#NARCOPRESIDENTE

Today the truth doesn’t really matter.

In the world of scammer headlines, the truth doesn’t really matter. Just recently, The New York Times was planning to publish a story about how the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had received money from the narco for his presidential campaign in 2018, where he won by a wide margin - yes, another story on the same topic already discarded before -, and López Obrador himself applied Eminem's strategy: if you fuck yourself up, the enemy can't do it anymore.

So began this morning of February 22nd: with a new episode of the war between the three powers that move the world. On one side, a not-so-secret agenda of US multinational corporations trying to influence the upcoming and very close presidential elections in Mexico; on the other side, a president who, in his eagerness to defend himself from those powers he calls 'neoliberals', attacks his most vulnerable population: critical journalists; and at the end of the saga, the journalist, who unwittingly is being used as a poor ignorant pawn in the struggle for power.

Sometimes I would like to think that journalists are not so naive. There is always an agenda behind the information offered, and that is today the first step before any allegation, information, statement, or evidence offered by a source: ask, "why does it serve you that I have access to this?" That's what has kept me alive writing stories about narcos in Latin America. But agendas are like whales: Sometimes they surface like that, without being asked, sometimes out of hunger, sometimes to sunbathe, other times to show off, to be photographed so we can go and tell. But most of the time, whales live in the cold and dark waters at the bottom of the sea. They don't show up, you have to go looking for them, well equipped for whatever comes. And the difficult part is not going to look for them, but coming back alive.

But the reality is that journalists continue to be the weakest link, the most precarious, the poorest and most ignorant of all powers. Even if you work for The New York Times. It is necessary to differentiate that Alan and Natalie, the journalists behind the scandalous and sad story against Andrés Manuel, are not The New York Times, they work for it, for its agendas, for its benefit. Whether knowingly or not.

And so they launched their story, proud of what they had in their hands, of the sources and fact-checking and documents and the certainty of their editors, that the information is worth it. What they forgot was to review the agenda of their own media. How does it benefit The New York Times that I publish this today? How does it influence the country I am writing about? The Deep Thought. The Whale.

But it is not a war against the president, which Andrés Manuel should not believe either. Not everyone is waging war against him. There are those who believe in the truth, who weigh the information, who also realize the whales in Andrés Manuel's sea, those that suddenly show their backs during his morning conferences: ego, power, manipulation.

One of Andrés Manuel's clearest agendas reminds me a lot of Donald Trump, who although in rhetoric they would seem opposed, they share a sea full of whales: they detest questioning, they despise critical journalists, thinking citizens, divers.

Andrés Manuel, say otherwise, is a bully. He is a ruler who, knowing the weight of his statements as president of a country as important as Mexico, decides not to measure his punches and crush anyone who questions him, who challenges his power. But in a cowardly way: he is a snake disguised as a tiny worm with gray hair and a little accent of a coastal town. He is always smiling, always innocent, always has other data. Doxxing a journalist in Mexico from the presidency of a country is despicable, a demonstration of the true colors behind the Moreno movement.

But as I said at the beginning, today the truth doesn’t really matter.