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“URGENT!” my phone screen flashed with a WhatsApp notification from the Martínez family group chat. The message included plenty of emojis, including a fire alert, a rolled-up newspaper, many shocked faces, and finally a link to a post on X, formerly Twitter, in which some random person wrote something incendiary about Mexico’s new textbooks for elementary school children.
“They’re going to teach our children all about sex change and how to become transexuals!” wrote one alarmed uncle.
“Ay, dios mío!” exclaimed another.
“Our poor kids . . .,” lamented a childless aunt.
Okay. Even if the Mexican government rarely fails to surprise—and shock—in many ways, I did not believe this rumor for one second. As the cynical, skeptical, and realistic journalist that I am, my first impulse was to go find a more credible source than WhatsApp and an X post by an anonymous account with exactly twenty-four followers.
Of course, none of it was true. Not one bit. As El Chapulín Colorado, one of Latin America’s most beloved heroes, once famously said: Lo sospeché desde un principio!
NOTE: Before you keep reading and ask this writer to stop embarrassing her family in public, please remember this column was conceived to be handled with a serious dose of humor.
Fake Noticias
As soon as I was able to debunk the news, I informed the very anxious members of my family on WhatsApp that they could sleep tight that night. Their kids would not be taken hostage by left-wing, liberal, woke government officials intent on teaching a new generation of niños how to be transgender.
Some sighed in relief. Some didn’t even bother to respond and quickly moved onto other, seemingly more important things, like sending memes and kitschy inspirational quotes brought to us by Tweety bird.
The scandalous, fake news of depraved elementary school textbooks was quickly forgotten. But the episode made me realize how, ever since I moved back to Mexico, I have spent more time than I would like debunking fake news shared via WhatsApp across many, MANY group chats.
That’s the other thing—there is not one family chat on WhatsApp; there’s one for the siblings, another for my father’s extended family, a different one for my mom’s side, and everything else in between.
I have never seen so much family intrigue (save for Succession, of course) than in the family chat on WhatsApp, the app so accurately described by a New York friend of mine as “The Immigrant App.”
Why is that?
For one, many of my people (i.e., Mexicans) were raised to distrust mainstream media and to always double check our facts—even if they don’t teach us how or where to conduct said fact-checking. It doesn’t help that most TV networks, newspapers, and radio stations in Latin America have been bleeding money and cutting down on staff, mostly journalists, leaving regular folks scrambling for alternative sources of information, namely “The Immigrant App.”
Just as I was wrapping up this column, sixty-eight-year-old, high-profile politician and mayoral hopeful Tomás Morales, formerly affiliated with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was reported dead at home. As I picked up my phone to investigate online, I was derailed by the family group chat, which was filled with messages about a potential cover-up, an assassination masterminded by our fearless leader to silence a politician who “knew too much.”
I barely had time to google the news because I was responding to WhatsApp, but I quickly found a message from the family of the deceased sharing news of his death and thanking everyone for their expressions of solidarity during this time of grief.
“This is all very suspicious,” someone chimed in on the family chat. “This was an inside job, and our country is going to hell.” One uncle firmly stated: “I bet he was pushed down the stairs by one of the President’s men.”
Okay, then. Time to mute WhatsApp. Off to bed now.
Stay tuned for Laura Martinez’s next Hisplaining column, which will tackle other key biz terms and jargon and help leaders everywhere smoothly navigate the multicultural business world. In the meantime, send us tips and ideas for other terms and jargon that you’d like to see us feature. And remember: Don’t panic . . . it’s just his-PANIC!
