Outrage as Mexico's Attorney General Says Missing Ayotzinapa Students Are Dead

Global Voices: Shot, burned in a garbage dump and thrown into a muddy river in black plastic bags. That was the fate of the 43 missing student teachers, known as normalistas in Spanish, who vanished on September 26, 2014, according to Mexico's federal attorney general on November 7.

Jesus Murillo Karam‘s words were met with disbelief, anger and indignation not only by the students’ families, but also by people throughout Mexico and the world because they rely on the confessions of three drug cartel hit men, not conclusive evidence — human remains discovered near a landfill based on their information haven't been identified yet. Read more. 

Mexico's media monopoly vs. the people

Televisa helped elect the country's new president. Now it hears cries for the breakup of its broadcast empire.

By Nathaniel Parish Flannery, contributor

CNN FORTUNE -- On July 7, nearly 100,000 people forced their way down Reforma, one of Mexico City's main avenues, gathering in front of the Angel of Independence, a 150-foot-tall monumentin a plaza in the city center. "People, Listen! This is your fight!" they chanted. "Governing a country is not [the same as] making a telenovela," one of the protest posters announced. Mexico's election is over, but in the weeks following the July 1 ballot count, demonstrators have takento the streets. They are angry about the victory of Enrique Peña Nieto, a polarizing but telegenic candidate who ran a campaign based on simple slogans such as "You'll Earn More!"

As the demonstration passed by Museo de Bellas Artes, an iconic museum in downtown Mexico City, Carolina Reyes, a recent college graduate, explained "I think there was fraud in the promotion [of Peña Nieto] in the media." She had painted the front of a model TV screen to show a modified version of the Televisa logo, re-done in the red, white, and green colors of Peña Nieto's party, a political machine with a long and checkered history in Mexico. A plastic tyrannosaurus rex toy poked its head out through a rip in the center of the logo, a warning about the return of old, corrupt, political "dinosaurs" to power. "Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!" the crowd around Carolina chanted, as onlookers stopped to use their cell phones to snap photos as she held her TV prop over her head. The protesters, the majority of whom supported Andres Manuel Lopez Obredor (AMLO), a leftist candidate, are frustrated with the influence of Televisa (TV), Mexico's most important media company, in their country's political discourse. They don't want to see Televisa write the script for their country's elections.

Many members of Mexico's urban, educated, tech savvy youth, who watched and criticized the campaigns via Youtube and Twitter, think that Televisa, a TV conglomerate that produces many of the country's most popular telenovelas, may be too big for the country's good.Televisa controls 70% of the broadcast television market, and its broadcasts reach 95% of all homes in Mexico. Unlike cable TV or the Internet -- platforms that offer a plethora of options -- viewers frustrated with the perceived political slant of news coverage on Mexico's broadcast TV networks have few alternatives. Especially in Mexico, a country with limited cable and Internet penetration, broadcast TV plays a central role. Right now the country has only two nationally broadcast TV channels. Javier Aparicio, a political economy professor at CIDE, a prestigious research institute in Mexico City, explained that his "main concern is the concentration of the media industry in Mexico." He added, "Televisa has an important influence in campaigns in national elections." Read more. 

With Mexico's election results upheld, what's next for the YoSoy132 movement?

The youth movement that emerged in opposition to the media's campaign coverage of President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto is redefining its message and working to give new life to Mexico's democracy.

CSM: Lauren Villagran,  Mexico City / September 11, 2012

When student protestors took to the streets after a government tribunal dismissed charges of fraud and upheld the results of Mexico’s July presidential election last month, they said they mourned “the death of democracy.” But not the end of their movement.

Known for its Twitter hash tag, #YoSoy132 emerged before this summer’s presidential election in opposition to what the students called favoritism by the television media for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto. Mr. Peña Nieto ultimately won the election with 38 percent of the vote in a field of four.

The election now settled, many are questioning what YoSoy132 will do next. Their No. 1 goal remains fair access to information and the “democratization” of Mexico’s media, according to a message emitted to coincide with President Felipe Calderón’s sixth and final state of the union address earlier this month. But the ad-hoc student movement, criticized early on for its lack of organization and focus, is still struggling to create a unified message, leaving some to question its significance and potential to endure in Mexico today.

“The problem with the movement is not whether it continues to have a voice; it’s that it has too many,” says Carlos Bravo Regidor, professor of political studies at Mexico City’s CIDE research center. “The internal diversity at times appears to overpower [the group’s] capacity to deliver coherent and effective messages.”

From nonpolitical marches against media manipulation to the “taking” of government buildings in the state of Veracruz to behind-the-scenes work on proposals for public policy, the private and public university students who consider themselves a part of the YoSoy132 movement differ as much on method as message.

That diversity is a source of strength, says Antonio Attolini, a political science student at Mexico City’s private Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM).  Read more.