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By Samedi Aguirre
What do former Colombian senator Iván Cepeda and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have in common? According to La Derecha Diario, both are a "risk." In contrast, presidents Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina bring prosperity.
As we reported in this Factchequeado investigation, La Derecha Diario, under the leadership of Javier Negre, has become a digital bridge between MAGA and Latin America. Although it was founded in Argentina, it is now a network operating in Spanish in Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Israel, Mexico, Spain, the United States, and Uruguay.
The idea that the right brings prosperity while the left brings insecurity and poverty is the narrative La Derecha Diario repeats most often on its accounts in Argentina, the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia, though in many cases it relies on disinformation to support its extreme ideological stance.
That is according to an analysis by La Silla Vacía's Data Unit of all of the outlet's posts on X, Instagram, and its websites between January 1, 2025, and August 15, 2026.
Disinformation fuels La Derecha Diario's narratives
An article published in a journal of the Complutense University of Madrid notes that "the strategic and deliberate spread of falsehoods fits into the construction of stories capable of confusing truth with plausibility."
According to the researchers, these stories or narratives carry significant weight in shaping how citizens understand events.
Based on La Silla Vacía's analysis, we identified the following main narratives:
Narratives from each country’s accounts
Three recurring narratives and examples of how they appear in coverage across six countries.
| Narrative | United States | Israel | Mexico | Ecuador | Colombia | Argentina |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The U.S. and its allies lead the fight against the "new axis of evil" (Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Cuba) | Trump seeks to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. | Israel killed a Hamas commander who was planning attacks. | — | Trump threatens to destroy Iran if it tries to assassinate him. | — | — |
| Left-wing politicians and governments are tied to drug trafficking, while the right fights organized crime | — | — | Morena has a pact with organized crime. | Noboa's government is effectively fighting drug trafficking. | De la Espriella will go after narco-terrorists militarily. | — |
| The right brings wealth and prosperity; the left, poverty and insecurity | Milei's program reduced poverty and inflation. | — | The Maya Train is generating huge losses. | Ecuador's economy is growing under Daniel Noboa's leadership. | Iván Cepeda is a danger to Colombian democracy. | Milei's economic plan will make Argentina great again. |
Source: Factchequeado, based on data compiled by La Silla Vacía.
Together, these three narratives pit right-wing governments, such as those of Trump and Milei, against left-wing ones, such as Sheinbaum's:
The United States and its allies are leading the fight against the new axis of evil (Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Cuba).
Left-wing politicians and governments are tied to drug trafficking, while the right fights organized crime.
The right brings wealth and prosperity, and the left brings poverty and insecurity.
These narratives are fueled by false or out-of-context claims. For example, as we reported in another article, La Derecha Diario's Mexico account has repeatedly claimed that the Mexican president and her government are tied to drug trafficking, though there is no evidence of this to date.
The Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, and United States editions have also called Sheinbaum a "narco-president" or "narco-communist."
In another example, in August 2025, La Derecha Diario's main account posted that Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, had revealed that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was allegedly linked to a drug trafficking network.
Ovidio Guzmán pleaded guilty to several drug trafficking-related charges before a Chicago court in 2025, two years after being extradited to the United States.
However, Venezuelan outlet Cotejo.info, a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and a member of the LatamChequea network, like Factchequeado, La Silla Vacía, and Chequeado, rated the claim partly false, since there is no direct evidence that Guzmán publicly named Maduro.
La Derecha Diario's United States, Mexico, and Argentina editions have repeatedly called LGBTQ+ people "degenerates." The Colombian edition has even used expressions such as "perverted gender ideology."
Its hate speech is also accompanied by disinformation. For example, in September 2025, the outlet claimed that "a wave of massacres and murders at the hands of mentally degenerate transsexuals" had become "an epidemic" in the United States.
However, this narrative has been debunked many times. "Trans attackers in mass shootings represent a minority of cases in the United States, according to data compiled by experts. The perpetrators are mostly cisgender men, followed by rare acts committed by women or LGBTI people," the Reuters team found.
At Factchequeado, we have previously debunked posts that falsely claimed trans people were responsible for other mass shootings.
Portraying migrants as violent, criminal, and dangerous is another narrative that is very present in La Derecha Diario. In the U.S. edition, ICE agents' actions are celebrated, and migrants are referred to as "foreign criminals."
"DANGER: The Islamist and socialist candidates of New York's Muslim mayor, Zohoran Mamdani (sic), won the congressional primaries in New York. This represents an existential danger to American values, since all of them seek to abolish the functions of Trump's ICE and guarantee protection for criminal illegal immigrants," it said in a tweet.
Negative emotions drive its narratives
Several studies have shown that emotional charge plays a key role in the spread of disinformation. For example, a study published on the SciELO platform notes that "emotions function as mechanisms of symbolic legitimization, lending plausibility and coherence to false stories," and that the main emotion used in disinformation in electoral contexts is anger.
Along those lines, an analysis by La Silla Vacía's Data Unit showed that outrage is the main emotion promoted in nine of La Derecha Diario's 11 accounts.
In the three most aggressive ones, Uruguay (53.2%), Mexico (52.5%), and Spain (49%), nearly one in two posts aims at that emotion. Adding up outrage, fear, and hatred, more than 70% of the messages in those three editions carry a negative emotional charge.
In contrast, editions in countries with allied governments are far less furious: in the United States, for example, outrage drops to 23.4%, in Argentina to 23.6%, and in Ecuador to 24.5%. In other words, the three editions that promote messages with a negative emotional charge cover left-wing governments, while the three milder ones focus on right-wing governments.
The Colombian account shows how the predominant emotion shifts depending on the ideology of the government in power. As we reported in another article, La Derecha Diario's Colombia edition sought to stir outrage during the 2026 presidential campaign, followed by fear, mainly associated with Gustavo Petro and his candidate, Iván Cepeda. Hope and joy were reserved for right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, and their intensity only rose when he won the election.
La Silla Vacía also found that the formula is replicated in several countries. The figure with the most positive mentions in the Argentine edition is Milei; in the U.S. edition, Trump; in the Ecuadorian edition, Daniel Noboa; and in the Colombian edition, De la Espriella.
In contrast, negative mentions in Spain are directed mainly at Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Castejón, in the Mexican edition at Sheinbaum, and in the Colombian edition at Petro.
Hateful messaging varies with political events
In La Silla Vacía's analysis of the regional channels, we found moments when messages with a negative emotional charge spiked.
In the United States, where the right governs, there is a balance between messages that seek outrage, fear, or hatred and messages with a lower, neutral, or positive emotional charge.
When the right wins, outrage subsides. Monthly posts on X, distinguishing those aimed at provoking outrage, fear or hatred (red) from other posts (gray). Select a country to explore the data.
For example, between July and August 2025, messages with a negative emotional charge declined slightly. During those months, Trump signed the "One Big Beautiful Bill," a law containing tax and spending policies; ordered the deployment of the National Guard in the nation's capital, arguing it was needed to fight crime; and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss ways to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
In Mexico, where the left governs, messages with a negative emotional charge predominate, and they increased in June and July 2025.
This coincided with the first-ever special elections in Mexico's history, held on June 1, 2025, to directly elect judges, magistrates, and justices of the Judicial Branch. That same month, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Mexican financial institutions (such as CIBanco, Intercam, and Vector) over alleged money laundering or facilitating transfers for drug cartels.
In Ecuador, governed by Trump ally Noboa, messages with a lower, neutral, or positive emotional charge predominate.
Negative messages declined in May, the month Noboa began a new presidential term, focusing his inaugural speech on the economy, security, and investment.
In contrast, negative messages increased in September 2025. That month, Ecuador experienced a wave of social unrest and an indefinite national strike called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) to protest the elimination of the diesel subsidy and other policies of Daniel Noboa's government.
In the case of La Derecha Diario Israel, although negative messages fluctuate considerably relative to others, those that provoke negative emotions slightly outweigh those that provoke positive ones.
The Israel account focuses mainly on spreading information about military actions: for example, that Israel killed a key Hezbollah commander, a Hamas commander, and an "Iranian oppressor." It also highlights the alliance with Argentina and warns of the supposed "threat" that Iran could control the Strait of Hormuz.
The first decline in negative messaging came in October 2025. That month, the ceasefire that marked an official pause in large-scale hostilities in the Gaza war was announced, and a peace summit was held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh with international leaders in attendance.
This investigation is part of "La Derecha Diario: Its Network in Latin America and Its Connections to MAGA," a collaborative series by Chequeado, Factchequeado, and La Silla Vacía. The series is part of "Los Desinformantes," an initiative of LatamChequea, the Latin American fact-checkers network.
Factchequeado is a fact-checking outlet building a Spanish-speaking community to counter disinformation in the United States. Want to join? Verify the content you receive by sending it to our WhatsApp at +1 (646) 873-6087 or at factchequeado.com/whatsapp.
