The Real Democratic Spring: Social Media HAS Changed the Course of the Mexican Election (Books will be written on this)

Gerardo / AMLO, Azcarraga, EPN, Mexico, Social Media, Soy132, Televisa, TVazteca / 0 Comment

I have been completely overwhelmed by the pace of the social media developments concerning the Mexican presidential election. One day’s events are overshadowed by the next’s. What has been going on has fundamentally changed the course of the election, so much so that Social Media is one of the main sources of discussion and news. The almighty TV duopoly of Televisa and TV-Azteca along with their pretension to be the election’s kingmaker are facing a serious challenge and are having to change their tone.

A brief summary of what is going on:

One of the candidates, Enrique Peña Nieto from the former state-party Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), has been pushed on the population through advertisement and implicit endorsement by the two dominant TV networks (particularly through the largest one, Televisa). To illustrate what the media owners think of their viewers, two quotes:

“Mexico is a country of a very modest class, very broke ["jodida"] … and will remain broke. Television’s duty is to bring diversion to these people and take them away from their sad reality and their difficult future.” 1 Dixit the late Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, former CEO and son of the founder of Televisa Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta; father of current Televisa CEO Emilio Azcárraga Jean.

“If you want to watch the Presidential candidates’ debate, do so on Televisa. If you want to watch soccer, do so on Azteca. I’ll give you the ratings the day after.” – Ricardo Salinas Pliego, CEO of TV-Azteca, through his twitter account @RicardobSalinas 

For six years people have seen repeated positive coverage of Peña Nieto and his second wife Angélica Rivero, a soap opera star.

This blog is not naive, and we understand all media are partial/biased to some extent. But things started to reach levels of insanity whenever Mr. Peña was given the opportunity to answer a question spontaneously, showing what one of his critics, historian Lorenzo Meyer, calls “brutal vacuity”.  Some examples, illustrated with corresponding videos:

1) Enrique Peña Nieto (henceforth EPN – see www.twitter.com/EPN ) cannot name three books that have marked his life

2) EPN “speaks” English – A.K.A. “Infrastructocho”

3) The “intempestously” death of EPN’s first wife (“intempestuously” is not a word in Spanish either) – Forward to 00:52

And so on and so forth. Some of these videos are relatively old, but they old surfaced to internet users after the December blunder of the three books, which caused an enormous outrage on Facebook and Twitter by people who discovered that not only did the TV intend to impose its presidential candidate, it also wanted to impose a man of very limited intellectual means. More and more people became convinced of the TV channels’ intent when these blunders received minimal coverage, or when “respectable” news anchors came to EPN’s rescue with wonderful quotes that (thanks to the Internet) will be forever remembered in history books, such as “One does not need to like reading in order to be president” by Televisa’s “young” and fresh talent Carlos Loret de Mola (www.twitter.com/carlosLoret). Other facts that the TV gives little attention to concerning EPN relate to the violent repression of peasants in Atenco, the ridiculously clumsy and unprofessional handling of the death of Paulette Gebara Farah, and the firing, imprisonment, rape and exile of gay teacher Agustín Estrada. (see here , here and here for more details on each).

Since then, EPN has been shielded and protected by his managers as much as possible, refusing to give any interviews unless the questions are handed in beforehand, and unless he knows that journalists will not be hostile to him. Even the first televised “debate” was set up in such a way that he could memorize his one-liners and be safe from most attacks. Indeed, the cameras were frozen on the speaker. No interruptions were allowed and each subject had a strict limit of two minutes and 1.5 minutes of reply and counter-reply.

In the meantime, frustrated, intelligent citizens from all over the country have been complaining angrily on social media like people tied up on a train’s rails as they watch a locomotive approach. This feeling of despair is further aggravated by daily bombardments from pollsters who say that EPN has a double-digit lead over its two main competitors from the left and the right. (See:  http://www.adnpolitico.com/encuestas )

The question is: Is EPN’s victory inevitable? It seemed increasingly so until last week Friday: after two cancellations, EPN finally made it to a meeting with students from the Universidad Iberoamericana, a Jesuit private university for the middle-upper class. For once an open question format, but the candidate and its team probably expected a mild mannered encounter with juniors. This is what actually happened:

The crowd, outraged, shouted: “Coward”, “Enrique, the people don’t want you”, “leave, leave, leave!”, “We won’t forget Atenco!”, etc.. They were particularly outraged at the human rights violations in Atenco referenced earlier on in this text as well as at his links with infamous ex-president Carlos Salinas.

What happened there has been a huge eye-opener and has unleashed a new impetus amongst people EPN opposers who were disheartened by what seemed an inevitability. If even the children of Mexico’s wealthiest and privileged, the most likely allies of such a status-quo candidate, are as outraged as the other groups who fear the possibility of such a man ruling over a country with the problems and complexities of a country like Mexico, then something still can and should be done to stop this.

Further fuel was added to the flames when the apparatchiks of EPN’s party reacted to the protests with demands to “investigate” the protestors, accusing them of being infiltrated or brainwashed. They even went as far as to hint that the protestors did not fit the class/race type of Ibero students. The result of this, another social media campaign against EPN:

131 Ibero Students Speak out

EPN went to the Ibero on Friday the 11th of May. This video went viral in the beginning of the week and Friday the 18th saw something very encouraging happen. The march of the 132: Students from the ITAM (another elite private university) and the Ibero marched from their respective universities to the headquarters of Televisa, demanding a balanced coverage of the election and the right to accurate information. The slogans for these marches were “Televisa te idiotiza” (Televisa idiotizes) and “TvAzteca te apendeja” (TV-Azteca makes you dumb). Voilà more video footage of the march, promoted by the #1 World Twitter Trending Topic #MarchaYoSoy132 (Iam132):

Finally, for once, social media is making Televisa hesitate. On Friday’s evening news, the most watched in the country, Televisa had to give 8 minutes (much more than they usually ever allocate to real issues) to the protests. Today, there was another march gathering thousands of people across the country to protest directly against EPN as candidate. Their original hashtag was #MarchaAntiEPN , but many have hijacked the 132′s hashtag, keeping it in the world TT section. Tomorrow there will be a third march, this one to be observed in France, the US and other countries outside of Mexico in support of the left wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (#MarchaPROamlo ).

Another interesting fact: after heavily bashing the right-wing female candidate to the presidency during an interview, the team of one of the most watched political analysis shows of Televisa had to spend half an hour of the following episode justifying their toughness and talking about the new effects of social media on democracy. They allege that they will be just as tough on EPN when he comes to the show on Wednesday the 23rd. This remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Enrique Peña Nieto has the remarkable privilege of having awoken an intense feeling of repulsion amongst the most intelligent citizens of the country BEFORE even being elected president. I suspect even people like George W. Bush did not accomplish such feats.

Yet another interesting fact: a political scientist has developed a method of opinion measurement of Facebook that, he claims, is even more representative and statistically correct than traditional polls. According to data collected since February by Jesús Antonio Zatarain de Losada, with an election turnout of 58%, the race would be much closer than the pollsters predict, and would actually go in favor of the left! He points out, correctly, to the very poor record of pollsters in recent local elections, where the results have been off by several percentage points and where they were often unable to predict a victor.

Dear reader, if you made it to the end of this post: thank you for your dedication! I am convinced though: books, or several chapters at least, will be written of the effect of social media on politics and the general media landscape of Mexico in 2012, particularly if the PRI loses. One of the questions will then be to what extent social media set off the spark amongst the newly flaming Mexican youth, amongst which we find 14 million (18%) of the new voters for this election.

As always, thank you for your RTs, likes, comments and +s!