By Wyatt Reed and Kit Klarenberg – Nov 20, 2025
Presented as a spontaneous youth-led uprising against corruption, violent protests that erupted across Mexico this month were backed by local oligarchs and an international right-wing network determined to topple the popular President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Violent demonstrations which erupted in over 50 cities across Mexico on November 15 were secretly financed and coordinated by an international right-wing network and amplified by bot networks, a new report by public fact-checking platform Infodemia has concluded.
Those findings were amplified by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has questioned what role Mexico’s cartel-linked opposition parties and foreign meddling may have played in inflaming so-called “Gen Z” protests on November 15. The demonstrations left around 120 people injured – over 100 of them police officers, according to a statement from authorities.
The Infodemia report traced the astroturfed movement’s origins to a shadowy nexus of previously apolitical social media influencers, Mexican opposition figures, and wealthy oligarchs, who are accused of subsidizing the chaos to the tune of 90 million pesos (approximately $5 million USD). Among the chief organizers was a wealthy young influencer named Carlos Bello; Mexico’s most infamous serial tax cheat, Ricardo Salinas Pliego; and the operators of anonymous social media accounts which mysteriously attracted hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter/X, Instagram, and TikTok in just a handful of weeks.
In early October, the 31-year-old Bello instantly transformed from a lifestyle influencer flashing cash and showing off sports cars to a political lightning rod after he slammed the Mexican government and exhorted young audience members to “assert your rights” during a forum organized by the Chamber of Deputies. In a rhetorical style clearly aimed at channeling Donald Trump, Bello mixed banal observations that the government had grown out of touch with the demands of everyday people with right wing pablum about the need for a successful “businessman” like himself to reinvigorate the system. The message was republished by Pliego, who emerged as a vitriolic opponent of the Mexican government after it ordered his Grupo Salinas conglomerate to pay over 50 billion pesos ($2.6 billion dollars) in back taxes.
Bello insisted he was neither affiliated with the ruling Morena party nor “PRIAN” – a reference to the ossified pro-establishment PRI and PAN parties which ruled Mexico for nearly 90 years before Morena was swept to power in a landslide election won by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018. Yet just two weeks later, Bello began to promote Alessandra Rojo, a mayor from Cuauhtémoc who belongs to the PRIAN’s successor party, Strength and Heart for Mexico.
It was Bello who first announced on October 12 that a “march” was being organized and that the date had already been set. “They don’t have the power,” Bello declared in a TikTok post, while displaying video of the Mexican legislature. “All of us have the power, and Mexico needs us to demonstrate that today more than ever.”
Though his speech had “woken up many Mexicans,” Bello insisted that “we can’t limit ourselves to words alone,” and concluded that “now is the time for the next step.”
The very same day, an account with the name “Mexican Revolutionaries” was opened on TikTok. Four days later, on Oct. 16th, the Mexican Revolutionaries page published the first call for demonstrations to take place on November 15th. That same week, another account which was central to the violent protest, “We Are Generation Z Mexico,” held a live broadcast promoting the demonstrations which was immediately shared by Henrique ‘Kike’ Mireles, a spokesman for the PAN party in the state of Querétaro.
These calls to action were quickly amplified by a range of accounts which Infodemia researchers singled out for exhibiting inauthentic behavior. They pointed specifically to dozens of accounts which had single-digit follower counts and were only created in October or November of 2025.
The vast majority of the accounts bore the image of a pirate flag from the Japanese anime One Piece, which have been a frequent sight at supposedly youth-led anti-government protests across the globe since the overthrow of Nepal in the summer 2025. The accounts appeared to be following the lead of the Mexican Revolutionaries and Gen Z Mexico pages, which adopted the logo the same week they issued calls for an uprising.
In the days leading up to the violence in Mexico, the We Are Generation Z Mexico page published a series of contradictory messages, with one Nov. 12 post insisting protesters not “vandalize” or “destroy,” hours before another post was made by the same account showing followers how to use angle grinders and physical force to disassemble the metal barricades installed to keep demonstrators from reaching the presidential palace.
Generation Z Mexico describes itself as “non-partisan” in its profile, yet the account has published a variety of posts clamoring for regime change in Venezuela since 2024.
Though it claims to speak on behalf of the entire generation of Mexican youth, an October 2025 poll by Bloomberg-tied El Financiero found that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum enjoys the support of two-thirds of the youngest voters in her country. Nevertheless, Western news outlets have largely adopted Gen Z Mexico’s narrative, consistently framing the chaos as a mass uprising of young activists against a supposed “narco-government.”
While the original protest materials focused on demanding President Sheinbaum step down from power, organizers switched gears following the assassination of a prominent anti-cartel mayor named Carlos Manzo. In weaponizing the killing against Sheinbaum, the protesters ignored her administration’s concerted crackdown on the local narcotics trade, which has led to tens of thousands of arrests, dozens of deportations, seizures of vast quantities of illicit substances and mass disruption to cartel operations.
The “Gen Z” protests have also received wholehearted encouragement from Vicente Fox, the former right-wing Mexican president whose security chief, Genaro García Luna, was convicted of an international drug trafficking conspiracy with the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, and now languishes in the same US supermax prison which houses infamous druglord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. State Department officials later conceded that both they and Fox’s administration knew all about García Luna’s collusion with the cartels, but did nothing because “we had to work with him.”
For her part, President Sheinbaum has alleged the protests were “promoted from abroad.” Though mainstream media accounts have largely painted her comments as a wild conspiracy theory, the president’s claims are not unfounded.
One outlet which promoted the demonstrations and pushed video clips of police brutality, Animal Politico, is among an array of Mexican media outlets and civil society groups funded with huge sums by the National Endowment for Democracy, the US government’s regime change arm.
Animal Politico openly offers corporations and advertisers the opportunity to place and promote sponsored content authored by in-house ‘journalists’ in its virtual pages in exchange for hefty fees. Its sponsors include a variety of Western corporations, including Google parent company Alphabet Inc, Astra Zeneca, the CIA-tied Ford Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations – not exactly supporters of the left-nationalist policies of Sheinbaum’s government.
Some of the most positive coverage the demonstrations received came from Real America’s Voice, the right-wing network of former Trump chief of staff Steve Bannon. Bannon has led the charge for Trump to authorize US military strikes on Mexican territory on the grounds of battling narco-cartels.
A November 15 New York Times report quoted numerous protest attendees, mostly young, calling for the government’s overthrow, while expressing no concrete demands beyond that. A typical interviewee presented by the Times was a 21-year-old “actor and singer” who explicitly stated, “the goal of this march is precisely to remove the president.” They were “unsure” what would happen if Sheinbaum resigned, but believed “getting her out is part of the beginning of something.”
A 19-year-old student advanced the insurrectionary spirit, but acknowledged it was highly unlikely the protests would succeed: “We’re obviously not going to achieve [Sheinbaum’s] revocation, because that’s too extreme.” Instead, they said the demonstrations were “about letting the government know that we’re willing to go that far. Because when those at the bottom move, those at the top fall.” Meanwhile, a sexagenarian farmer pleaded for US “intervention” – “the only solution” to the supposed “grip” of cartels over the country.
The New York Times revealed protesters organized the mayhem using the Discord messaging app, where it was noted that “several” users went so far as to advocate breaking into the Presidential palace. Coincidentally, the violent protests that toppled Nepal’s government in early September were also coordinated via Discord. Parallels between that unrest, which also bore many of the hallmarks of a US-sponsored color revolution, don’t end there.
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As in Mexico, the media framed Nepal’s upheaval as led by disillusioned local “Gen Z” elements, who took to the streets waving signs and flags bearing the One Piece pirate flag. Nepal’s interim leader was also chosen through a vote on Discord, with a widely-shared image of the vote’s tally showing the country’s new head of state received just under 4,000 votes – a negligible fraction of the country’s population of 30 million. Mexican protesters similarly used Discord to discuss replacements for Sheinbaum.
According to the New York Times, proposed successors included oligarchs like the “brash billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who has become one of the most aggressive opposition voices.” Pliego is a dedicated neoliberal and among Mexico’s wealthiest citizens, who has been accused by authorities of orchestrating the disruption. In response, he angrily demanded they “present a single piece of evidence for the lies you’re spreading without any scruples about me.”
While the evidence of Pliego’s involvement remains circumstantial, he has not been shy about his support for violent anti-government protests. And he enjoys some notable international connections.
For example, in March 2023 he launched Universidad de la Libertad, to “advance free-market principles, business development, and innovation” in Mexico, in conjunction with the Atlas Network. This US corporation-funded organization represents a nexus of hundreds of “free market” think tanks, associated with the US State Department and NED. The Network provides grants to “pro-freedom organizations” globally every year, totaling millions, and pushing the right-wing project across Latin America.
Atlas has been implicated in a variety of US-backed coups in Latin America, including the 2019 effort to overthrow Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Listed among the recipients of Atlas’ sponsorship is Jhanisse Vaca-Daza, an upper class eco-socialite whom The Grayzone exposed in 2019 as a leading instigator of the 2019 coup that subverted Bolivia’s democracy.
Another recipient of Atlas Network financing is the Caracas-based Center for the Dissemination of Economic Information (CEDICE), which has lobbied for pro-business, capitalist reforms since its founding in 1984. In April 2002, it was a key player in the US-orchestrated coup that temporarily ousted elected President Hugo Chávez, receiving tens of thousands of dollars from NED for the purpose.
If the turbulence that recently gripped Mexico was attempted regime change, then it likewise failed. However, it may represent just the initial barrage in a wider war on Sheinbaum’s administration. Donald Trump expressed dismay at the tumult, seemingly hinting at future military action. He has previously praised Sheinbaum as a “brave woman”, but claimed the country is “run by the cartels.” Since Trump’s inauguration, rumors have swirled that the CIA and US Army are being prepared for covert deployment in Mexico – an act which its government would view as hostile.
“I looked at Mexico City over the weekend. There’s some big problems there… I am not happy with Mexico,” the US President said in response to the November 15 protests. “Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me. Whatever we have to do to stop drugs.”
The organizers of the chaos have since issued a call for demonstrators to descend on the National Autonomous University of Mexico on November 20.
Wyatt Reed
Wyatt Reed is a Blacksburg, Virginia-based writer and activist who spent several years in Latin America.
Kit Klarenberg
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
