Mexicans Push Back Against Threat of Internet Censorship

Thousands of Mexicans have taken to the streets and flooded social media over the past month, protesting a sweeping telecommunications reform bill that critics say would hand the government unprecedented power to surveil internet users and censor online content — transforming a law originally pitched as pro-competition reform into what digital rights advocates are calling a direct threat to free expression.

A Reform Bill With a Hidden Edge

President Enrique Peña Nieto introduced the Ley de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión — the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law — on March 24, framing it publicly as a long-overdue effort to break up telecom monopolies and expand access to phone, internet, and broadcast services across the country, according to a detailed breakdown of the bill from Global Voices Advox. But as details of the legislation circulated, digital rights organizations identified provisions they say go far beyond breaking up monopolies, touching four distinct areas: accessibility, privacy, freedom of expression, and net neutrality.

Two provisions in particular have become the focus of protest. Article 189 would permit real-time geolocation tracking of any user’s mobile device without requiring prior court approval, according to academic analysis of the cyberprotest movement. Article 197 would require telecommunications companies to “block, inhibit, or temporarily nullify” telecommunications signals at “events and places critical to public security” — language critics warn could be used to cut off phone and internet access during protests and demonstrations, precisely the kind of civic action currently being used to oppose the law itself.

Voices From the March

FSRN’s Andalusia Knoll spoke with Mexican digital rights activist Luis Fernando García at a demonstration in Mexico City, where protesters marched from the headquarters of Televisa — the country’s dominant broadcaster — to the Mexican Senate. García, describing the bill’s mechanics, pointed to a provision known as third-party liability: “It puts responsibility on — third party liability as it is known — in which companies are made to make decisions on legality of the content that is generated by the users, and usually they abuse this power and they censor,” García told FSRN, warning that placing censorship decisions in the hands of private telecom companies, rather than courts, effectively outsources government censorship to corporations with every financial incentive to over-censor rather than risk liability.

The march itself carried pointed historical symbolism. The demonstration fell on the anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary leader who fought for Mexican farmers’ land rights nearly a century earlier under the rallying cry “Tierra y Libertad” — Land and Liberty. Protesters appropriated Zapata’s image for the occasion, carrying signs reading “Land, Internet and Liberty,” while another protester’s sign read simply, “Information is a right, don’t use it for profit.” Laid-off workers from the SME electrical workers’ union joined the march as well, adding a labor dimension to a demonstration otherwise centered on digital rights, united by shared opposition to Televisa’s outsized influence over Mexican media and telecommunications policy.

A Movement That Went Viral, Then Took to the Streets

The protest Knoll covered was one of several actions in a broader campaign that has unfolded largely online, under the hashtag #EPNvsInternet. Within days of trending, the hashtag had been used more than 33,000 times, becoming the second-most trending topic on Twitter worldwide at its peak, according to coverage from Latin Times. A YouTube video opposing the bill, posted by the activist collective YoSoyRed, drew hundreds of thousands of views within days, part of what organizers explicitly framed as a global day of action against censorship in Mexico, according to Global Voices’ coverage of the campaign.

The online momentum translated directly into street mobilization. Over a thousand demonstrators, many of them students, gathered at Mexico City’s Angel of Independence monument in the days before the Televisa-to-Senate march, some with X marks drawn over their mouths in ink to symbolize the silencing they say the law would enable, chanting “No a la censura” — no to censorship — according to reporting from the Christian Science Monitor. Organizers followed with an even more ambitious action on April 26: a human chain stretching roughly seven kilometers, from the official presidential residence at Los Pinos to Televisa’s headquarters in Chapultepec.

International Rights Groups Weigh In

The controversy drew international attention well beyond Mexico’s borders. The Electronic Frontier Foundation joined Mexican civil society groups and international organizations including La Quadrature du Net and Article 19 in sending a formal letter to Mexico’s Congress opposing the bill, warning that provisions allowing internet service providers to block content “at the specific request of a simple authority” would violate protections against prior censorship enshrined in Article 13 of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, according to EFF’s own analysis of the bill.

For the protesters marching past Televisa’s headquarters and the activists flooding Twitter with #EPNvsInternet, the fight is being framed as a test of whether a reform bill genuinely aimed at breaking up telecom monopolies can coexist with provisions that hand government and private companies alike sweeping new power over what Mexicans can say, see, and share online — or whether, as critics increasingly argue, competition reform and expanded state surveillance power have been bundled together specifically to make the latter harder to oppose without also appearing to defend the monopolies the former promises to dismantle.

For related coverage of internet policy fights, see our piece on the Trans-Pacific Partnership text release, or browse our full Policy & Rights archive.