➡ A large protest took place in Mexico City due to the assassination of a beloved mayor, Carlos Manzo, and the increasing violence and insecurity in the country. The protesters, mainly young people, are upset about the growing influence of cartels and the government’s inability to control the situation. The protest turned violent, with the police using tear gas and other measures against the protesters. Despite the unrest, it is not expected to escalate into a civil war, but more protests are anticipated.
➡ Young men in Mexico are protesting against their government and the influence of drug cartels, which they believe are ruining their country. They feel this is the only way to get international attention and bring about change. This protest movement is driven by a desire to improve their country rather than migrate elsewhere. The situation is worsened by corruption and extortion from cartels, which is forcing businesses to pay a portion of their earnings to these criminal groups.
➡ The police in Mexico have been criticized for their harsh treatment of protesters, revealing their inability to manage such situations. The Mexican authority is under pressure to address the escalating violence and cartel activity, but there are doubts about their capacity to do so. The situation is gaining international attention and causing widespread public outrage, with many people bravely protesting against the ‘narco government’. This unprecedented public resistance is largely driven by the younger generation, who are praised for their courage and hope for a better future.

All right, folks. I am live with Oscar Ramirez, boots on the ground journalist in Ciudad de México right now. You are there where all the action is happening. How’s it going, Oscar? Well, it’s a massive protest that happened yesterday, the 15th of November. Gen Z protests, and it was hundreds of thousands, well, thousands of people, thousands of people that walked all the way from the Angel of Independence all the way to what you see right here in images, all the way to the governmental plaza, better known as Socalo. And, you know, if you want to get into the details of what happened, I can tell you every single day.

Okay, so hold on. This is all because of the remarks that Claudia Scheinbaum said, correct? I mean, she said some things that just, what, kicked this off? Well, it’s a combination of a lot of things, and it is just her incompetence. She just controlled the violence and the insecurity in the country. The growth of the cartel violence in the hats increased massively on abductions, extractions, missing people, you know, dismembers, decapitation bodies of the cartel having massive activity and control over states. But the thing that triggered everything to light it up, it was the assassination of the mayor Carlos Manzo, a man that was loved by the country of Mexico, and that it was potentially going to be the governor of Michoacán.

And then after that, he was potentially going to run to be president, and he was assassinated, and the people know that it was the government that completely was negligent to put attention to him, to send protection to him, and that he was assassinated by the cartel also. So that lit up a fire into what you see right here, that I was right there in the front line where all the computation was happening. So you even got hurt. You got hit, right? I was multiple times hit with tear gas, toxic gas, and there is a thing I had to go to the hospital yesterday, Apetado, that is kind of like a little ball explosive, that they throw the authorities, and they throw one right here on my left side, on my right side, on my ribs, and then I was hit with a gigantic rock on my ankle, thrown by the authorities also to my ankle, and I have a spring ankle right now.

Damn, bro. I mean, they don’t mess around there. I remember that short little story. I used to get in bar fights in a lot, and they used to come, and hey, there’s the billy cubs, pepper spray. They don’t care. They don’t care over there. They’ll take whatever measures necessary to get you out of the bar and send you to jail, and then, I mean, it’s horrible. The conditions are terrible. So Generation Z right now is rebelling. They’re fighting back. They don’t want the cartels running anything anymore. Is it picking up? Is it escalating, or is it starting to simmer down now? Oh, yeah.

We saw, you know, thousands of these young kids between 17 to mid-20s, and a lot of them, they were, you know, basically what their number one concern is that the cartel is recruiting old young kids, and the young kids are killing the young kids. So they’re saying, why our future is in the hands of these criminals, and why our future is in the hands of anarcho-government? We shouldn’t be having our future in the hands of these people. So thousands of them yesterday were protesting. They went all the way to the front lines. When we got to the place that is in Sokolov, it is the governmental plaza, there’s a few things that need to be signalized.

One, it is for the first time in history, the main cathedral, that it was the first main cathedral of the conquest of Spaniards in our country of Mexico, it was where the heart of the temple of the Aztec culture was located. That main cathedral of Catholics was closed, and it was closed with barricades for the first time. So it tells you that Claudia Shambown messed politics with faith, and she completely closed the access to the cathedral. And Catholics were extremely upset of that, because one thing has to do with people protesting against you, and the other thing has to do with messing with, you know, the faith and the religion.

And she completely, you know, neglected that and closed that access, and she encapsulated all the plaza for people to be encapsulated as soon as they arrived there to that particular place. And the escalation of attacks, it was just massive, you know. I cannot even tell you, I was right there in the front lines. There’s a lot of press that got brutally hurt by police officers. They’re completely incompetent, they’re negligent, their lack of professionalism to handle these kind of situations was really bad. I saw multiple aggressions to innocent people, children being hurt with petardos, that those are these explosives, young kids that they were just yelling, why are you, you know, not fighting the Carters, and why are you so brutal with us, but not the same as the Carters, and immediately they were hurting them, they were pushing them.

They have the direction to do that against to oppress the people that they were protesting against them, but ultimately they were infiltrated people that they were throwing rocks at them, so they had to retaliate and defend themselves. Agitators, correct? Yeah, agitators and infiltrators. But the thing is that how a US police officer are throwing rocks, you know, in defense to the agitators and also throwing it real deep into the crowd where they were innocent people. I saw third age people between 60, 70 years of age being hurt, you know, some of them unconscious because of the gas because of the tear gas.

It was a full-on confrontation for around two hours hard, and then it had to decimate, and it was another two hours of just spreading them out and getting them out of the plaza. So the police, they’re militarized, they’re what we used to call the federales, see? That’s what you call them, right? I mean, the federales, I mean, this is who the cartels own. Cartels own these cops here. Well, they’re under the direction of Claudia Shambown, and you know, the people, thousands of them, they were yelling narco president, so under the assumption, you know, yes. So, okay, so these are, I mean, obviously, these Generation Z right now is standing up against the cartels, they’ve had enough, and what’s expected to happen here? What’s Claudia Shambown going to do? Well, she already came out in statements saying that all the people that were there, they were agitators.

Of course, she’s going to basically, you know, put their narrative, she’s already paid her influencers and bloggers to go ahead and say that these are traitors to the people, that these are, we are bende patrias, like they say, we are sellouts to the opposition, and that we’re letting also the United States invade our country. There were thousands of these Gen Z young men that they were actually saying we need help by Trump and Marco Rubio. A lot of them, a lot of them, they’re saying we need help on Marco Rubio, we need help by Trump, because nobody else is going to clean up this mess than those people that they actually want to clean up this mess.

And actually, you know, what is happening right now is that right wing politicians, also conservative politicians and independents, that they’re the ones that they’re lighting up the voice more in our country. They are basically right now catching a lot of attention, and the people are supporting them because they are sick. It’s just a reality, you know, we are sick and tired of this kind of situation of all hogs, no bullets. The government is completely, you know, incompetent to defend ours, to defend our sovereignty, to defend ourselves. And they’re basically oppressing the people, but not helping, you know, but not helping to the fact that to detain this stop the cartels.

It’s gotten really bad in Mexico. Do you think this is going to, right now it’s civil unrest, but could this turn into a civil war? Oscar? It can, you know, but I don’t think that it will. The Mexicans, you know, people are not going to, they, well, yesterday, in the Rapan, another place that it was, where the mayor was assassinated, they entered the governmental palace. And, you know, the people are tired. Now, I think that it is going to go into a place that they’re going to push the government to do their job, which I don’t believe that they’re going to because they have their narrative.

But there’s going to be these kind of movements consistently now. It is going to escalate onto another protest, another protest, another protest. And also the opposition, the left wing, is going to have their protests underway themselves to defend ourselves. And there’s going to be a point that there’s going to be a competition that hopefully, you know, in my eyes as a Mexican, I don’t want violence with violence. But, you know, they’re talking to the gents. Do you take care of the problems? Exactly. Let me just tell you something. I was talking to a lot of these gents, young men, you know, I’m 44.

So I’m talking to them and they’re explaining to me and saying, sir, there’s no other way for us to send a message because this is the only way. But if we don’t do it this way, they’re not going to listen to us. You have done it your way, peacefully yelling, screaming. It hasn’t worked. This is the only way. And look what has happened. International media right now is looking at Mexico and they’re asking yourself why they’re doing this. And when they ask and the people respond because we’re living on a narco state and narco government, then it is the other response.

So then their way Gen C is saying intelligently, this is the only way. This is the squeaky wheel gets the oil, man. Yes, absolutely. So I had to, you know, understand their point of view because you’re talking to 17 year olds and 80 year olds, the way they see the world. It is that they are sick and tired of the young age. And I’m older and I already understand how they feel. But this is the only way, they say, to change it, to change our country. They’re taking that into their own hands to change it. When is the last time something like this happened in Mexico? I don’t remember ever seeing this, dude.

Well, this massive. I don’t think that it has never happened. This is a story of what happened yesterday. But the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, that they were assassinated by the government of Priya and Enrique Peña Nieto. Students were assassinated? Students, students, yes, students, students, 43, 43 students, the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto with the political party of three. They disappeared them because they were protesting against a corrupt government. And I think that there were, you know, 43 students and it has gone into history as one of the most horrible things. You know, also another one in the 60s that it occurred against, you know, students protesting against the government.

This is related, again, to coming back in history as young, you know, young men protesting and saying, this is not the future that I want in my life. And a lot of it tells you, you know, that a lot of these young men, they don’t want to migrate. They want to stay in their country. Right. Right. They don’t want to leave somewhere else. They want to stay right there. Right. I get it. Exactly. Exactly. So that gives me as a journalist that has been covering migration hope to see that, you know, actually young men are fighting for our country.

And also the fact that they’re being deported back to Mexico, they got them. Now they have to make Mexico their own. They have to change Mexico from within. They know, OK, we’ve lost hope to going to America. Now we have to make this place our home. We got to change the system. Well, exactly. And they have to adapt ourselves. You know, sadly, when when you’re deported, you have to adapt yourself to a system that you’re not comfortable with because it is a lot of corruption. And you see that and there’s no other way by to say whether I’m part of the corruption or a change it.

And a lot of these people are now coming if they’re being deported or returned back to Mexico, they’re saying, I cannot be part of this corrupt situation. I have to change it. I have to do something about it. And this is why it was more than 70. They were saying more than 80 cities now nationwide that they protested yesterday. It was not only city of Mexico. It was the whole nation that it was full on protest. So how do you like I know at the street level, right? I know businesses and Juarez and see that Juarez, you know, pharmacies, restaurants, they all have to give a piece.

They get extorted. They have to pay the cartels. The cartels come in and they tell them, hey, man, we want our cut. Sometimes different cartels come in and want to cut. How is that going to stop? Are they saying no to these people? Because if they say no, they get murdered. Well, a lot of these entrepreneurs and small business owners are speaking up that that is one of the things that it has been extremely difficult because they completely get although they get assassinated. It’s, you know, kidnapped or they get more threats. But a lot of them, they have had the courage to come out and say, this is the problem that we’re having.

And it has exposed the federal government and the federal government because it’s getting exposed so much in social media and and also mainstream media. They have to do something about it. And you had a lot of those a lot of those people yesterday that they were saying now we have to get under our weekly pay. Now we have to say, oh, this is amount for the workers. This amount for rent. Now, this is the amount that I have to pay for extortion. And we’re sick and tired of that. So this is one of the reasons why yesterday was so important to send a message to the world that is not only the cartel violence in terms to assassinations.

It’s all what it comes, you know, giving the criminals all that what they want. And people need to really understand this, folks, Mexico, I’ve lived on the border my entire life. They want to leave because it is cartel control. No one can live under that that rule of law. There is no rule of law. You don’t do it. They say they come and they murder you. You get extorted. You know, we feel bad enough that we’re playing that we’re paying our taxes to a government. Well, they got to do it, you know, to these cartels and who knows how much you know how much they get extorted for.

Is there a certain number that, you know, basic or is it just whatever they ask for? Well, sometimes it depends on the business, but it’s sometimes they ask up to up to 30 percent or 50 percent. And it is and it is something that it grows gradually because it’s their strategy to later on come and say, if you don’t have, you know, the money to pay me. So I’m going to take over your business and I need you to leave. So that’s their strategy to take over businesses, businesses. And then after that, they money laundry through those businesses and they put the people that they want to run those business.

So it’s a strategy to basically start owning streets, start owning neighborhoods and all these businesses, they become drug dealing, you know, spots. So small businesses, I’m talking about taco shops and all that kind of stuff. So now generations Gen Z knows it’s not an option to go to America anymore. They got to change Mexico from within. Yeah. And they, you know, the most fascinating thing that I believe is that me as a young man, I knew the potential that my country had to be a first class worker. country. But this Gen Z generation, they know the potential that they have.

And they say why we have to go somewhere else if we have all of this right here. And the only people that they are enabling this to not happen, it is the cartel. And so why don’t we eliminate this problem and the corrupt politicians and we can have a future here. And it is that main thing, that center part right there that is the organized crime, the corrupt politicians. You should have seen it yesterday, Nino. You know, it was all these young kids yelling narco-president, narco-government, narco-state, narco-violence. It is this narco, narco, narco. And I’m like, wow, man, amazing that at their young age, they already know what is the main problem of our country.

And they already, they’re already exercising the right and pushing it really hard to change it. As any big new syndicates, did you see any big new syndicates down there? I doubt they even want to cover it. They’re probably scared to. But I know that people with their phones now, that’s instant media. And with the power of social media, it’s probably just the floodgates have been open. Well, in terms to Mexican media, the Azteca, Televisa, you know, Milenio, Noticia, they were there. In terms to U.S. media, I did not see U.S. media. I saw, I did not see CNN, MSNBC and all these people.

But they used their sister stations down there, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They share their to share their video. You know, I see them a lot on Carabas, and that is how they change the narrative of migration to pander to the migration to the migration and also in the Darien Gap. I see them. But ultimately, over here, I did not see them. Why? Because and I got to tell you, even the media over here is being pushed to a corner to say, how can you not? How can you lie about this? Because now the government, now the president of Mexico has come out and said, there was no violence by the authority towards the citizens.

And there’s hundreds of videos of the police being extremely aggressive to just vulnerable protesters. And, you know, it’s showing the lack of professionalism from the police, also showing the lack of, you know, the capacity to have the capacity to know how to control this level of violence or level of protesters. It was just completely shameful what happened yesterday and expose the authority of Mexico that they’re not able to handle these kind of situations themselves. What do you think is going to happen now, now that the pressure has been applied to Cara? Where do you see this going? I believe that on Monday, she’s going to come out and try to, you know, expose some actors that they were there and push that narrative that those actors, they’re violent, they’re criminals.

And try to, you know, basically say that all of the people that they were there, they’re exactly the same. But it is inevitable. You know, all the congressmen, all the senators, and the opposition political party, it is too much. And also, international media was present there. I was there, some other international media, not from the United States, from Europe, they were there. And it’s all over the place. Everybody is seeing this all over the world, and it is shared. Now the pressure it is upon her to say, you know what, we need that she’s going to have to do something about it because she needs to decrease the violence and the level of cartel activity, which I don’t believe that she’s going to.

She’s actually being enormously controlled by them. So the Mexican people are going to rise more, rise more, rise more, until, I don’t want to say it yet, until, you know, like you say, it possibly can happen. But I don’t wish that that happens because violence with violence, for me, it’s not the solution. But you know, I hope that it doesn’t get to that point. But it’s getting international attention, which is never before seen. I’ve never seen it like this in my life. No, it’s the first time in history. This happened yesterday. I’ve never seen the public rise against cartels ever in my life.

No, we it’s and it’s nationwide. Everybody’s sick and tired of it. And to have the courage, I saw a man around his fifties with his daughter and his sons, and their daughters and their sons saying, you know, this is a narco government to have the courage for your kids to say it, and your family to go to a protest to say it, it is because it is affecting your life now could all entirely your children, your house, your work, everything, and everybody was doing exactly the same. So, you know, it was a courageous manifestation yesterday.

And that really, emotionally, personally, when you see that you see like, Oh, my God, it’s going to get fixed, you have that hope, you know, that that’s all you need, man. Yeah, it needs something like this. And you know, you have to, I have to say, you know, to the Gen C right now of Mexico, we are extremely proud of you, you know, because it took it took you guys to do this change for us, and for our children, and for the future generations of our country. Wow, wow, dude, Oscar, thank you so much for joining me.

Where do people find you, Oscar? Oscar Blue Ramirez, all social media. And you know, that’s how you find me on YouTube, X, and also our web pages, Oscar Blue Ramirez news, you can go over there and watch our post that we do. Oscar Blue Ramirez on X everything. That’s where he’s at, folks. All right, Oscar, thank you so much for joining, man. I appreciate you. God bless. All right, be safe, man. Be safe. All right. [tr:trw].

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