Enrique Peña Nieto/Prole

On December 3, 2011, presidential pre-candidate Enrique Peña Nieto was giving a presentation about his new book: “México, La Gran Esperanza” (Mexico, the Great Hope) in the International Book Fair celebrated in Guadalajara. After his presentation he gave a Q&A session in which he was asked which were the most influential books in his life. The Mexiquenze politician answered among his books were “The Bible, which I haven’t completely read, that one of chieftains by [Enrique] Krauze (”Siglo de Caudillos" Century of Chieftains), one that talks about lies by Krauze as well, and La Silla del Águila (The Eagle’s Chair) by Krauze." The Eagle’s Chair, as it turned out, was not written by Krauze, but by Carlos Fuentes. Peña Nieto also said that he “had read many telenovelas [Soap Operas]”. His mistake was quickly picked up by Mexicans who found it hilarious that a politician who was aiming to be president could not tell three books that influenced his life and getting mixed up on authors and books.

Web following

Following his mistake, Twitter users quickly picked up the story and turned it into a hashtag. #LibreríaPeñaNieto was on the top 5 trending topics on Twitter until Sunday, December 4, when it was deleted by 8:00 PM. Mexican twitters felt outraged about the deletion and accused Twitter of censorship. As a response from the critiques against his father, Peña Nieto’s daughter Paulina Peña Pretelini (@ Pau_95Pena) posted a tweet on her boyfriend José Luis Torre’s (@ JojoTorre) Twitter, that said:

(Greetings to the bunch of assholes that form the prole[tariat] and only complain about those who they envy!)

After this both accounts were closed and quickly reopened after Peña Nieto offered a public apology on the matter. Paulina Peña would later state she did not tweet her message and that it was all made by her father’s oppositors.

“Paulina’s RT was an emitove reaction for my mistake in the FIL [International Book Fair]. It was definitely an excess and I publicly apologize for it.”

“It’s all an invention by my father’s oppositors. I would never say something like that to my dear people.”

A new hashtag was opened on Twitter following the deletion of Librería Peña Nieto: #SoyProle.

Latest Tweets

Image macros

As a response from Peña Nieto’s mistake, several images were re-edited, many posting as ads by Ghandi Libraries.

More mistakes
Peña Nieto tried to laugh at himself with the image macros created to criticize him, but he just pushed his knife deeper in the wound when he was asked how much was the minimum wage in Mexico. When he erroneously said that it was “about 900 monthly pesos”, while it is actually about 1,740 monthly pesos. When he was criticized for not being able to know such basic political things, he replied that he “was not a houswife”.

Furthermore, past appearances of him have resurfaced on the internet, like his inability to speak correctly in English in the World Future forum: