What Keeps Latino Voting-Rights Activists Up at Night? Disinformation; The New York Times, October 17, 2024

Jazmine Ulloa , The New York Times; What Keeps Latino Voting-Rights Activists Up at Night? Disinformation

"Latino voting rights groups are hoping the increased scrutiny will shed more light on content that they say appears designed to manipulate Hispanic audiences. The Pew Research Center in March issued the latest of its studies showing that Latinos, who may prove to be a decisive voting group in November, are more likely to rely on social media outlets for news than Black or white people. That has made the electorate more likely than the general population to receive, consume and share misinformation. At the same time, Russian-owned media has emerged as a major purveyor of news across Mexico and Latin America, researchers said.

“We see the influencers, we see the content creators, but we don’t know who is funding them,” said Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, the founder of We Are Más, a communications firm based in South Florida that tracks disinformation. Now that the government has opened cases into Russia’s involvement in American media, she added, “the more we will know, the more we will see the trail.”"

Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.; The Washington Post, August 20, 2023

 David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.

"“Beware of what is happening in Mexico,” Gálvez warns me at the end of our conversation. “Our president is capable of anything. He has no limits.”

A chilling example of what frightens many Mexicans about López Obrador happened last Wednesday morning at the president’s office, a few miles from where I was talking to Gálvez.

At his regular morning news conference that day, reporters asked López Obrador about five young men from Jalisco who had disappeared a few days before. A horrific video had just surfaced that showed the five, friends since childhood, their bodies battered and bloody, with their mouths taped shut and their hands tied behind their backs. One victim was forced to bludgeon another with a brick and then decapitate him, before he was killed himself. Investigators later recovered their badly burned bodies. The governor of Jalisco said the murders were “clearly linked to organized crime.”

And what did the president say when reporters asked him to comment on this appalling crime? “Can’t hear,” said López Obrador, cupping his hand to his ear. He then told a crude joke about a poor Mexican man who pretended he couldn’t hear a question. And then he smiled and walked offstage."

Ralph Lauren apologizes after wife of Mexico's president accuses US fashion giant of 'plagiarism' by appropriating Indigenous designs from country's pre-Hispanic cultures for $360 cardigan; Daily Mail, October 21, 2022

Daily Mail; Ralph Lauren apologizes after wife of Mexico's president accuses US fashion giant of 'plagiarism' by appropriating Indigenous designs from country's pre-Hispanic cultures for $360 cardigan

"Ralph Lauren has apologized after the wife of Mexico's president accused the luxury US clothes brand of plagiarizing indigenous designs, which she described as an appropriation of the work of the country's pre-Hispanic cultures."

Mexico president Enrique Peña Nieto plagiarized thesis for law degree: report; Associated Press in Mexico City via Guardian, 8/22/16

Associated Press in Mexico City via Guardian; Mexico president Enrique Peña Nieto plagiarized thesis for law degree: report:

"President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico heavily plagiarized the thesis for his law degree, according to an investigation by a local news outlet...

It said 29% of the thesis was material lifted from other works, including 20 paragraphs copied word-for-word from a book written by former president Miguel de la Madrid without citation or mention in the bibliography...

In 2006, a scholar at the Brookings Institution found that now-Russian president Vladimir Putin in earning his graduate degree had copied pages of material from a book written by two American professors.

In 2012, Hungary’s President Pal Schmitt – whose role was largely ceremonial – resigned after a scandal over his doctoral dissertation.

Earlier this year, a German university decided to let the country’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, keep her doctorate after plagiarized passages were found in her dissertation."

La Cucaracha; GoComics.com, 6/26/16

Lalo Alcaraz, GoComics.com; La Cucaracha:

"I don't like that kid."

Coca-Cola under fire over ad showing Coke handout to indigenous people; Guardian, 12/1/15

Guardian; Coca-Cola under fire over ad showing Coke handout to indigenous people:

"Consumer rights and health groups are calling on the Mexican government to ban a new Coca-Cola ad depicting young white people handing out Coke as a service project at an indigenous community in southern Oaxaca state.

The ad has been criticised for its depiction of light-skinned, model-like young people joyously constructing a Coca-Cola tree in town and hauling in coolers of Coke.

Mexico has skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes, especially among indigenous people.

The Alliance for Food Health is calling on the National Council to Prevent Discrimination to pull the ad campaign immediately.

The alliance, a coalition of consumer rights and health groups, says it is an attack on the dignity of indigenous people and contributes to their deteriorating health. Mexico is a major consumer of soda and other sugared drinks.

The ad was publicly posted on a Coca-Cola YouTube channel until Tuesday night when it was removed, after news of the campaign about it broke."