I shit you not, this is a popular story happening in mexican mainstream media while I'm typing this.
As you might know, there's a huge election coming this july. Mexico will elect president, 30 governors and two houses of representatives. This while the party in power is on it's lowest popularity levels in history. If there was ever a time for the people to kill the dictatorship, it's this one
These are three main candidates:
The one in the very right is José Antonio Meade, the current Secretary of Economy, son of the mexican aristocracy and candidate of the party in power. Rumor says Donald Trump personaly chose him as the man he wanted to deal with in Mexico.
The one in the middle is Ricardo Anaya, powerful amongst the aristocratic and the corporate sector, but mostly ignored by the poor mexican majority.
The one in the left is Andres manuel. He's the most popular candidate. He has run in three elections, won the three but had the presidency stolen three times. Guess who the government is saying has Russia's support.
So the actual president of Mexico posted an animated video showing with a scary voice and animation (no actual proof, tho) how Russia wanted to destabilize mexican democracy by making the poor people candidate popular.
The backlash was immediate, people didn't believe a single word because the whole campaign was grossly exagerated. It didn't help either that the most corrupt mexican politicians helped push forward the story.
Later that day, the president's office decided to delete the video from social media.
But wait... Colombia is facing elections this year and the story is the same. Bad boy Putin is at it again:
The actual declarations of Frank Mora, ex subsecretary of defense in EEUU, were "He's using the same tools in Mexico and Colombia and I suspect in Brasil too, even tho I haven't seen anything there but there's not reasons to think they're not doing it."
But Colombia's democracy needs no help to fail. Years of a quiet civil war against a CIA backed guerrilla (FARC) left the population poor, shocked and resentful. Nowadays, Colombia is the country with the lowest percentage of population voting in their elections. Thousands of deaths and displaced later, the CIA guerrilla gave up their weapons, but now they have their own political party and the people are angry. Most colombians don't want democracy, they want revenge.
The truth is America is losing their grip on latin american geopolitics.
You might say this whole story started in the 60's, when America was trying to prevent a communist Latin America. Operation Condor (look it up) was a project where CIA backed guerrillas would destroy leftist social movements in Latin America. A nasty mix of red scare and corporate interests made this continent a colony of the United States and the world's torture capital. Thousands were killed or dissapeared trough the 20th century.
Recent democratic revolutions have sprung out of the loss of interest of american agencies on the continent. Brasil had one of his most popular worker's leader elected as president (although later deposed by the local far right) and Bolivia chose a native american president to represent the interests of the poorest.
Colombia right now is on the fence, where they could choose to pursue revenge and continue a war that has only left pain and destruction... or move on, and unite to build a stable democracy.
Mexico, on the other hand, has a lot more trouble, being as close as it is to the United States. For a start, the results of this elections will hugely impact the negotiations on NAFTA, which basically holds the mexican economy together. But a moderate investment in states corporations will bring this fragile economy together.
Just look at china, how it's copying the 50's economic model of Mexico, the one we called The Mexican Miracle
Which brings me to the next tricky issue. Sorry, american frieds...
I'm sorry but, while I was doing research for this piece I found not a single evidence of collusion with the russians. Only a bunch of powerful people accusing Trump and, of course, conflict of interest, but that's way different than treason.
Look, as a mexican, I dislike Trump as much as the next guy, but I don't think there was a russian plot to put him in power. From the evidence, it looks more like a soft cue of corporations aided from insiders of the White House.
Losing their grip on power, the same old guard of politicians who didn't expect to lose the presidency, has nothing but the power of the media. And the russians are the oldest trick in the book.
It was always there to scare uninformed masses: Alexander the II, the bolsheviks, The Soviet union and now the evil Putin. But the truth is, with no warm water ports and NATO bases all around their borders, Russia is more scared of the west than us of them.
Be careful, tho. Fear on a powerful hand can deal a pretty destructive blow.
Tl;dr why are western leaders scaring us about russian intervention in their elections? Because all of them, France, Spain, Colombia, mexico, an yes, the United States, had let their "democratic" system rot and now fear to the outsider is the only way they can make the people vote for them.
And in Mexico, not even that.