Silence or Death

Silence or death: such slogan seems to portray the current state of the Mexican journalism. Only in 2010, fourteen reporters were murdered. And according to the Mexican National Commission for the Human Rights, during the last decade sixty-eight journalists were killed in the practice of their job. Other twelve were reported disappeared and eighteen media outlets had been attacked. The danger of working as journalist in Mexico is only comparable to the risks in Pakistan or Honduras.

Gathered for the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, journalists from all nationalities and generations are now discussing about the most pressing issues affecting the practice of journalism worldwide. Of course, one of the topics at the top of the agenda is the negative effects of violence on the freedom of expression and the accurate reporting of reality.

Self-censorship and omnipresent corruption are the two main consequences of the growth of the drug cartels there. If the bloody money doesn’t buy the silence of those in charge to inform the society, the death threat will hang upon the lives. Just a few dare to resist the pressure and decide to take the chances of telling the truth.

However, not only the drugs cartels are the ones responsible for violent actions. Law and order forces, as well as politicians and government functionaries are considered to be somehow involved in the coercion of journalists. Anabel Hernandez’s research proves the point: the drug cartels are not the only source of danger for journalists. Journalists like her, who commit in the investigation of drug trafficking, end up realizing that a bigger threat might come from government functionaries and authorities who support the cartels and accept profits from them. Anabel recently published a book –Los señores del Narco– uncovering the hidden links between the Mexican government and the Sinaloa cartel.

Violence against journalists in Mexico is not a new phenomenon. Lately, it has only escalated. In 2008, the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics –CEPET – reported a total of seventeen cases of aggression supposedly related to the drug cartels. The bullets took the lives of two journalists and three communicators. According the CEPET, Chihuahua was the most violent state, followed by Oaxaca, Veracruz and the capital city, Mexico DF. But the violence targeting journalism in Mexico does not stop in threatening the practitioners. It also reached the media outlets. The main office of El Debate, a local newspaper in the Sinaloa region was damaged because of an attack with hand grenades.

Gennaro Carotenuto, expert on Latin American issues from the University of Macerata, provided useful background information. As he pointed out, the introduction of the maquilas in the US-Mexican border in the 70’s created a social situation in which the cartels could easily develop. Ciudad Juárez, icon of the mayhem, was forgotten by the Mexican State. No one prevented that a growing city would need further schools for the sons and daughters of the young women that were moving there in search of a job and better chances. Today, the teenagers in Juárez must join the cartels not out of will, but because they lack of any better choice. Carotenuto highlighted another historical element. In 1994, when Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was also killing its agriculture system leaving a trace of unemployment in the process. Those farmers who were left without source of income had no other option than becoming cartel soldiers or mules.

Nowadays, in Mexico the power of Money joins the power of violence. However, the most pressing warning that the speakers gave at the meeting of Perugia was that the situation in Mexico matters not only to the Latin American country. Even if Europe sees very distant the trace of chaos and blood that drug cartels leave behind, the truth is that drug traffic is the most globalized industry. Drug cartels have understood like anyone the mechanism and principles of the economic globalization, which can be summed up in “profits at any price”. Therefore, the danger hangs over the whole world.

Jennifer P. Roig