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By the Factchequeado Team
With the country on edge after Mexican security forces killed the top leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Nemesio Oceguera Cervantes, "El Mencho," the director and then co-owner of La Derecha Diario, Javier Negre, posted a fake image of a plane supposedly on fire at the Guadalajara airport.
"Mexico's narco-president must be proud," Negre posted on X in February 2026. The image was later debunked by authorities and fact-checking outlets such as Chequeado, AFP Factual, and Reuters Fact Check.
Thousands of miles from Mexico, in Argentina, La Derecha Diario's account in that country falsely claimed that after El Mencho's death on February 22, 2026, narco-terrorists had taken over the Guadalajara airport.
It is true that CJNG members set up roadblocks, burned vehicles, and clashed with the military in several states, including Jalisco, Puebla, Nayarit, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas. There were moments of panic at the Guadalajara airport, but reporters on site, local media, the airport itself, and authorities denied that drug traffickers had taken control of the facility.
"Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro: Some future Morena voters vandalized businesses and broke into them intending to rob them, taking advantage of the chaos unleashed by the death and capture of 'El Mencho' in Guadalajara," La Derecha Diario México posted on February 24, 2026. It offered no basis for linking the young people in the video to the party that currently governs the country, and it mocked a social program aimed at helping young people find jobs.
In November 2025, La Derecha Diario México extensively covered protests reportedly organized by Gen Z youth against the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum. The protesters' main demand was public safety, following the murder of Carlos Manzo, mayor of the municipality of Uruapan.
La Derecha Diario México promoted the calls to protest and predicted a "mega march."
It also criticized the fences placed around the National Palace and published anonymous audio clips without verifying their authenticity, which claimed that supporters of Sheinbaum's government planned to attack marchers with needles. That did not happen: no attack of that kind was recorded.
Mexico City is governed by the Morena party, so attacks on local authorities also target party members such as President Sheinbaum, whom the outlet accuses of colluding with drug traffickers without providing any evidence or documentation.
As with its platform in Argentina, where it launched in 2019, and in at least nine other countries, La Derecha Diario México's main editorial line is to criticize left-wing politicians and increase polarization.
According to an analysis by La Silla Vacía covering January 1, 2025, to August 15, 2026, the most frequent topics on the Mexican account are attacks on President Claudia Sheinbaum and her government. For example, it accuses her, without evidence, of having ties to criminals, and blames her for the economic failures of projects led by the previous administration.
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It also spreads disinformation and hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community and women's reproductive rights.
On The Right News Show, the YouTube program he broadcasts from the United States, Negre showed Sheinbaum with devil horns, criticizing her for allegedly ordering a crackdown on the Gen Z protest.
Salinas Pliego, his partner against "the lefties"
A distinctive feature of La Derecha Diario's operation in Mexico, compared with other countries where it is present, is the alliance Negre formed with a far-right TV mogul.
In December 2024, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, owner of TV Azteca (the country's second-largest commercial TV network in reach and influence), publicly called on Negre and La Derecha Diario to operate against the Mexican left.
"What if you help us in Mexico against these criminal lefties?" Salinas Pliego wrote to Negre on X. "It will be a pleasure. Mexico is a great country that deserves to escape the clutches of communism," the Spanish commentator replied, also publicly.
That same month, the X account @DerechaDiarioM was launched. It now has 89,600 followers, a figure that looks low compared with the 606,000 followers of La Derecha Diario's Argentine account, considering that Argentina has a third of Mexico's population.
Still, it has had an impact in Mexico's media and political sphere. It is constantly amplified by conservative politicians, such as Senator Lilly Téllez, a former employee and ally of Salinas Pliego, and PAN lawmaker América Rangel. It has also been singled out as a source of disinformation from the Mexican government's main public platform: Sheinbaum's morning press conference, known as la mañanera.
The alliance between Salinas Pliego and Negre has an important backstory. The left won Mexico's presidency for the first time in 2018, with Andrés Manuel López Obrador as its candidate. At the time, Salinas Pliego supported him and even joined a business advisory council for his government.
But that support ended after the López Obrador administration refused to forgive a multimillion-dollar tax debt owed by Salinas Pliego. From then on, both his personal account and his network's news coverage showed openly oppositional messaging against the Morena governments, first López Obrador's and then Sheinbaum's.
The businessman referred to left-wing supporters as "shitty lefties" and made his sympathy for the far right clear by attending events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held in Argentina in 2024.
That event featured Argentine President Javier Milei, and Negre also attended, at the time as president of "EDA TV group," his media outlet in Spain. According to the now head of La Derecha Diario, it was at that CPAC event that he met Salinas Pliego, and just a couple of days later they sealed their alliance on X. According to an investigation by Spanish newspaper El País, "sources close" to Salinas Pliego said he "reached an agreement to fund the Mexican branch for $6,000 a month for six months," but that the billionaire "was left dissatisfied," and that "Negre denies having been funded by Salinas."
La Derecha Diario's website lists 13 contributors in its Mexico section. Among them is Luis Arturo Herrera, listed as editor. The economist is very active on X and frequently appears as an analyst on debate panels on Salinas Pliego's broadcast TV channels.
La Derecha Diario México and pro–Salinas Pliego "troll" accounts interact frequently and share narratives against the Sheinbaum government and the left in general.
For example, they blamed her administration for the shooting by a man at the Pirámide de la Lunain the Teotihuacán archaeological zone in April 2026. The attack left a Canadian tourist and the shooter dead, and more than a dozen people injured.
"COMMUNISTS ARE MENTALLY ILL: The Teotihuacán shooter reportedly had material referencing the Soviet Union, as well as hunting weapons, a knife, and cartridges," La Derecha Diario México posted, claiming in another tweet that the attacker was a "left-wing terrorist."
It offered no evidence that the attacker had a left-wing orientation. In fact, outlets such as El País reported that the attacker was a follower of Adolf Hitler with far-right leanings.
Homophobic and anti-feminist messages
La Derecha Diario México's account contains multiple messages against the LGBTQ+ community, the feminist movement, and reproductive rights.
Figures such as Genaro Lozano, appointed as Mexico's ambassador to Italy, have been called "degenerate" in several posts because of his sexual orientation.
In June 2025, the account criticized Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada for an event to display the world's largest LGBTQ+ pride flag in the city's main square, the Zócalo.
"Degeneracy advances: instead of solving the flooding, insecurity, or dispossession problems facing Mexico City, the good-for-nothing Clara Brugada's government will use taxpayer money to call LGBT+ collectives to the capital's Zócalo and make the world's largest perverted flag," La Derecha Diario posted.
Months later, in October 2025, it accused the federal government of distributing "books with degenerate content for public school children that promote despicable gender ideology to brainwash Mexican children."
The "books" it referred to are actually a public document from the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, and it is not aimed at children. The document describes concepts related to sexual diversity, gender identities, and sex characteristics.
Its posts have also included messages opposing women's access to abortion, describing the medical procedure as part of a "murderous agenda," and using derogatory terms for feminist groups such as "feminazis" and "stinking femi-orcs."
La Derecha Diario Argentina spreads disinformation about Mexico
From Argentina, La Derecha Diario's main account has also published disinformation and unfounded accusations.
In February 2026, in addition to the false claim that drug traffickers had seized the Guadalajara airport, it spread a supposed "last audio" of the Jalisco Cartel leader "threatening to kill a police chief so he would pull back his officers, before being exterminated by Trump." The audio was not recent: it had been circulating since 2016, as verified by ColombiaCheck.
The Negre-led platform also amplified a claim by Argentine politician Carlos Ruckauf that the United States had supposedly led El Mencho's capture, and that "Claudia Sheinbaum decided to kill him during his transfer so he would not expose in the United States his ties to Mexico's narco-government and the funding of Morena." It provided no evidence to support the claim.
"During this operation, military personnel were attacked, so in defense of their safety they repelled the aggression, resulting in four members of the criminal group 'CJNG' killed at the scene and three seriously wounded, who died during their air transfer to Mexico City; among the latter was Ruben 'N' (a.k.a.) Mencho," the Mexican government explained in a statement.
On July 2, 2026, during the World Cup, La Derecha Diario Argentina repeated an Argentine commentator's claim that "Ecuador national team players were threatened by drug cartels to throw their match against Mexico." The rumor circulated on social media, but no evidence, direct complaints from Ecuador's players, or investigation ever surfaced.
Factchequeado contacted Javier Negre to ask about La Derecha Diario's funding in Mexico and any ties to Salinas Pliego, but he had not responded at the time of publication.
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.
