International media are playing up dramatic videos and photographs of masked youth, with tear gas swirling around them, storming police barricades in Mexico’s central plaza, the Zócalo. They trumpet the line that this was a “Generation Z” protest of “thousands,” similar to protests that have threatened or overthrown other governments around the world. The line given is that “youth,” reacting to the Nov. 1 drug cartels’ assassination of Carlos Manzo, Mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, were protesting the failure of the government to protect society from the traffickers.
A video clip filed by CNN from the midst of the march should alert any astute person that the protest was not as the media is portraying it. CNN featured a poster which proclaimed, in English: “SOS Trump and Marco Rubio: Government of Mexico has betrayed the USA and Mexican people….” The protester holding it up for everyone to see was no youth, but a gray-mustached, older man. If other protesters held up more explicit posters demanding “USA: Invade us, please!” the media did not promote them.
Some facts: Most of the march against violence was peaceful; a smaller group of masked young people reportedly initiated the violence near the end of the march. There may have been thousands in the march, but the majority of them were not youth, but rather older folks, led by politicians from the right-wing opposition parties. A leading champion of the supposedly anti-drug cartel march was former President Vicente Fox, an avid drug legalizer, well-invested in the international marijuana “industry.”
