Who is Ryan Matta?

Ryan-Matta-and-the-dissemination-of-false-information

This is not a hit piece but a cautionary tale, and a legitimate question: Who Ryan Matta really is? Lets address some keypoints (Versión en español):

A Little Background
My First Impressions
The X Space and Chat with Ryan
Reactions From The Left and The Flat Earth Theory
Harassed by Ryan Matta
The Dissemination of a False Document by Ryan Matta
The Weird Alignment of Ryan Matta with Anonymous Trolls
So who is Ryan Matta?

A Little Background

My name is Rodrigo Polo. I’m a web developer, coder, and, due to politics and foreign intervention in my country, an independent journalist. I would never ask you to believe me or anyone else; instead, I encourage you to do your own research and fact-check everything.

As a coder, and perhaps because of some OCD, I cannot remain silent when I see blatantly fake news in the media. In 2012, when a news outlet in my country published a list of the most followed Twitter users from Guatemala, I felt compelled to debunk the claim. I did this by coding a bot to download the followers of the most followed accounts, then producing some aggregates. The main idea was to show that most of the followers were inactive, so I published my findings on a domain I bought, TwitterGuate.com. After that, I was invited to many news outlets, presented as an “expert” even though I asked not to be labeled as such. On one occasion, when I was invited to one of the most famous morning shows on one of the most well-known local radio stations, the main topic was an alleged “hacking” of our electoral tribunal by “Anonymous”. I challenged this claim by requesting at least a screenshot of the stolen data; the infamous group couldn’t produce the evidence.

Since that moment, I became the target of harassment and death threats, so I decided to investigate who these anonymous trolls were. I found out that most of them were employed in the Public Health Ministry by then-Minister of Health Lucrecia Hernández Mack, niece of the activist Helen Mack Chang from the Mirna Mack Foundation NGO, which is well-funded by USAID, the European Union, and part of the now-defunct George Soros Foundation in Guatemala.

I exposed this network of trolls, and since then, with my own resources, I have researched and exposed many far-left groups, most of them well-funded by foreign nations through USAID, the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, Endowment for Democracy, etc. The response from these groups has been like a snowball rolling downhill, resulting in a never-ending back-and-forth with them.

Of course, even complying with the community standards of each social network, I was suspended on different occasions, highlighting the blatant censorship of dissenting voices from the official narrative, nevertheless, here are some of my publications in English and a playlists of my videos in English:

My First Impressions

There are many songs I’ve heard before, and I’ve seen many foreign people claim to be concerned about what is happening here in Guatemala only to then see them asking for money to be the mouthpiece of some agenda. This is too common here, which is why I’m quite skeptical of any foreign person claiming to be concerned about our internal affairs. In the case of Ryan Matta, there was no exception.

Let me be clear because I don’t want to come across as xenophobic or internationalist. I believe in a pragmatic nationalism without the glorification of symbols and any other nonsense. Being objective, I don’t see any reasons why a person would be concerned about another’s problems. Even in literature, a character finds motivation in his own problems and struggles, not those of others, let alone people from another country.

Ryan Matta came to notoriety here in Guatemala after being received as a hero by our Attorney General, Consuelo Porras. He presented himself as a documentary filmmaker and journalist, but then he acted as the public relations officer for the Attorney General. Without hesitation, I expressed my concern online, stating: “And that’s where they lose me, when they fall into the cult of personality.”:

To be clear, the common citizen here in Guatemala does not view Attorney General Consuelo Porras favorably. People on the left portray her as the reincarnation of Satan, while those on the “far-right” see her as an angel. However, being objective, we are still waiting for the results of her investigation into the 2023 electoral fraud. I personally gave her the benefit of the doubt, but more than a year and a half after the fraud, I have my doubts.

On the morning of December 12, 2024, I published an audio in my Telegram Channel expressing my concern about the glorification of Ryan Matta and his publications which appear to be a public relations campaign for Consuelo Porras. I appealed to my audience to always fact-check every claim and to check the background of anyone who suddenly appears praising a bureaucrat, because they often hire people or pay the media to paint themselves in a positive light.

Also, Attorney General Consuelo Porras doesn’t have an office open to just anyone; it’s almost impossible to request her participation in an interview. She has clearly stated that she isn’t open to discussing any case with the press, which made it quite disconcerting to see her so open to discussing cases with a foreign actor.

The X Space and Chat with Ryan

On the same December 12 in the afternoon, I participated in an X Space organized by @MazeLove14. Some of my followers asked me to talk about the electoral fraud. I was hesitant about any participation; I even posted about the matter to avoid participating. However, after hearing the fallacy that the election was protected by the blockchain, I decided to join the space. While I was in the Space, I sent Ryan Matta some information about the fraud to his direct messages so he could share it in the Space.

A few hours later, through DMs, Ryan asked me for specific information about Todd Robinson, the former U.S. ambassador to Guatemala. For a moment, I thought he was interested in the topics of fraud and child trafficking, not just in a specific person, but I shared with him what little I had, warning him that there is a lot of misinformation on the subject. I emphasized that every statement must be backed up with objective evidence if one doesn’t want to be labeled as a liar or a “conspiracy theorist”. In fact, in the Space, I told him that I believed in Linus Torvalds’ motto: “Talk is cheap, show me the code.” Because I have nothing to hide, here is the complete recorded X Space (my participation is at 2:05:36), a copy as an embedded audio here, and a link to the complete chat with Ryan Matta.

Reactions From The Left and The Flat Earth Theory

On December 16, 2024, a far-left “podcast” called “TanGente” addressed the visit of Ryan Matta, stating that his claims come from the most fringe part of the extreme right-wing. They exposed that Ryan Matta is a flat-earther who was banned from some flat-earth circles because of his extreme views on the matter. Then they made an outrageous comparison, stating that Ryan Matta was “the US version of Rodrigo Polo”. I do NOT believe that the earth is flat; I consider that anyone who states the earth is flat is, more than ignorant, a lazy person who doesn’t want to verify for themselves that the earth is round. I have produced many videos, posts, and guides to verify the shape of our planet. Even while those comparisons offend me, I avoided making comments so as not to give these left-wing activists the attention they do not deserve.

I expected Ryan Matta to have the maturity to do the same: ignore them, or in the worst-case scenario, respond to them by addressing the issue at hand that he says concerns him, child trafficking. However, Ryan chose to debate based on his crazy flat earth theory, falling into ridicule:

This was something that I could not help but comment on, inviting him to verify his claims and to focus on the issues that are worth it. My comment was a serious mistake; I only got insults and systematic harassment from Ryan:

Harassed by Ryan Matta

Now, I don’t want to embed each and every image of every insult that Ryan Matta has made against me for simply asking him to focus on the subject for which he traveled to Guatemala, instead of discussing something as absurd as the subject of the flat earth. However, here I share a list of the publications and insults he wrote to me, some of them without any provocation or previous exchange, other were serious allegations without any evidence:

The funny thing is that some of the childish insults are in fact, inside jokes that some far-left trolls use to throw at me, exposing a possible connection between Ryan Matta and the trolls from the left. Now, I encourage you to go to Ryan’s X profile and check his publications related to Guatemala, and then tell me he is a formal journalist. I have a point of comparison; Mary Anastasia O’Grady did some reporting about Guatemala and didn’t engage in a troll war against our politicians, nor did she endorse or promote any politician or public figure, far from it.

The Dissemination of a False Document by Ryan Matta

Now, if you read the complete chat I had with Ryan Matta, you already know that I warned him about some fake documents portraying Todd Robinson as a pedophile. I encouraged him to always fact-check any claim because of this on December 13, 2024:

I saw those documents because, on June 22, 2021, Betty Marroquin Silva, a so called “political analyst” from Liga ProPatria, shared those files with me via Telegram, portraying them as newsworthy. I read the documents and found that they had no stamps from any formal state institution, no dates, or signatures, In fact, In fact, the document looked like the scan of an inject printout, something out of a cartoon, with a cartoonish “confidential” stamp, the most worrying and perhaps funny thing is that at the end, the document has signed with “The Clown”.

I told Betty I could NOT produce any content around those documents because they were clearly fake, and I’m not playing games nor am I a clown for a show, she got mad about it telling me that the thing that matters was to just tell a story.

It is important to emphasize that on September 17, 2017, Cuban Bárbara María Hernández Orego, a supposedly right-wing activist, contacted me to share a bank document allegedly exposing deposits to a public official in my country. Bárbara spoke to me via Skype, showing a meeting with an alleged informant. Although I doubted the subject, I considered it was worth showing in one of my videos. Serious mistake; the image of the bank document was taken from Google Images. So, a few hours after publishing the video, I took it down and made a well documented statement apologizing to my audience, guaranteeing them that I would check up to three times before sharing any data. It is because of that experience that I demand that everything always be reviewed.

I can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that these documents were sent by Betty Marroquin Silva to me, to whomever wants at any time:

On February 5 of this year, Ryan Matta was interviewed by Stew Peters, and he used this fake cartoonish document to support his claims against Todd Robinsons, and to be clear, Todd Robinson was the worst, he was one of the key players behind the far-left in Guatemala, but any claim should be supported by factual information and not cartoonish fabricated falsehoods:

Original Stew Peters post – Copy – Shared by Ryan Matta and cropped image of the fake document – Copy

This makes me wonder, Is Ryan Matta a rigorous investigative journalist who corroborates the facts, or just a mouthpiece for anyone who donates to his GiveSendGo campaign? Why did he share the clearly fake document as if it were a legitimate one even when he was warned about it? Why is he so interested in Liga ProPatria’s sworn enemy, Todd Robinson? Does he care about facts or just narratives? You’ll be the judge, because if you want to be a journalist, the first step is to investigate, to go after the facts, and see where the facts lead you. Only then can one draw conclusions. But if you target a particular person to look for anything objectionable, then you are not doing journalism; you become a hitman of misinformation, something that the left does the most.

The Weird Alignment of Ryan Matta with Anonymous Trolls

Here in Guatemala, there was a person who used an account with the pseudonym “YesMaster” to fight the left, defending the right to private property. I learned this person’s name one day after he died, on August 5, 2021. Originally, this account was managed by Mario Roy Roberto Contreras Rosenberg. Currently, it is managed by groups aligned with Liga ProPatria with the aim of misinforming, very different from what the original author did with that account.

The original author of this account was a very polite and well-mannered person. When he needed it, he would write to me via DM asking for some information or help sharing some content, and he always gave credit to the authors of the information, or at least, in my case, he did. The new administrators of the account are rude and arrogant; they no longer defend freedom and sovereignty. They even promoted lockdowns and inoculations in several iterations of the account, which has been suspended repeatedly. The last straw is that this account, and even Ryan Matta’s account, use my content creating posts simultaneously, while at the same time they insult me and accuse me of anything every time I question their narratives. I can provide the original files that Ryan and the troll account plagiarize to anyone who wishes to fact-check this claim, I addressed this in a post on X.

Ryan’s post with my content – Copy, Troll post with my content – Copy

So who is Ryan Matta?

There is a famous phrase that says “by their fruits they will be known.” Well, Ryan claims to be an investigative journalist, but he DOES NOT investigate and does not verify the data and targets specific individuals, that is NOT journalism. He gets involved in flame wars over the shameful flat-earth theory, plagiarizes content and makes false accusations accusing anyone who contradicts him of being a pedophile; the above facts have become clear to me and are documented. However, I invite anyone to review his profile on Facebook and YouTube (as I already did), where he offered his services as a wedding and event photographer to then, create some GoPro reviews. He then dedicated himself to motion graphics tutorials, and after that, to the subject of cryptocurrencies. Until recently, and without any clear motivation, he became interested in child trafficking. In my opinion, he is doing what is called “riding the wave”, and there is no problem with that; everyone decides how they make a living. The problem is wanting to deceive naive people without solving the problems or fulfilling what is offered, which is doing high-quality journalism.

As I always say, do not believe in what I said or anyone claims, do your own research, fact-check everything, do not become the sheep to anyone, be the master of your life, and if you want to fight the false narratives of the left and globalists, do it with verified facts, with truths, not with false narratives and fake documents, that will ultimately just damage any cause.

Frente por la Verdad y los Hechos

Invitando a la ciudadanía a expresarse en línea