Does Claudia Scheinbaum, the front-runner in the Mexican presidential election, want to make circumcision mandatory and close venerated Catholic churches? No, it's all part of the election disinformation war.
The June 2 vote is being contested not only by campaigners in the streets but also online, where the battle is based on often false rumours, many of which have been debunked by AFP fact-checkers.
Using old and taken-out-of-context videos, internet users have repeatedly accused opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez of wanting to dismantle the social policies of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Sheinbaum, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, has faced unfounded rumors that she wants to make circumcision mandatory and turn the Basilica of Guadalupe into a museum.
Felipe Lopez Veneroni, a political analyst and professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said such misinformation creates confusion, undermines trust in candidates and discourages people from voting.
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He said hate speech creates “totally irrational, emotional narratives motivated more by fear than clarity of proposal.”
Venelloni said false rumors reinforce “the prejudices that many people already have: they believe what they want to believe.”
Both Galvez, who is vying to become Mexico's first female president, and Scheinbaum have been accused online of lying about their university degrees.
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Frine Salguero, executive director of the Simone de Beauvoir Leadership Institute, a women's training center in Mexico City, said such attacks portray women as “weak, incompetent and incapable of leadership.”
“They are trying to exclude and prevent women from participating in politics. Unfortunately, that is a reflection of Mexican society,” she added.
Immigrants have also been drawn into the disinformation war, accused of receiving social assistance from the government in return for voting for Scheinbaum.
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In reality, only 83,000 naturalized immigrants are eligible to vote, a tiny fraction of the 99 million people registered to vote.
The National Electoral Commission has stated that non-Mexican nationals will also be given the right to vote.
Accusations of fraud and doubts about the electoral process are common on social media.
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Days before Mexico's election, some voters were still confused by misinformation about how to mark their ballots and whether the pens provided by electoral commissions contained erasable ink.
Martha Tudon, digital rights director at human rights group Article 19, said such falsehoods could sway voters and change the outcome of an election.
“In places where people don't have full access to the internet and only have WhatsApp and Facebook, this could become very serious,” she said, adding that she couldn't verify what was being sent.
A UNESCO survey released last November found that 61 percent of Mexicans get their information through social media.
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