In its report number 50, published on April 13, 2026, Ciudadanía Católica y Análisis Social (CAS) launches an urgent and unambiguous warning: the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, as a faithful continuer of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s project, has turned the systematic denial of reality, institutional lying, and narrative manipulation into the main instrument for erecting a totalitarian State in Mexico.
Under the title Denying Reality, Lying, and Creating Narratives, the document begins with a quote from Fratelli tutti (n. 14) and three devastating questions: Are things really going well in Mexico as the government proclaims? In what way does the so-called fourth transformation govern with lies and denial of reality? Is it a good strategy to deny at every step what is really happening? The Observatory’s response is resounding: no. A personalized authoritarianism is being built that legitimizes itself with false promises of social development, democracy, and well-being while reality shows exactly the opposite.
The report details three key reforms that expose the advance toward an omnipotent power. The first inverts the historical meaning of the amparo: it no longer protects the citizen from the State, but the State from the citizens. The tax authority will be able to freeze accounts, cancel digital seals, and seize assets before the taxpayer can defend themselves. The second expands the catalog of crimes subject to mandatory preventive detention—including tax crimes—and limits the presumption of innocence, violating international standards. The third, validated by a Supreme Court dominated by pro-government justices, allows the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) to block bank accounts without a judicial order. “It is by no means an exaggeration to state that such reforms point toward an omnipotent power of the State,” the text concludes.
Parallelly, the presidential discourse has become a machine of denialism. Sheinbaum has been accused of “disappearing the disappeared”: she reduces the nearly 130 thousand registered cases to just over 43 thousand, rejects the UN report, and fragments the tragedy while searching mothers continue to find clandestine graves. The same pattern repeats in infrastructure: derailments of the Tren Maya turned into “track incidents,” fires and explosions in Dos Bocas blamed on “lightning” or “droplets” of chapopote, and accidents in the Tren Interoceánico whose blame is shifted to operators, never to supervision failures or deficient materials.
The economy does not escape the devastating diagnosis. Private investment has accumulated 16 consecutive months downward, formal job creation fell 8.4% in the first quarter of 2026, inflation remains at 4.6% annualized (March 2026), and public debt will reach a historic high of 55% of GDP in 2027. Banxico has lost credibility by lowering rates under fiscal pressure, violating its inflation control mandate. Meanwhile, the official discourse sells “successes” and “future investments”.
The Observatory also denounces the attempt to financially strangle critical civil organizations (IMCO, Mexicanos Primero, Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad) and de facto control over INE and the Electoral Tribunal, although the electoral “Plan B” has failed. “Morena’s strategic objectives are to establish a new populist, authoritarian, and anti-democratic Mexican State,” the report states, which includes the systematic weakening of middle classes and business sectors through reforms that attack rights, freedoms, and patrimony.
The bulletin closes with three urgent lines of citizen action: demand the truth without half-truths or dressed-up lies, defend civil society institutions that denounce abuses and corruption; respect the truth, because “with lies, nothing solid can be built.”
Ciudadanía Católica y Análisis Social offers not only an analysis, but an ethical and civic call in the face of a power that, under the appearance of transformation, builds authoritarianism with denial as the main tool. The question it leaves hanging is unsettling: how far will Mexico go if lying continues to be the main government strategy?
The Observatory’s Report No. 50 can be read here:
Ciudadania Catolica y Analisis Social 50