Monday, July 17, 2006

MEXICO:The Mexican Webolution continues: Barney Sings to AMLO. La Webolucion Mexicana. Barney Le Canta a AMLO

That't it. From now on, I am calling this La Web-olucion Mexicana del 2006- or The Mexican Web-olution of 2006- the anti-AMLO campaign by younger Mexicans - which has been relentless and relentlessly funny. The amount of content created, specially the multimedia stuff, using basic PC applications like Photoshop, et al, was initially skewed towards the Calderon anti-AMLO side, even though there is some pro-AMLO stuff. A search on Youtube for Lopez Obrador and Felipe Calderon, at least at first glance shows that the AMLO spots are equally critics and supporters, Calderon is mostly his supporters.

The obvious answer where equal numbers of people voted for each candidate is that there is a digital and educational divide in Mexico. That many of the poorest urban and rural citizens do not have internet access, either at home or at school.

The Web-olucion Has Been Joined There are a lot of AMLO supporters online, and they are also active. One blogEl Sendero Del Peje which appears to be an activist group, has almost 900,000 hits. It has a day to day account of protests, and email reports from all over Mexico, with on the spot accounts of alleged voting irregularities. They provide a "Vide-Blog" with instructions on how to upload video shorts of everything including AMLO speeches and parodies. And there are the inevitable AMLO supporters who make their feelings felt on the comments sections where they trade insults with their opponents as most online political junkies do. And sometimes both sides they actually engage in lively and intelligent debate.

But, the content difference definitively does show. There is a youngish tech-savy crowd making this stuff up, if only by the many pop culture references. And it generally is a younger demographic that is familiar and handles this kind of application, while the older crowd might be more confortable with just surfing and commenting. But regardless, with the on-line activity of AMLO supporters, trying to catch up in the media side, and actively taking advantage of blogs, it is looking like it genuinely incorporates people on both side of the political divide in Mexico, the type of revolution that can only provide winners - and some funny as hell Barney parodies.

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