Cristian Carlos.
Yesterday, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has a leftist past and has preserved the concept of republican austerity, announced that he had been in contact with the president-elect of Honduras, Xiomara Castro. "It is a pleasure to be able to work in coordination with a persevering woman and defender of just causes. Congratulations to her people," he wrote on his Twitter account.
Up to that point, the Mexican president's tweet would have been free of speculation; however, he attached a photograph from the National Palace - the official residence of the current president - with a state-of-the-art iPhone on a base made of wood and without a protector of any kind.
The iPhone in question, it's not just any iPhone. Apple supports its phones with the latest iOS 15.2 operating system since the iPhone 6s which was released in 2015, and it performs all the communication functions that any conventional phone.
In the photo, you can see an iPhone 13 Pro Max in gold color. That iPhone has a starting price in Mexico of $28 thousand pesos, about 1 thousand 320 dollars at the exchange rate of December 15. That's if it is presumed that the iPhone chosen has been the lowest capacity; however, Apple offers the same iPhone in a maximum configuration of 1TB storage, in which case the price would rise to $42 thousand pesos or about 2 thousand dollars.
Immediately upon the tweet's publication, the Internet population questioned the contradiction of the Obradorist discourse of "first the poor" that leads the entire federal government.
In addition, citizens on Twitter pointed out that the National Palace, where Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador resides, has fixed telephony and Internet, so, they say, "sure you can communicate without problems" to any destination without using additional technology.
The controversy thickens as the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has shown his rejection of the current of neoliberal consumerism and has created the category "fifi" to denigrate the luxuries. Some users even recalled what the Mexican president himself has said about similar situations: "We have to detach ourselves from luxurious and material things".
The iPhone is the most secure communication technology device and the most pursued in the espionage scene. Recently, it was revealed that US diplomats were spied on by the US government via the Pegasus malware. Despite this, the phone has industry-leading encryption which would make it suitable for presidential use.
The phrase "there can't be a rich government with poor people" that the Mexican president has repeated several times during his administration was reproduced by people who joined the conversation on Twitter and blamed his administration for the lack of medicines -specifically, treatments for children's cancer patients-, resources to address the growing escalation of homicides against vulnerable populations, the absence of computer equipment in public schools in the country and the upsurge in violence caused by organized crime with a presence throughout the country.
