In the beginning was the voice.
Not the microphone, not the printing press, not the tweet. The voice. The one that rose in public squares when fear was doctrine, the one that narrated what those in power wanted to bury, the one that documented the blood while others counted votes. The voice that makes people uncomfortable, that doesn't ask for permission to say what is happening. Today, that voice is under siege.
The regime doesn't want to silence it by shouting, but with something more perverse: legislating obedience, criminalizing criticism, and domesticating speech. It doesn't intend to silence it with fear. It wants to annihilate it with laws.
The pinching strategy
Mexican democracy won't fall all at once. There won't be boots in the streets or tanks in the Zócalo. It will die little by little, by legal pinches, disguised as modernization, made up as ethics, wrapped in speeches about "governability."
Each initiative, each "reform," is another stitch in the shroud of freedom of expression. A Congress that debates how to limit journalists, and not how to protect them, ceases to be a legislative power and becomes an institutional accomplice of authoritarianism.
From the National Palace, the directive is simple: whoever questions, betrays. Independent journalism is "chayote," uncomfortable reporting is "montage," investigation is "dirty war." This is how the ecosystem of distrust is fed, amplified from the morning press conference, replicated by bots, paid influencers, and media subdued by agreements.
Censoring by digital decree
On April 30, Morena congressman Gilberto Herrera Ruiz presented an initiative that, under the pretext of regulating artificial intelligence, seeks to control the flow of information from its algorithmic origin.
The proposal aims for only the federal Congress to have the final say on the development and use of emerging technologies, including AI. But this isn't a technical discussion. It's a step toward a new form of censorship: automated censorship.
What Herrera proposes is an ideological wall, a filter where what is published must pass through the sieve of what the regime considers "ethical."
The question isn't whether AI should be regulated. The real question is: Who will regulate it and for what purpose?
When a government that attacks journalists every day wants to control the technology that automates reporting and investigations, it isn't seeking to protect rights. It seeks to shield itself from criticism.
Puebla: digital nepotism with a gag flavor
In Puebla, governor Alejandro Armenta went a step further. He promoted a reform that turns "insulting on social media" into a criminal offense. Up to three years in prison and 30,000 pesos (66 pounds) in fines for expressing oneself without his approval.
Is it to protect victims of harassment? No. It is to shield the powerful from humor, criticism, and denunciation.
The reform to article 480 of the local Penal Code doesn't defend freedoms: it strangles them.
