Mexican journalist Jorge Ramos, based in the United States, a whistleblower with great influence in the Latin American community as host of the Univisión news program broadcast in the United States and 16 other countries on the continent, confronted the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this Monday. During the president's daily morning press conference, the communicator chided him for the violence rates recorded during this six-year term (2018-2024).
Ramos was present on the same day that the president reported the disclosure of the personal information of 309 journalists covering the morning news. “I would like to ask you about your sixth year how you are going to leave the country. Mexico is, you know, one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism. “That is why the leak of data from many of my colleagues in this press room is concerning because of the danger they risk, Mr. President.”
“President, you will leave behind a country full of violence, that is a fact,” Ramos continued. “Are you saying united or in hiding? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, does it?” López Obrador responded with a smile. Ramos ignored the president's intervention and showed a poster with the figures of the six-year term in which there were 166,193 deaths, 4,892 femicides and 43 murdered journalists. “And thousands of missing persons who have unfortunately disappeared from the official figures again,” said the communicator, referring to the controversy surrounding the new count of missing persons of the president, who is accused by the president’s relatives of falsifying the data on missing persons. The victims.
“Data is data and if we compare his government with other governments, the number of deaths in his government is much higher,” Ramos assured. “Are you prepared to acknowledge, based on reality and data, that your militarization strategy has brought not more peace but more violence?” the journalist asked again. “I respect your point of view very much, but I do not share it because I have a different vision and I also have different data,” said López Obrador, who showed how, according to his figures, the number of murders has decreased by 10% and 20% compared to the end of the previous government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
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