La Derecha Diario in Mexico: Ties to a TV mogul, disinformation, and attacks on minorities
When Mexican security forces killed Nemesio Oceguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho," the top leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Javier Negre, director and then co-owner of La Derecha Diario, posted a fabricated image on social media showing a plane allegedly on fire at the Guadalajara airport.
"Mexico's narco-president must be proud," Negre wrote on X in February 2026. Authorities and fact-checking outlets including Chequeado, AFP Factual, and Reuters Fact Check later debunked the image.
From Argentina, La Derecha Diario's account in that country falsely claimed that after El Mencho's death on February 22, 2026, narco-terrorists had seized control of the Guadalajara airport.
While CJNG members did set up roadblocks, burn vehicles, and clash with military forces in several states including Jalisco, Puebla, Nayarit, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas, reporters on site, local media, the airport itself, and authorities all denied that drug traffickers had taken over the facility. The CJNG is considered one of Mexico's most powerful criminal organizations, with operations extending to over 40 countries worldwide and assets estimated at over $20 billion.
"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. The account provided no evidence linking the young people in the video to the ruling Morena party, which currently controls 24 of Mexico's 32 state governorships and holds a supermajority in Congress. The post also mocked a social program designed to help young people find employment.
Promoting protests and spreading unfounded claims
In November 2025, La Derecha Diario México extensively covered protests reportedly organized by Generation Z youth against the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum. The protesters' main demand centered on public safety following the murder of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan municipality.
The outlet promoted calls to protest and predicted a "mega march." It 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. No such attack occurred.
Mexico City is governed by the Morena party, so attacks on local authorities also target party members such as President Sheinbaum. The outlet accuses her of colluding with drug traffickers without providing evidence or documentation.
Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and environmental engineer who was part of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, served as Mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023. She was elected President of Mexico on June 2, 2024 with approximately 58.3% to 60.7% of the vote and took office on October 1, 2024, becoming Mexico's first female president and first Jewish president in the country's 200-year history.
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 Sheinbaum and her government. The outlet accuses her, without evidence, of having ties to criminals and blames her for economic failures of projects led by the previous administration.
La Derecha Diario México also spreads disinformation and hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community and women's reproductive rights.
Alliance with a billionaire media mogul
A distinctive feature of La Derecha Diario's operation in Mexico is the alliance Javier Negre formed with Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a Mexican billionaire with an estimated net worth of approximately $8 billion, making him one of the richest people in Mexico. Salinas Pliego owns TV Azteca, the country's second-largest commercial television network, through his conglomerate Grupo Salinas.
In December 2024, Salinas Pliego 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 modest figure compared with the 606,000 followers of La Derecha Diario's Argentine account, given that Argentina has a third of Mexico's population.
Despite the smaller following, the account has had an impact in Mexico's media and political sphere. Conservative politicians, including Senator Lilly Téllez, a former employee and ally of Salinas Pliego, and PAN lawmaker América Rangel, constantly amplify its content. The outlet has also been singled out as a source of disinformation from the Mexican government's main public platform: President Sheinbaum's morning press conference, known as la mañanera.
The alliance between Salinas Pliego and Negre has 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.
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 the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Argentina on December 4, 2024. That event featured Argentine President Javier Milei, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and other international far-right figures.
According to Negre, who attended CPAC as president of "EDA TV group," his media outlet in Spain, it was at that event that he met Salinas Pliego. Just 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. 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 accounts interact frequently and share narratives against the Sheinbaum government and the left in general.
For example, they blamed her administration for a shooting by a man at the Pirámide de la Luna in 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."
The outlet offered no evidence that the attacker had a left-wing orientation. Outlets such as El País reported that the attacker was a follower of Adolf Hitler with far-right leanings.
Homophobic and anti-feminist content
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.
In October 2025, the outlet 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 the document is not aimed at children. It describes concepts related to sexual diversity, gender identities, and sex characteristics.
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."
Disinformation from Argentina about Mexico
From Argentina, La Derecha Diario's main account has also published disinformation and unfounded accusations about Mexico.
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." No evidence supported 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.
