When the international press covers the ongoing gasoline protests in Mexico, it focuses on predictable elements: looting, vandalism, mass arrests. In January, CNN wrote: “Authorities arrested more than 250 people for robbery and acts of vandalism around the country this week, officials said. Some protests have been peaceful.”

A reader of the French press would get the same picture. On January 7, Le Monde wrote that “protests against rising fuel prices erupted in scenes of chaos all across Mexico.”

The media presents looting and robbery as the primary means of protest, the recent 20 percent hike in fuel prices as its direct cause, and the country’s economic slowdown and monetary devaluation as the general background. Indeed, the recent weeks of intense protests have led to over 2,300 arrests and at least seven civilian deaths. But the news reports that emphasize these facts both criminalize and misrepresent this mass action that opposes not only neoliberal austerity, but also the ruling party’s violent drug war and assaults on democracy.