The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, launched this Thursday a dig at the entrepreneur Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who a report presented by the president himself links him with a network of accounts promoting the marches called this Saturday by young people who identify as part of generation Z. “I told them that there was a tremendous campaign. But we took to the streets and the people are happy. And it’s better for them to pay taxes instead of paying for campaigns,” Sheinbaum said. With this comment, the president winked at the Supreme Court’s ratification on Thursday, which forces the businessman to pay almost 50 billion pesos – a figure not yet specified – to public coffers for debts outstanding for up to 17 years.
Sheinbaum gave the lecture at an event in Tecámac, Mexico. There he rejected that his government could be authoritarian and called for democracy: “We believe in democracy, we believe in freedoms. But, as (former President Benito) Juárez said, ‘no one and nothing is above the law.’ The president defended the government-people union, which in recent weeks has been shaken by the insecurity crisis in Michoacán and by the explosion of the Generation Z movement, animated by young people born after the second half of the 1990s, which next Saturday includes a massive march in several cities of the country.
The president has criticized this movement over the past week and insisted that investigations uncover its source. Sheinbaum said the movement has no real origins and the report presented during his morning briefing attributes the mobilization to a “multifaceted digital strategy” promoted by bot, influencerspoliticians linked to the opposition. Opposition parties have sought to insert themselves into the Generation Z movement, although some of their followers insist they have no partisan ideology. The Mexican president defended himself: “There may be young people who do not agree with us and this is part of democracy, but it is very important to know how this mobilization was orchestrated.”
Sheinbaum defended that “there is evidence” that the promoters have nothing to do with Generation Z and that it is a “political operation.” “Even financed from abroad,” he said. Some figures such as former president Vicente Fox (2000-2006) or several current politicians have joined the wave of the generational movement, inviting the population to join Saturday’s march. The new mayor of Uruapan, Grecia Quiroz, wife of her predecessor who was assassinated in early November, Carlos Manzo, distanced herself from the appeal after meeting Mexico’s Security Minister, Omar García Harfuch. In a conference, Quiroz denied that the November 15 marches were his initiative: “Let them know that we are not leading them.”
