El 5to Poder
2012One of my first works of digital art and activism.
During the Mexican elections of 2012, and in sight of an electoral fraud, a massive ocean of missinformation flooded the social media outlets of Mexicans along with memes and jokes around Peña Nieto’s, the official candidate, hyper mediatic campaing.
During this period of time an un precedented event occured at IBERO, a school with a majority of middle and upper class college students, where the Presidential Candidate was going to give a speech followed by a Q&A. To everybody’s surprise, most of IBERO students booed and eventually kicked out of the school the Presidential Candidate, because no one beleived he was a real candidate with a legitimate campaign, an that is how the Student Movement known as #YoSoy132 started.
During the same period of time I was living and working in Los Angeles, CA. I wanted to join this once upon a lifetime opportunity, actively participate in the elections and try to fight a possible fraud by the candidate, by joining the forces of the many students who took the streets and decided to face the Defacto Powers in Mexico.
Since I was witnesing the events at a distance, and the demonstrations have not yet taken place in Los Angeles, I decided to take some action, and started a website in order to fight the ocean of missinformation of a massive mediatic campaign that had already changed the minds of many. The website I started was called “El 5to Poder” which in english translates to “The Fifth Estate”, refering to cyberjournalism and citizen journalism.
The website was mainly about sharing accurate information about the elections and fighting missinformation with a humorist twist, that was very particular of these elections, thus why Peña Nieto is often referred to as “The President of Memes”. Along with the website I also designed a monthly donwloadable brochure, printed and digital, that focused on spreading accurate information about Peña Nieto’s Election and how to properly vote, which included a selection of my favorite memes, and which was shared among peers at the demonstrations that took place in LA.
This project lasted about 6 Months, until right before the election day. On the next day I stopped it, I continued to erase everything after knowing Peña Nieto “won” the elections in fears of retaliation or persecution by the government.
