MXPE Weekly Essentials

Mexico’s war with YouTube’s biggest influencer, museums, telecoms fight, and other highlights in Mexican politics, policy, and markets from the past week.

In February, president Claudia Sheinbaum was named Mexico’s number one streamer. Her team has gone to great lengths to repeat the success of her predecessor’s morning pressers which millions of Mexicans tune in to watch every day.

That would lead one to assume that the Mexican government understands the complex dynamics behind digital influencing and online culture. A debacle over the weekend leads to the opposite conclusion.

In what was supposed to be a million-dollar advert produced for free, US influencer MrBeast published a YouTube series about his trip to the Mayan ruins of southeastern Mexico. It was the perfect win: The influencer was just given the necessary permits to film in and around the archaeological sites, and in return tens of millions of viewers would be exposed to the wonders of Mexican cultural tourism.