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 3 - Gilberto Lozano: ultra-elite oligarch with extreme, fascistic views
Gilberto Lozano González has established himself as one of the most die-hard opponents of President López Obrador.
A mega-rich oligarch from the heartland of Mexico’s elite, Lozano has made himself the figurehead of his National Anti-AMLO Front, FRENA.
Lozano publishes indignant rants on YouTube, where his channel has nearly 150,000 subscribers, calling the elected president a would-be dictator and warning that “the communist agenda is advancing”.
Most of the videos are recorded in Lozano’s opulent mansion, where viewers can see his loft ceilings, fancy paintings, mountain of hats, and grand piano. And the oligarch has a penchant for dramatic flair, posing in front of a statue of an angel armed with a club, or holding up a tray with a caricature of AMLO’s face. This, coupled with Lozano’s entertaining, fury-infused fits, might partly explain the popularity that drives views of his social media videos to well over 50,000.
In these often lengthy video rants, Lozano repeats his familiar refrains, ironically accusing López Obrador of carrying out a “soft coup” while simultaneously calling for the elected leader to be removed before November 30 and replaced with an “interim president”.
The oligarch’s extreme, far-right views have led many Mexicans to compare Lozano to Donald Trump or to Brazil’s fascistic leader Jair Bolsonaro.
In fact, FRENA published an open letter to President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and US Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau this past May, seeking their support.
In the missive, FRENA claimed AMLO is a “tyrant whose sights set on the Latin American Castro-Chavista socialism” and a “commander-in-chief whose agenda is none other than that of the Sao Paulo Forum led from Cuba and supported by Venezuela”.
Claiming to have the support of 2 million Mexicans, FRENA asked the US president “and all levels of your government to stop calling [AMLO] ‘a friend.’ He is not your friend nor your country’s.”
Lozano subsequently shared a link to the letter from his personal Twitter account, adding the note, “Available to talk with you Mr. Trump”. He even apparently included his phone number in the message.
In a follow-up tweet, Lozano added, “I am waiting for this call or audience with [Ambassador] Laundau”.
But before he became a key figure in the anti-AMLO opposition, Gilberto Lozano was known as one of Mexico’s most powerful business magnates.
Lozano previously directed corporate giant FEMSA, the largest bottler of Coca-Cola in the world, and spent 16 years at the helm of the massive, multibillion-dollar multinational conglomerate the Alfa Group.
He was also the owner of the enormous convenience store chain Oxxo, as well as a distributor of numerous corporate brands, including Heineken.
Lozano is a native of Monterrey, a city in northern Mexico infamous for being controlled by ultra-rich right-wing families with nearly unlimited economic resources – and thus significant sway over their country’s politics. These powerful oligarchs are known collectively as the Grupo Monterrey, or Monterrey Group. And in perfect symbolism of his elite status, Lozano served as president of their Monterrey Football Club.
The businessman has used his extensive connections to put a heavy footprint on Mexican politics. Lozano founded and directs the influential National Citizen Congress (Congreso Nacional Ciudadano, or CNC), a group of oligarchs who claim to be apolitical, but who aggressively lobby for right-wing neoliberal policies, as part of their plan to create a “new Mexico”.
In a lecture at Canada’s McGill University in 2015, Lozano described the strategy of his National Citizen Congress in starkly Gene Sharpian terms: using a “horizontal structure” to build “power and agency.” Combining right-wing populist flair with libertarian and anarchist rhetoric, the oligarch claimed they were ushering in a new “revolution,” weakening and dismantling the state and government institutions in order to construct a decentralized society that ensures “self-determination” and “autonomy” for individuals.
Lozano and his National Citizen Congress also have extensive economic and political connections in the United States. Lozano boasts that he has a network of CNC activists in the US.
The oligarch frequently makes trips to Texas, where he conducts interviews with right-wing US activists, ranting about how AMLO and his Morena party are purportedly destroying Mexico.
In a trip to Dallas, Texas in November 2018, Lozano discussed the anti-AMLO activities that his National Citizen Congress oversees in both the US and Mexico.
Next, Lozano livestreamed a video on Facebook, from Houston, Texas, where the Mexican oligarch spoke with a fellow CNC member at a Pemex gas station.
Lozano barked into the camera, condemning then President-elect López Obrador’s transition team for inviting representatives from Venezuela’s internationally recognized government to his forthcoming December inauguration. Although AMLO had not yet taken power, Lozano shrieked that the left-wing leader would turn Mexico into a “corrupt killer dictatorship” with no toilet paper, as he portrayed Venezuela.
In the video, Lozano claimed that pro-AMLO protesters were being paid by the government. Then, in the comments below, Lozano accused his critics of being bots and fake accounts run by López Obrador’s Morena party.
These might seem like the ravings of a madman, but Gilberto Lozano’s ravings have fallen on fertile social media soil. He is also a regular fixture on Mexico’s mainstream corporate media networks, which are owned by some of the same right-wing oligarchs who want to unseat AMLO.
In May 2019, Lozano and his National Citizen Congress brought an absurd criminal complaint before Mexico’s House of Representatives, formally accusing President López Obrador of treason.
The oligarch leveled more than 20 accusations against AMLO. Among them, local media outlets reported, was “subjugating the Mexican people’s sovereignty, independence, and integrity to foreign interests,” and his evidence for this incendiary claim was the supposed arrival of “Central Americans, Cubans, ISIS cells, Islamists, Africans, and Mara Salvatrucha” (MS-13) gang members.
In his legal complaint, Lozano claimed López Obrador’s policies will destabilize Mexico, destroy the economy, and fuel more violence, endangering women, and even unleashing illnesses and viruses, including ebola.
The influential left-wing public intellectual John Ackerman, a close ally of AMLO, dubbed Lozano “the Mexican Trump“, arguing he uses the “same racist and neofascist discourse as the President of the United States”.
However, Ackerman predicted that Lozano would not succeed as Trump has, because the “Mexican political culture is more resistant than others to fascism.” Ackerman reminded readers that a similarly extreme, Trumpian presidential candidate, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, only received 5 percent of the vote in the 2018 election.
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