, I could have been more precise in clarifying these issues in my previous installment (although several of them could have been more thorough in dealing with these issues, avoiding presenting the protesters as puppets of the global right, the opposition parties and the business class).
After admitting this oversight, I move on to question the heart of his criticism. There is a very unfortunate trend in the Mexican press: focusing on the organizers of social demonstrations or political mobilizations and not on the reasons why real people participate.
This trend leads journalists and analysts critical of Morena to question any mobilization in support of the federal government due to the participation of “carreados.” Under this vision, a frutsi, a cake and 200 pesos are enough for tens of thousands of citizens to spend a day under the sun, in uncomfortable conditions, supporting a politician. Perhaps there are some people for whom, in fact, this is their main motivation, but there are many other citizens who attend these rituals to demonstrate popular support for the political project in power, motivated by the genuine conviction that it is necessary to express in the streets that the government has social traction. The enthusiasm with which thousands attend these popular rituals cannot be faked, and critics of the government would do well to try to understand why these emotions motivate people to actively engage in a political project.
Worse still, the habit of focusing journalistic coverage on the organizers of the demonstrations and the economic resources destined to promote them leads reporters and analysts related to the ruling party to discredit any opposition mobilization or criticism of the government. Here it is worth remembering that infamous moment in 2021 in which Hugo López-Gatell and El Fisgón, along with several political figures and journalists, classified the claims of parents of children with cancer as “coup plotters.”
I am convinced that many of the analysts who take this position have financial interests linked to the ruling party, while many others genuinely think that all opposition protests are illegitimate because the will of the people is with Morena. The most worrying case, however, is that of those who are not on the payroll of the ruling party and do not share this intolerant conviction but fall into the tendency of focusing on the organizers and financiers and ignoring the participants of the demonstrations, or of focusing on the episodes of violence and leaving aside the peaceful and creative expressions of political discontent.
