Have you ever felt discriminated against because of your skin colour? It’s the question that Mexican anti-racism collective Poder Prieto posed on social media platforms including TikTok and X in 2021 in an effort to ignite a movement for change. Trending hashtags such as #DondeHayPrieturaHaySabrosura, #EsoPrietas and #PrietaPoderosa soon emerged.

“One of the biggest problems with racism in Mexico is that it’s made invisible,” says actor Quetzalli Cortés, one of Poder Prieto’s founding members. “Most people in the country still believe it doesn’t exist.” By opening up the debate on social media, creating content and engaging with users, Poder Prieto is putting racism at the top of the agenda.

We spoke to Cortés, as well as Vania Sisaí and Alberto Juárez (who are also actors and founding members of Poder Prieto), about taking on discrimination and racism in the entertainment industry and spreading their message of inclusion and representation.

It was during the first lockdowns of 2020 that a group of actors began to gather via video calls to discuss their experiences of stereotyping, stigma and racism.

“We realised it’s not normal,” Juárez says. “We all asked ourselves the same questions, but didn’t dare to take the discussions beyond private tables.”

They established ties with the organisation RacismoMX, and the power of their conversations began to transcend the original circle of actors. “As we began to organise, people from other backgrounds quickly united,” Cortés says.

Poder Prieto’s powerful manifesto (El Manifiesto de #PoderPrieto) is available to stream on YouTube and features many of its members in educational videos, conversations and interviews. Covering everything from civil rights to challenging widespread beliefs about national identity, theirs is an ambitious project to challenge the status quo in all walks of life.

The members of Poder Prieto are reaching a massive audience through their X and TikTok pages (find them @poderprieto_mx); their posts are thought-provoking and engagement with their cause accelerates when they pose questions about race and discrimination.

They received lots of reactions to their question about whether people have felt discriminated against because of their skin colour. Sisaí took this opportunity to share her own story; it happened at school when she was about 5 or 6 years old. Her teacher was a bit rude and didn’t let her participate much, while the fair-skinned girls were treated more favourably.

Milestones and achievements from members of the community are celebrated with #Prietxschingonxs – check out their TikTok video about Josué Maychi, a young Mayan actor who appears in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Their posts also amplify the creativity of artists whose work centres on the themes closest to Poder Prieto’s heart. Keep an eye out for illustrator @xururuka who creates images of proud and empowered women of colour.

As Sisaí points out, access and representation is a particularly complex problem for women: “The majority of new stories that are being told are about men.” Poder Prieto has been a vocal supporter of the movement to tackle male violence against women in Mexico and been active around key moments – for this year’s International Women’s Day, they asked their female audience to share answers to the question, “What were you told?” – the large number of responses featured many of the misconceptions about gender that are directed at girls while growing up.

Poder Prieto’s focus extends far beyond the entertainment industry – their content aims to fight racism across all aspects of Mexican life and they’re driven by a desire for a better and more just society for future generations. The road ahead is long; the three actors agree the achievements, though important, are small steps in the right direction.

Juárez leaves us with one big question: “How do we create a more even floor, where we all have the same rights?”. Follow Poder Prieto’s ever-evolving mission via one or all of their social channels to see how they attempt to answer that.