Image via Yahoo Noticias
***
Earlier this month, thousands of young people filled the streets of Mexico City carrying black posters with bold white letters that read: “El Estado no hará nada por ti. Organízate,” which means: “The state will do nothing for you. Organize yourself.”
What began as a loosely coordinated online campaign under the name “Marcha Generación Z” quickly became a nationwide display of extreme frustration because of corruption, insecurity, and political violence.
For many young people in the country, the march symbolized more than anger; it represented disappointment towards the political party in power, Morena, which had offered so many promises of ‘new politics’ or transformation, but had become increasingly similar to the establishment it had promised to replace. The protest’s core message was blunt: the government will not save you, so you’d better save yourself.
The demonstration came just days after the assassination of Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez, the mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán. He ran with Morena but eventually distanced himself politically from them after some disagreements. Manzo was shot and killed during a Day of the Dead celebration he had attended with his family. He was struck multiple times and later died in a nearby hospital.
His murder, one of the multiple attacks on local officials this year, caused massive public uproar and street protests demanding justice. Citizens chanted the phrase “Ni uno más” (“Not one more”) and shouted phrases against Morena. Citizens are accusing the government of ignoring cartel violence, the rising tide of political killings, and turning an issue that affects everyone into a political polarization issue.
For Generation Z, Manzo’s killing was not an individual act of brutality; it was confirmation that Mexico’s violence has become a systemic issue that the government has chosen to turn a blind eye to. Despite President Claudia Sheinbaum’s pledge to continue Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of “abrazos, no balazos” (“hugs, not bullets”), insecurity has only deepened. This phrase has become so controversial because it minimizes the epidemic of violence that Mexico has seen throughout the years. The young population is rising against a state that is not only unable but unwilling to confront organized crime.
Unlike previous opposition movements, the Marcha Generación Z had no visible political leaders or any party affiliations. This movement gained momentum online, particularly on TikTok, Telegram channels, and Instagram posts. Its organizers have used anonymous accounts, memes, and encrypted messaging to mobilize thousands across the country.
This decentralized system can be both empowering and precarious. The movement grew organically, but it was also vulnerable to accusations or political manipulation. Morena officials and people who support the current administration have claimed that the protest was fueled by right-wing interests and boosted by billionaires like Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
Whether these claims are credible or deflective, they show how the ruling party is feeling anxiety about a new political force, one that can’t be easily co-opted, negotiated with, or contained by the traditional political institutions. When frustration and opposition spread through social media algorithms, it becomes extremely tough to control.
The Marcha Generación Z is not an isolated event; it is part of a larger pattern of youth-led uprisings that extend far beyond Mexico’s borders. Across continents, young people are becoming increasingly frustrated and have decided to confront political systems they view as corrupt, exclusionary, or no longer representative of them.
In Latin America, we have seen these types of uprisings for years. In 2019, protests in Chile erupted over rising subway fares, evolving into a nationwide movement to draft a new constitution led primarily by students and digital organizers. Then, in Colombia, Gen Z protesters started using TikTok as a tool for political education during the era of the 2021 national strikes, by livestreaming police violence and coordinated marches in real time. So, from Mexico City to Medellin, digital platforms have become shields and protesting tools that offer a way to document state abuse while also creating a shared generational identity that transcends national borders.
In Europe, young people have mobilized around issues of democracy, environment, and inequality. For instance, a global icon like Greta Thunberg fights for climate activism, or youth coalitions in Poland and Hungary, protesting against anti-LGBTQ+ governments, have all utilized the young demographic and social media to spread their message and create movements that are hard to dismantle.
These movements differ in cause, but they share a common generational logic: they are all decentralized, digitally centered, and morally urgent. Gen Z is less interested in ideological purity than in accountability. Their demands are not for abstract ideologies or revolutions; they seek governments that work for them and cater to the people’s needs.
Mexico’s current protest is mirroring this ideology. Like their fellow protesters abroad, young Mexicans used social media not only to coordinate but to frame the narrative before the state could shift it to their advantage. Messages on social media spread so much faster than any tools that the government may have. What unites them with youth like Thunberg or those fighting in Poland is not language or policy or even common goals, but method: politics being shaped digitally, in real time, in a collective manner.
The last century belonged to labor unions and large parties, but this one belongs to the coalitions found in the digital interface. Mexico’s Generacion Z march demonstrates how protest has evolved from street chants to global and digital action. The same technologies that are being used to surveil and pacify citizens are not being re-weaponized by youth as a weapon of resistance.
What makes this generation’s activism so different is how they refuse to separate the local from the global. To them, corruption in Uruapan, Michoacan, is connected to Medellin and anywhere else where youth are trying to make their governments serve them.
Still, after the marches finish and the hashtags are no longer engaged with, the question arises whether online outrage can become lasting political power.
The Marcha Generación Z illustrates a paradox of modern activism, where visibility does not always lead to long-lasting change. Morena could have never spread a message of this magnitude at the fast pace that it did, yet its very speed made it ephemeral. Virality on social media can quickly mobilize thousands to take to the streets, but institutional transformation will take much longer.
Still, the protest’s most crucial contribution may not be a legislative reform but imagination. By recognizing that the state is not doing anything for them, young Mexicans articulated both their frustration and their strategy for going further. This group understands that they cannot wait for the government to rescue them. By exposing the government, starting digital collectives, and recognizing that they are being surveilled, it is more than what the past generations have been able to achieve.
If the Marcha Generacion Z has proved anything, it is that Mexico’s political imagination is shifting to a new modern age. Authority doesn’t only flow exclusively from the presidents, parties, or politicians; it now flows through networks, communities, and platforms. Citizens have now come to realize that a government can only have power if the people legitimize it. Political power has managed to become more immediate, horizontal, and at times more volatile.
In this sense, the protests are not seeking to be a rejection of the entire political system but an expansion of it. By turning the digital into physical, it turns this individual frustration into collective momentum. The young people who marched are not distancing themselves from the political system; they are redefining what modern political participation looks like.
Across Mexico and the world, Gen Z is rejecting the ruling political class and coming to an age of enlightenment, understanding that Democracies are supposed to cater to their citizens, not the other way around. Their message is more than clear: if the government won’t realize its mistakes, the people will call them out.
***
This article was edited by Colin Mitchell and Isabella Valentino.
Anika Bobeck 
Nia Cruz 
Sara Starace