Sunday, November 16, 2025

Latino Spring? Mexico City explodes into anti-narcostate riots

 Is President Trump's show of strength against Venezuelan and Colombian drug traffickers having an unexpected knock-on effect in cartel-plagued Mexico?

It's hard not to think that when one sees the intensity of protests like these at the center of Mexico City:

‼️🇲🇽 HAN CAÍDO TODAS LAS BARRERAS QUE RODEABAN EL PALACIO DE GOBIERNO DE MÉXICO.

Solo queda el esquema de seguridad. No lo puedo creer, los jóvenes van a tomar el Palacio.pic.twitter.com/ro6s5nzqND

— Agustín Antonetti (@agusantonetti) November 15, 2025

As President Trump blows narcoboats out of the water in a bid to shake Venezuela's Marxist cocaine dictator, Nicolas Maduro, out of his illegitimately held nest, now narco-plagued Mexico is seeing huge protests in a bid to accomplish something similar, and the words "Latino Spring" come to mind.

I've seen radical protests in Mexico City before, but nothing like these videos. I recall being there as the guest of a billionaire I was covering for Forbes magazine in March 2001. When the Chiapas 'revolutionary' known as Subcomandante Marcos marched into the Zocalo with his communist denizens (same place where these riots took place), we got up from our meal and looked out the window of the restaurant to watch the radicals march in pretty peacefully, not saying much.

This riot seems more similar to the 2010-2011 Arab Spring chain of events and protests that toppled one weak dictatorship after another in the Arab world, brought on by one seemingly insignificant event when a Tunisian fruit seller self-immolated after police goons seized his fruit cart.

In Mexico, the triggering event was likely the broad-daylight assassination a few weeks ago of the small-city mayor of Uruapan, who had challenged the cartels and criticized the government for doing little, prompting the government to deny him the needed security. Yes, many elected leaders have already been killed in Mexico. But something about this killing seems different.

Both the Arab Spring and these events in Latin America come in the shadow of U.S. policy shifts. The Arab Spring took off when President Obama shifted U.S. policy to one of weakness and apology tours. This event in Mexico City is coming as a result of President Trump's show of strength. That may make a difference in the outcomes.

Regardless of the U.S. role, the assassination of the mayor put the population on the boil. Mexicans are tired of the narcos ruling everything, tired of the thievery, murders, lost quality of life, and their flaunted riches, brought on by the border surge's "crossing fees" from illegal migrants from all over the globe into the U.S. They are especially tired of the government's coddling of these dirtbags as cartel power grows. They seem to be afraid of them.

Now a protest was organized, beginning with the spraying of the words 'narcostate' on the hastily erected walls protecting the presidential palace, and the riots have begun.

They have reportedly spread to other Mexican cities whose leaders are accused of complicity with narcotraffickers.

Watch Colombia, too.

Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, blames computer bots and two disfavored billionaires for organizing the riots.

According to Bloomberg:

President Claudia Sheinbaum criticized a Gen Z march planned for Saturday in Mexico City, calling it a movement financed by right-wing politicians and business leaders who oppose her government. The demonstration is being promoted on social media by 8 million bots operating from outside the country, she said on Thursday during a daily news conference from the presidential palace. “We agree with freedom of expression and freedom of demonstration if there are young people who have demands, but the issue here is who is promoting the demonstration,” Sheinbaum said. “People should know how this demonstration was organized so that no one is used.”

... and ...

Other government officials named specific individuals: Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, former President Vicente Fox and businessman Claudio X. Gonzalez are among the key sponsors of the march, according to an analysis produced by Infodemia, an official fact-checking agency tasked with combating what it calls “fake news” targeting the government.

I've spent time with both of those billionaires, too, from that same Forbes run -- one fiery and the other a sweetie -- but both are Milei-style libertarians in contrast to Sheinbaum's boutique socialist orientation.

She hates them, and her minions blame them for the rioting. I find it doubtful that either would have had anything to do with it, though I wouldn't rule out the CIA, which has been called to get active in Venezuela's narcostate and might have extended orders. Fox seems more like a buffoon but I don't know everything.

But riots like this, with this intensity, are hardly likely to be astroturf. The discontent in Mexico is real. The U.S. finally has a president willing to do something about narco problems. That can credibly be something that gives angry, frustrated Mexicans heart to continue. There's still a lot of information we don't know at this point, and the media coverage here has been sparse. But the reaction looks pretty big. And the rioters may well force Mexico into getting serious about its narco problem, or else consider that they may go the way of Maduro, too.

UPDATE from Andrea: 

Looking at what Monica describes, I can’t help but be reminded of what I wrote in 2017, right after Trump’s first inauguration. I wrote this at Bookworm Room, my personal site (where I try to have meme roundups most weeks, although I didn’t get the chance this past week). I was relaying a back-and-forth I had on Facebook against a Progressive who was hysterical about the fact that the first Trump administration planning to deport illegal aliens:

My first point was that, behind all that compassion, he is actually complicit in a moral evil when he supports corrupt Latin American governments — the ones that prey on their people — who use illegal immigration as a safety valve. The system he supports means that decent people in Latin America who are devastated because of government corruption and its related economic devastation are actively encouraged to trek through dangerous deserts and sneak into America just so that they can send home billions of American dollars that keep those rotten systems afloat. With the funds illegal immigration brings to Latin America, those governments don’t have to improve. I finished by telling the man he ought to be ashamed of himself, and was quite racist, for being complicit with tyrants.

It strikes me that Trump’s deportations and the closed border mean that corrupt governments have lost their safety valve—and their beleaguered people, with nowhere to go, are finally pushing back.


Latino Spring? Mexico City explodes into anti-narcostate riots - American Thinker


-
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Why the Left is doomed

  Have you experienced an incandescent light glowing brightly just before it burns out? Sometimes, just before breaking, the filament may br...