Yo Soy 132 is an ongoing Mexican protest movement centered around the democratization of the country and its media. It began as opposition to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and the Mexican media’s allegedly biased coverage of the 2012 general election.The name Yo Soy 132, Spanish for “I Am 132”, originated in an expression of solidarity with the protest’s initiators.
The phrase draws inspiration from the Occupy movement and the Spanish 15-M movement.
On May 23, 2012, the movement released its manifesto. An excerpt from it states:
First – we are a nonpartisan movement of citizens. As such, we do not express support of any candidate or political party, but rather respect the plurality and diversity of this movement’s participants. Our wishes and demands are centered on the defense of Mexicans’ freedom of expression and their right for information, in that these two elements are essential to forming an aware and participating citizenry. For the same reasons, we support informed and well-thought out voting. We believe that under the present political circumstances, abstaining or making a null vote is ineffective in promoting the edification of our democracy. We are a movement committed to the country’s democratization, and as such, we hold that a necessary condition for this goal is the democratization of the media. This commitment derives from the current state of the national press, and from the concentration of the media outlets in few hands.
