The journalists mexican now receiving the award to Reporters of the World for their excellent work in the midst of impunity, violence and neglect
Thomas Friedman: “You have to explain to the editors that the clicks are not everything”
Time of liberticidas, time-of-resistance
Mexico has become, according to calculations by the organization Reporters Without Borders, in the world’s most dangerous country to practice journalism. Ahead of Syria and Afghanistan, the mexican reality looms with a data spine-chilling: 12 journalists killed in 2017. The awards today, delivering THE WORLD to reward the courage of independent journalism in mexico on the figure of two of its leading exponents: Lydia Cacho and Anabel Hernandez. Two journalists with a capital which, throughout his long professional career, have faced threats, pressures and attempts at censorship to tell the terrible truths that, in Mexico, since few people dare to investigate.
The two journalists awarded are part of a generation that has witnessed historic changes in Mexico: from the hegemonic PRI until the Fourth Transformation of the country that predicts the new president López Obrador. Although the delicate situation faced by journalists has changed little in these years, as he confesses Anabel Hernández: “In the past 12 years of massacres in Mexico, we can highlight aspects that are very negative and some positive. On the one hand, journalists have improved their practices, their codes of ethics and their ability to report. If this has been possible is because of the terrible dynamic which we live has forced us to leave our comfort and our habits of self-censorship. Now we have journalists more prepared and committed. On the other hand, the violence and the impunity speak for themselves.”
according to the organization Article 19, the 99% of crimes committed against journalists go unpunished in Mexico. Only during the last six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto, this organization documented more than 2,000 assaults against communicators, and half of those came from officials or former public officials. “The situation is terrible and what is worse is that the media we have left, no measures have been taken serious enough to protect its staff. Those who kill and intimidate they know that they can do this because we are alone,” confesses Hernandez.
99% of the crimes against journalists in Mexico go unpunished
Both Lydia Cacho, as Anabel Hernández know first-hand this sad reality. In the Hernandez case, this situation is aggravated especially in the wake of the publication of her book Los señores del narco, where bare the relations between the Sinaloa cartel and local and federal authorities. A careful and dangerous research whose theses are being confirmed these days by the witnesses involved, in New York, in the trial against el Chapo Guzman. “These last few years I have faced a very difficult situation. There have been armed attacks against my family, against my home, animals decapitated at the door of my house, the murder of several sources of information… I Wrote that book when these gentlemen were at the height of power, but it comforts me to know that what it cost me to persecutions, and nearly the life it is today confirmed that judgement. Several Prosecution witnesses have already insured that was paid millions of pesos to the ex-presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón”.
threats and his tireless work have led to the two journalists, today award-winning by THE WORLD, they have been forced to escape their country. In the case of Lydia Cacho, the threats began to knock at the door after publishing his novel, The demons of Eden, in which he draws a map of the mob of paedophilia mexican who acts in collusion with senior politicians and businessmen in the country. His complaint, with names and surnames, made history by achieving the first sentence in the firm for sexual trafficking of minors and child pornography in Latin America. Although the personal price that had to pay for revealing this truth is too large: since then he is living with a permanent escort.
The attempt to silence your voice was so great that, in the year 2005, its safety device was mocked by elements of the police of Puebla, who were acting on the orders of the then governor of the State, Mario Plutarco Marín, pointed out in his book as a part of this exploitation of minors. Cacho was kidnapped and tortured for more than 20 hours and just a few days, after 13 years of what happened, the Attorney General of the Republic has been sentenced to prison to one of his tormentors. In all this time She has not ceased to continue investigating and denouncing, from a distance, the injustices endured his country.
Hernandez is also perfectly aware of the high personal cost that is to search for these truths in Mexico, although it has not ceased to chase them down and criticize them. “It has been a personal cost, very sad, for many years I suffered in silence, I lived a long season autoaislada of the world because I didn’t want to become a danger to my family and friends. So I just walked away from them but that’s not why I stopped to investigate. Those threats I never silenced”.
In 2005, Lydia Cacho was kidnapped and tortured for more than 20 hours
one of the complaints typical of the communicators in Mexico has to do with the ineffective use of the Mechanism of Protection of Journalists, created to protect the press and human rights defenders from attacks. The past month of October, the ministry of Finance confirmed that it did not have the resources promised to comply with the plan and that, therefore, 727 people would be left without protection measures. The new Government of López Obrador has pledged to release those funds in the coming months, although Hernandez does not believe that this measure will change the landscape: “The great majority of cases of threats against journalists from public officials. Then, what good is the amount of money or laws that will be generated if directly is the State that wants to kill us and silence us? For me, the only solution to this problem is that the culprits are jailed.”
The margin release those funds, among the first of their measures, López Obrador has taken a far, and much, Anabel Hernández: the creation of a Truth Commission to re-investigate the case of the 43 students of Iguala. Peña Nieto wanted to close one of the cases that more have been harmed during their tenure with the so-called historical truth, which claims that elements of the police crazyl handed over to members of organized crime to the 43 students. The UN and independent human rights organizations have detected a number of irregularities in this thesis, they also deny the families of the missing.
All of these irregularities were already reported by Anabel Hernández, in 2016, in his book The true night of Iguala: the story that the Government wanted to hide. “I began this research thanks to a grant from the University of Berkley, and, again, we demonstrate that independent journalism is being advanced to the justice. Everything I wrote then is being corroborated now by the UN and I hope that soon by the new Commission of the Truth, are not only theories, it is a legal reality. The problem is that, if detained and tortured were not responsible, who are?”.
Among the many statements and promises that Lopez Obrador offered during his inauguration there was one that worried many: not pursue the crimes of the past, pursue that are to come. Hernandez also shares this concern: “As a journalist I am obligated to be critical and cautious. The good intentions of the new Government I am concerned about his double discourse: on the one hand, promise justice to the family and, on the other, that there will be no persecution of crimes of the past. The manager of the Truth Commission, Alejandro Encinas, confirmed to me in an interview that they will investigate the Military and that is not going to stop until we find the culprits. I trust him, his political career will endorse and we will see if you have enough strength to give justice to the families despite the double talk of your boss”.
In the midst of this environment of impunity, violence and abandonment, Hernandez, and She is elevated as an example of that journalism-courageous, who also practiced communicators Julio Fuentes, who was killed in Afghanistan, and Julio A. Parrado, a victim of the Iraq war, which inspired the award to Reporters of the World receive today. For Hernandez, the more immediate solution to the delicate situation of the press in Mexico is “seeking partnerships on the outside. Before the abandonment of the Government and the media, we must seek support from foreign Governments and independent organizations. Therefore, this recognition that THE WORLD is very important, not so much by the people that rewards, but because it is a clear message to the mexican journalists: we are not alone”.
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