Between bullets and bots: this is how Mexico was misinformed after the fall of El Mencho
When the country exploded, we all ran to the screens. Blockades, fires, confrontations. The news of the operation against Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, ‘El Mencho’, ignited Jalisco and 19 other states. The result was brutal: more than 70 lives taken in a single Sunday.
But next to the real fire, another fire was burning. A digital one, fueled with artificial intelligence and bad faith.
“I didn’t know what was true and what was false,” confessed Victoria Elizabeth Peceril, 31, in Guadalajara. “We were very afraid.”.
Fear was the perfect fuel. Fake videos circulated of the Guadalajara airport under attack, with planes on fire and passengers stampeding. There was talk of American tourists being taken hostage. The chaos seemed total.
The lie-making machine
The Mexican government presented compelling figures: between 200 and 500 publications with false information identified. Of them, between 20 and 30 exceeded 100,000 views. The data came from a study by the Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The analysis is revealing: between 35% and 40% of the disinformation offered data out of context. More than a quarter were outright misleading. And another quarter used AI-manipulated or simply made-up content.
Theories flew: from that a US agent had strangled the boss, to the fact that President Claudia Sheinbaum was taking refuge on a Navy ship. The academic document cites verifications made by his team, by The Associated Press and other media.
“There was a lot of news with very bad intentions on Sunday, seeking to generate terror,” Sheinbaum had denounced on Tuesday.
The million dollar question: who is behind it? Neither the university nor the government said so. But experts point in one direction.
Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution notes that these groups have invested heavily in digital presence. “Criminals have become great experts in technology,” he indicated.
“The level of misinformation was impressive… some chatbots making artificial intelligence images for Jalisco Nueva Generación have been impressive, sophisticated,” Felbab-Brown added.
For many Mexicans, checking chats or networks before going out is already a sad routine. It is where they find citizen information that they cannot find elsewhere. The CJNG’s bloodthirsty reputation – for shooting down helicopters or attempting to assassinate the current Secretary of Security – made anything seem possible on Sunday.
Nicolás Martín, a Spaniard stranded in Puerto Vallarta, experienced it firsthand: “At first we believed everything… it was like seeing on the internet what you have seen in the movies”.
What surprised him most was the quality of the fake images. I expected blurry videos of frightened citizens, not almost professional productions supposedly taken with drones.
Sarai Olguín, a university student from Guadalajara, summarizes the collective feeling: that day it was almost impossible to distinguish reality from fiction. I received chilling warnings via chat: after a certain hour, everyone on the street would be killed.
In the end, he recognizes a bitter positive effect: “All this fake news helped to take care of (the people), although it sowed immense fear.”
The paradox is clear. In the midst of the real terror generated by some criminals who are experts in bullets, others – perhaps the same ones – proved to be experts in bots. And they left an entire country wondering not only where the guns were, but also who was behind the keyboard.
