17 Feb 2012 | Americas, Mexico
Mexican politicians are using social networks in sleight of hand similar to the ones they used in elections before the age of technology, say critics. Instead of paying voters to show up for the vote, or stuffing boxes — known practices in previous mid-term or presidential elections — today’s savvy campaign managers are helping their candidates swell up their numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook “likes”.
“They are doing online what they used to do offline,” according to Maria Elena Meneses, a media expert and professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey who has studied elections and the Internet.
The campaign of ruling party presidential candidate Josefina Vasquez Mota drew much criticism after it allegedly used an internet bot to create a trending topic during recent elections to select the presidential candidate for the ruling Partido de Accion Nacional. News magazine Procesoreported that news sites that had measured the growth of the Vasquez Mota’s followers could determine how many of them were obtained through the bots.
Despite this criticism, Vasquez Mota seems to have one of the best online media teams. Her approach is similar to that used by US President Barak Obama in his 2008 presidential elections. The team’s use of various hashtags to trigger a trending topic, including the hashtag #HoyganaJosefina, which means “today Josefina wins”, helped expand her followers list by 31,000 in only a few hours in late January during her party’s internal election process (detractors say this is where the campaign used bots). The candidate’s Facebook page also has a lot of young followers.
Meneses says it is estimated that 15 million Internet users in Mexico are between the ages of 18 and 34. The young vote will be the more difficult to harness in the next presidential elections in July: 34 million new voters who turned 18 between 2006 and this year will be voting this presidential election.
But the presidential campaigns have a wooden Internet presence. Enrique Peña Nieto, the presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose party ruled Mexico for 70 years until 2000, uses YouTube, but, Meneses says, not in a way that would attract young voters. “They only tape their campaign presentations. There is no give and take with the audience, which is what young voters want,” she says.
Meneses says none of the three presidential candidates for the three major parties — the PAN, the PRI and the left of center Partido Revolucionario Democratico, (PRD) — are using social media effectively to reach and communicate with common citizens. “They could use those sites to respond to uncomfortable questions,” she insists.
3 Feb 2012 | Mexico
It has become a game of “he said”, “she said”. But two recent scuttles that developed in Mexico over telecommunications and television channels are at the heart of freedom of expression and access to information debate in the country.
Last week it was announced that Televisa and TV Azteca, two large monopolies that dominate open television in Mexico, were trying to get into the quadruple play mobile business by offering broadband Internet access, and telephone with wireless capabilities. Last April, both companies, who together capture 98 per cent of the Mexican viewing public and are often seen as adversaries, bought 50 per cent of mobile phone company Iusacell.
Their aim was to revamp the company to compete with Mexico’s multibillionaire Carlos Slim, who owns the most powerful Mexican mobile phone service provider, Telcel. But last week the Mexican Commission of Competence issued an order that said the merge had been rejected, even after representatives of both TV Azteca and Televisa tried to influence the vote.
The dust on the case had barely settled when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD), issued a report on Monday that claimed that lack of competence, weak regulations and a permissive legal system has cost Mexican mobile users more than 29 billion USD in overcharges in the period 2005 to 2009. The edict by the international organisation rattled in Mexico. It was front page news in all the major national media. The release of the report led Slim, who is known for not being shy, to respond to the statement at a press conference on Wednesday, calling the OECD information “false and misleading”.
To say that Mexico loses 25 billion dollars in overcharges for mobile usage is wrong. (…) Even if they use the income we earn from Telcel or Telmex, [the fixed line company that is also a monopoly controlled by Slim] the figures are wrong because both companies only sell 17 billion dollars a year.
The OECD did something it never does, and responded to Slim. It said Slim’s companies were aware of what was going to be said in the OECD report and that his employees were part of the consultations. It also refuted what Slim said, arguing that it was wrong to compare what the mobile and telephone market has lost in Mexico (because of lack of opportunity to compete) with the total amounts of sales and services from Slim’s companies.
The debate over the television channels and the cellphone problems is still on the sidelines. The decision will probably be left for the next president who will be elected this July and take office at the end of the year. Till then, these two issues, both of which have a large impact on the rights of Mexican citizens to an open market, impact freedom of expression by limiting the access to an open debate over public airwaves.
16 Jan 2012 | Americas, Mexico
Making the wrong commentary about the drug war in Mexico could create problems for public figures. Take the case of Kate del Castillo, a Mexican actor who incurred the wrath of many in the country after she tweeted that she preferred drug gang leader Chapo Guzman to the government.
Her mistake was to post a long statement on social media site Twextra. “Today, I believe more in El Chapo Guzman than in the governments that hide truths from me,” she wrote, adding later:
“Mr Chapo, wouldn’t it be great if you started trafficking with positive things? With cures for diseases, with food for street children, with alcohol (drinks) for old people in retirement homes, where they are not allowed to spend their final days doing whatever they like. You can traffic with corrupt politicians and not with women and children who end up as slaves?”
She ended the statement urging Guzman, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug bosses, to become “The Hero of Heroes,” a play on a Mexican corrido song describing a top drug baron as the “Jefe de Jefes” or Boss of Bosses.
El Chapo, which translates to “Shorty”, is one of Mexico’s most powerful drug traffickers. He was named the most influential drug trafficker in the world by the US Treasury Department, and has been ranked as one of the richest Mexicans by Forbes for the last three consecutive years.
The only entertainers who flocked to support Kate were Ranchera singer Chavela Vargas and Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin, plus her ex-husband Demian Bichir.
Most Mexican entertainers stay away from appearing too chummy with known drug traffickers. Several singers of traditional grupero music have been killed in the last few years. None of the cases have been solved and the killings are said to be linked to songs the singers were paid to compose and make famous. Many of the songs describing and praising drug traffickers are called “narco-corridos”, a spin on the traditional corrido ballad music of Mexico.
Del Castillo, a top name in Mexico, recently moved into the US market, playing a role in Showtime’s Weeds. She also starred in the Spanish-language TV series La Reina del Sur, in which she played a female drug trafficker. The series is based on a real life drug trafficker, Sandra Avila, known as La Reina del Pacifico, who is in a Mexican jail today, fighting extradition to the United States for cocaine smuggling. Avila laundered money for the Chapo Guzman’s drug syndicate.
29 Nov 2011 | Americas, Mexico
The website of the weekly newspaper Riodoce was taken down by a cyber attack. The DDoS attack follows the murders of two unidentified twitter users in Nuevo Laredo and the slaying of two workers of an Internet news site and blog. All occurred in the same state, Sinaloa, which is a hub for organised crime in Mexico.
According to Riodoce’s Director, Ismael Bojorquez Perea, the distributed denial-of-service attack attack began last Friday at noon. The publication is known for its incisive reporting, it recently received New York’s Columbia University Maria Moors Cabot Award for ‘heroically’ struggling to report the news in the face of increasing violence from organized crime.” The newspaper covers Sinalo’s drug trade but has always managed to avoid provoking the wrath of drug traffickers. The newspaper covers crime in a simple and stark manner, but ignores some details that could cause problems for the weekly. It has now been three days since the website riodoce.com.mx disappeared from the web.
Riodoce found out about the attack when their US-based internet host Dreamhost, warned them about a “big attack” that also affected some of their other clients. The internet hosting company is now refusing to host Riodoce.
Sinaloa, where Riodoce was founded in 2003, is home to the Sinaloa Cartel, but has recently been hit with a wave of unprecedented violence due to battles between different organised crime groups. A major massacre occurred in this northwestern state last week. The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the most established organised crime groups in Mexico. Its leader, Joaquin Chapo Guzman Loera, is among the richest men in Mexico.
