A Trump-like Mexican oligarch, Gilberto Lozano, is leading a coalition of corporate leaders and far-right fanatics called FRENA to try to overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
by José Guadalupe Argüello III and Ben Norton
Part 6 - FRENA member Pedro Ferriz de Con calls for foreign intervention to remove AMLO
Although FRENA lacks a grassroots, working-class base, it has the support of some powerful elites. Not all of these oligarchs are publicly disclosed, however.
While the National Anti-AMLO Front says there are 67 members of its elite governing council, only four of these are named. Alongside Gilberto Lozano, the FRENA website lists Pedro Ferriz de Con, Rafael Loret de Mola, and Juan Bosco Abascal.
Pedro Ferriz de Con is an anti-AMLO journalist known for his propensity for hyperbolic statements, like claiming “the government has not had this many problems since the Mexican Revolution”. Ferriz ran for president in 2018 as an independent candidate.
This April, an audio recording was leaked in which Ferriz de Con called “for AMLO to be removed from office with the help of a group of businessmen along with foreign powers”.
These comments ignited a national scandal in Mexico, leading a group of citizens to bring a case against Ferriz de Con to the attorney general’s office.
Ferriz de Con published a video on Gilberto Lozano’s YouTube channel voicing his full-throated backing for FRENA. He also repeated his characteristically exaggerated claims, insisting that López Obrador’s government is the worst and most dangerous that Ferriz de Con has seen in his nearly 70 years of life, or that he had ever heard about from his father.
Under AMLO, “We see that there is not, as there was in the past, at least an opportunity for the free market, free competition, respect for private property, for intellectual property, for industrial property”, Ferriz de Con declared.
“I don’t want, for my children, for the next generations, to leave Mexico immersed in socialism. And today I’m seeing that this country is becoming the head of the Sao Paulo Forum”, he added, referring to an international conference of left-wing parties in Latin America.
Ferriz de Con concluded the video by insisting that FRENA should take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic, which he gleefully predicted would lead to unemployment, “enormous capital flight”, and a lack of foreign investment, in order to oust López Obrador.
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