Note: Here is Marcela's full speech from the IRE conference. Thanks to the Global Investigative journalism network for the transcript.
Good afternoon everyone.
I am honored to address IRE on a topic of importance to us
all, especially considering that this is an organization that has long
stood up for investigative reporting on the border, most memorably after
Don Bolles, an IRE co-founder, was killed by organized crime figures in
Arizona.
As you know, in 2006 president Felipe Calderón launched the
‘war on drugs’ in part with funding from the United States. Our country
became a battlefield. He put soldiers and federal police on the
streets, supposedly to fight drug cartels, giving rise to an irregular
war, which has caused at least 70,000 victims of homicide, and more than
twenty thousand disappeared people. These are unresolved crimes, of
which we still have not fully grasped the nature.
.
Journalists in many regions of the country have become
trapped in the middle of the conflicts. And, due to the lack of
investigation into the murders by the authorities, it is still difficult
to understand who is truly behind the crimes.
We Mexican journalists have become war reporters in our own
country. In my case, for example, I began as a reporter who covered
poverty, who from one day to the next was suddenly covering massacres of
young people, documenting ghost towns abandoned after a series of
murders, or social programs for children orphaned by the violence. One
day I had in front of me a row of 30 women with photos of their missing
children who wanted to tell me their stories.
I have dedicated much of my own work as an investigative
reporter at Proceso to ferreting out the truth behind some of these
episodes and documenting the victims of the war.
We Mexican journalists were not prepared for the violence.
Suddenly, there we were, being pushed-around, in the chaos, in the
middle of a war which was not about drug trafficking, as they told us,
but for control of territory. A war to see who would hold onto the land
where narcotics are grown, the trafficking routes, and the points of
sale of drugs in the country. To see who would control the business, who
would tax the sellers, who would appoint the mayor, the next chief of
police and the director of prisons.
And in a situation like this, it is clearly central to have
control of the press, so that no one asks questions. To guarantee
control of the population.
I and other reporters founded an organization called
Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on Foot) to train journalists who
cover poverty issues. However, we had to change focus quickly to respond
to the crisis. We held workshops on how to survive an assignment, how
to understand the drug trafficker, how to interview a child who had
survived a massacre, how to continue reporting without losing the joy of
living.
Before we realized it, we were a crisis center. At any hour
of the day, including tense deadline moments, we have received calls
from colleagues in remote zones, desperately seeking help because they
know the hitmen are coming for them and they need refuge. Or requests
for psychological support for reporters who don’t want to go back out to
work after a traumatic event, like a fire or attack on their office.
In this war for territory, the journalists have become
victims. Because, unlike in traditional wars, in Mexico journalists
don’t die in the crossfire, from a stray bullet, from walking in a
minefield. In Mexico, the killers hunt down journalists, dragging them
out of their offices and their houses, intercepting them in the street.
In Mexico the reporters who are supposed to file the news became themselves the news.
In the past 10 years, at least 17 journalists have disappeared and 72 have been killed. None of them have been solved.
One of them is Regina Martínez, the valiant reporter who exposed political corruption and
Cimacnoticias in Flickr (CC License)
You don't kill the truth by killing a journalist.
organized crime in the state of Veracruz. She worked for
Proceso magazine, as do I. A year ago she was strangled in her house.
The local government, which may be implicated in the murder, decided
without credible evidence that her murder was the result of a robbery,
and they locked up a young man. He claims he was tortured into admitting
the crime.
As in the other murders of journalists, the judicial
authorities did not consider her journalistic work as a possible cause
of the murder. As in other murders, they blamed the journalist for her
own death, and tried to call her integrity into question.
Days after her murder, two more journalists were killed with another who had recently left the profession out of fear.
These killings had the desired effect. They silenced the rest.
At least 17 journalists fled the state, some of them paid
by the state government to leave and come back after the elections. Some
left the profession in an attempt to save their lives. Others of them
are cutting grass or selling tacos in the US, or rely on solidarity to
sustain themselves, whilst they wait for their asylum case to be heard.
Others work as street vendors or as whatever they can, in Mexico City,
trying to rebuild their lives. Terrified, penniless, broken.
The situation is different in various regions of Mexico.
In some areas, drug traffickers leave videos or messages,
and they call up the journalists to report on them.
In other zones, the
warnings always come accompanied by violence, and journalists who
publish information that annoys a certain group are abducted and
tortured, and their skin marked, to show that they won’t get a second
chance. In some areas, journalists are forced to attend press
conferences with the local cartel chief, who dictates the editorial
line: telling them what information to cover and what to ignore.
Generally, they give them instructions to follow, they watch them, and
they pay them a salary. The newsrooms are infiltrated, too.
Whoever
refuses has to change jobs or start a new life somewhere else.
In places like Mexico City, they are visited by the so
called ‘narco-lawyers’, who tell them which information irritated their
clients.
In this turf war, the media is a target: they receive
intimidating phone calls, bombs are hurled, they are fired upon with
heavy arms. There have been cases in which employees (not always
journalists) have been taken as hostages to force the publication of
something favoring a certain group. Some newsrooms have been burnt down
as reporters are inside, writing.
Some states have become zones of silence, and the silence
has extended. We are losing contact with regions that are now forbidden
territory for everyone, in which we no longer know something as basic as
how many people are killed every day. Only from time to time, when a
massacre occurs (which is so spectacular that it can’t be covered up –
such as that of 72 migrants -) or an entire village flees their homes:
only then can we get a sense of what is happening, only then can we get
an idea of what is being hidden.
One of the most dangerous states for journalists is only
two hundred and sixty five kilometers from here, less than three hours
on the highway, on the other side of the border, where silence has been
imposed.
In states like the Tamaulipas, many blood-chilling episodes
take place, which could have been written about by any war reporter.
For months, passengers in public buses have been made to get off and in
that very place recruited by force, taken as slaves or killed and
buried. Only suitcases arrive at bus terminals. Nobody said anything
until graves were found containing almost two hundred bodies.
In places like this, and in various parts of the
borderland, people ‘disappear’, along with their car or truck. Some were
Mexicans on their way to McAllen or Laredo to go shopping or to visit.
Some were Americans visiting relatives in Mexico.
I remember when I went to Matamoros, across the border from
Brownsville, to cover the discovery of this mass grave. It was said
that there were thousands of bodies, but they didn’t finish excavating
it. Hundreds of anguished families arrived there from all over the
country, all looking for a child who had disappeared.
A woman who was waiting to see if one of the bodies was
that of her son found out I was a journalist. She began to hold forth
furiously.
“Why are you, reporters, coming here now,” she said, “for
months we have been saying that people were disappearing on this
highway, but nobody paid any attention. It felt like we were talking
from the bottom of the sea.”
Her phrase, talking from the bottom of the sea, sums up
perfectly the situation that this lost zone is living there, where The
Dallas Morning News reported that 8 journalists had disappeared,
something that we Mexicans didn’t know. And where have been discovered
training camps for the ‘sicarios’, the hitmen, some of them teenagers
from Laredo, Texas, who dropt out of high school to become assassins on
the Mexican side of the border.
In this area full of hidden graves, sown with corpses,
citizens are murdered every day. Even the border crossing is controlled
by drug traffickers, who abduct those who don’t pay and decide who goes
through and who dies.
Many journalists tried to speak out about it until they
were silenced. As far as they can, they are still trying. Some live with
a pistol to their head. Others leave running, with only their keys in
their pocket, to start again. Until the night covers them.
How much they can do depends on where they live.
In desperation, citizens have tried to assume the role of
the journalists. I remember that video filmed by a normal citizen who
went out into the street to record on her cell phone the destruction of
the battle of the night before, of the shootouts that the authorities
claim don’t happen. They use social networks or set up blogs, such as
‘Valor por Tamaulipas’, where they post citizens’ reports of armed
encounters which the media are prohibited from covering. These websites
don’t last long. The drug cartels put a price on the heads of their
administrators.
The government is also interested in shutting down these
sources of information, because they contradict the official government
position that everything is well.
I know a journalist who went to Tamaulipas to report on the
situation. In the main square, in front of the government building, he
was surrounded by a convoy of vans which bore the logo of the local
cartel on their number plates. The reporter and the cameraman were
abducted and tortured, and warned to stop asking questions.
In this area, the earth swallowed a young freelance visitor
from San Antonio, who left his hotel to take photographs and never came
back.
And a Mexican reporter who anonymously ran a blog for
citizens, telling them where there were shoot-outs and publishing their
complaints, was decapitated, and her body found with a note threatening
anyone who uses social networks. How can we say that journalism is
possible in a place like this?
The violence has even reached Mexico City. An example is
the magazine where I work, which was founded four decades ago and is
still considered a leader in investigative journalism today. Proceso is
one of the media which has suffered the most aggressions. Not only did
they murder Regina Martínez. Four journalists have been forced to move,
some outside the country, others from one city to another. In this year,
four have been threatened, and some of them have asked for assistance
through a recently created governmental mechanism for journalists’
protection. Let’s see if it Works.
Proceso is not the worst case. Others exist.
At the beginning of the last decade, the organization for
training journalists that emerged thanks to the support of the IRE, was
forced to attend to the crises of that period. In these recent years,
involuntarily perhaps, our organization has focused too on attending
these crises.
From being active journalists, without quite knowing how,
we became defenders of human rights. We have organized marches to demand
an end to impunity and justice for our colleagues, as well as auctions
and collections to support journalists who have had to flee their homes.
We support other local journalists, helping them become stronger,
organize themselves and develop their own techniques to deal with
emergencies.
We do not agree that the only way for the government and
some international organizations to deal with these crises is by
removing journalists from their home territory. Because in this way the
silencers win the game.
The battle we have at hand is not only for freedom of expression. It is for peoples’ right to be informed.
In a panorama like this, investigative reporting has
faltered. Journalists are no longer the watchdogs of democracy, as we
used to define ourselves.
In many areas, the watchdog is chained, muzzled, it does
not have permission to bark. It is an abused animal who has learned not
to bark when an enemy approaches. It is a dog domesticated by governors
who bought its silence. It is a dog forced to turn a blind eye to
violations of the law.
However, even in some of the worst places there are a few
fierce and isolated watchdogs still fighting to defend the owners of the
house they protect, still resisting the leash. There are individual
efforts, true heroes, who risk their lives with every article they
write.
Not every part of Mexico has come to this extreme point
but the silence is spreading. Not only through violence but through more
sophisticated methods, such as the threats of imprisonment. Or using
enormous government advertising budget lines to fill media with
propaganda or pay for publicity or they remove it, as reward or
punishment. Or buy off media owners and managers.
Mexico’s newly-elected president has insisted to “speak
well” of Mexico. At the moment, politicians and organized crime share
the same objective: ‘que no se caliente la plaza’, to keep from heating
up the areas they control.
The killings and disappearances of journalists are not
random. The targets are often the leading investigative reporters – or
top watchdog reporters who appear to have been carefully selected to
send a powerful message and silence a region rather than an individual.
Ramón Angeles Zalpa is an example: he exposed the
extraction of natural resources, of mines and forests, by organized
crime in Michoacán. He was never seen again.
María Esther Aguilar Casimbe published about the capture of
a trafficker mayor, a police torturer and the seizing of a shipment.
Any one of these three stories could be the cause of her disappearance.
Alfredo Jiménez Mota started the list. A brave, experienced
young journalist who was investigating a local capo, Mota went out to
take an interview and wasn’t seen again.
Although we have new laws which allow us to access public
information, investigative journalism is becoming more and more
difficult. Even daily journalism is under threat. There are questions
that now nobody asks.
In 1976 IRE made a great effort to shed light on the murder
of its co-founder Don Bolles by traffickers. You were not able to live
with this murder, you made great investigative efforts because he was
one of your own.
On the other side of the border they are killing
journalists like flies. Some of them are young people who dreamed of
being investigative journalists. Others were skilled reporters who died
investigating stories. Armando Rodriguez, “El Choco” was a member of the
IRE Mexico Project and had spoken at its conferences.
He was the reporter who counts the daily killings in El
Diario de Juárez. He was killed when he was taking his daughter to
school.
These are your colleagues, our colleagues, members of our
family of investigative reporters. I want to ask you that you do not
ignore us. This problem, and these techniques I mentioned, do not stop
at the border.
I recognize that great efforts have been made by some
American journalists. Many top us newspapers covered the violence in
Juarez , in fact almost all the newspapers of the world eventually sent
someone there. There are subjects that came to light thanks to the work
of US investigative reporters or correspondents, such as Operation Fast
and Furious, which makes us so indignant.
Or the publication of the databases with up to 25,000 names of people who disappeared under the last government.
But as time passes, all this death, all these massacres,
all these mass graves, all these bodies, all these missing people, stop
being so newsworthy.
As Lise Olsen wrote in a book: on the US side, “reporters
who are informed and experienced in Mexico and the border have been
dropped in all border states, largely for economic reasons, but the
violence has had an impact too.
“Every major newspaper in the region has eliminated bureaus
and cut coverage. In California, the largest border region newspaper,
the San Diego Union, had a five-person border team in the late 1990s.
Only one person remained to cover Tijuana in 2012. The Los Angeles Times
has a single border reporter, though he works with a team of two in
Mexico City. The Arizona Republic has lost border staff too. In Texas,
the Dallas Morning News formerly deployed five people to Mexico City–one
remains. The Houston Chronicle and the Express-News (…) located only
150 to 300 miles from Mexico by car, once had three border reporters and
two in Mexico City. Only one of those jobs remained in 2013.
“Many large and small US newspapers no longer allow
reporters to cross the border to cover any story.
Both national US and
Mexico City-based media companies have reduced binational coverage”.
Many times, reporters as you, ask us: how can we help you?
We could say: raising funds, offering asylum, raising
awareness. But what we ask from IRE members is that you do your work
here. That you investigate trafficking networks in your own country.
That you share this problem, which is mutual.
It isn’t only gun trafficking that adds to the death toll
in our country. It’s corrupt us government officials, US drug dealers
and gangs, and US dirty businessmen and money launderers.
Because some cartel leaders and hitmen are us citizens. Many others live and own property here.
We do not ask for anything that is not in your best interest.
But as your friends, we need you to see that you need to
face this problem as your own. Asking yourself, who is my neighbour. Who
controls neighbouring states. Because we share three thousand
kilometers of border. Because, as you have reported, Mexican cartels are
present in more than 200 cities, and keep growing.
Also push for your newspapers to cover stories about how
Mexican policy cost lives or forced journalists or others into exile.
Many of those who were forced to flee are here – right here in Texas –
and are included in the growing list of those who have asked for asylum.
I would have liked to have come here to talk to you about a
different panorama. To tell you how fruitful were the courses and
conferences that IRE’S Mexico Project organized in Mexico City in the
nineties, and in the two binational meetings in Tijuana and Ciudad
Juárez. Or how long lasting have been the relationships that were made
between many journalists back then.
But what’s left after they shoot up your office three
times, as happened to El Siglo de Torreón, even though it had federal
protection? Or if, as happened to El Mañana, they kill two editors and
throw a grenade which wounds many people? Or to El Diario de Juárez that
after two of its reporters were murdered wrote an editorial asking drug
lords who control the city what their ground rules were, thereby
revealing to the world that the Mexican national government had no
control over the largest city on the us border?
The battle to control information is underway at this very moment.
But everything is not lost. Valiant efforts are being made.
El Diario de Juárez, as example, using databases and processing
information it was able to map the violence and related how the
government aligned itself with a cartel group. And the magazine Zeta de
Tijuana every month tells us the correct figures for the killings,
because otherwise no one would have access to that state’s data.
There have been efforts of collaboration among editors who
agree to publish the same article when they put pressure on someone from
the group. Or collaborations between reporters and foreign
correspondents, so that news prohibited in Mexico can be divulged
elsewhere.
Other journalists have created news blogs to inform the
people of what is happening, and they maintain them for the time they
are able to keep their identity secret. In one case, a Mexican media
opened a blog in Texas, in order to avoid detection. Until they were
discovered. Journalists have also created our own networks, such as our
organization.
I know various journalists who are secretly writing a book,
hoping that conditions change and they can publish it. These are
efforts which go against the current.
These isolated and, for their own safety, anonymous heroes,
are among various enemies: companies which don’t protect their own
people, the corrupted government and organized crime.
I have a story embedded in my mind. I repeat it a lot – perhaps you have already heard it. But I can’t avoid retelling it here.
A reporter told me how one night someone called to tell him
that a commando squad had taken his colleague. He got up from the bed,
got dressed, said goodbye to his wife, kissed his children, and sat down
in the living room; waiting to be taken away. It was the longest night
of his life.
“Why didn’t you run?” I asked, surprised.
“Where could I run?” he said. “My only wish was to stop
them entering my house and taking me in front of my family. I didn’t
want my family to remember me with that image.”
He survived, but his friend was found the next day, his
body discarded in the street, as if he were trash. In the city where
they live, the policemen are the narcos.
There’s another one I can’t forget. A colleague went to see
what help she could give to some reporters in Veracruz. She asked one
of them how we could help. He said: bring me a pistol. She was
stupefied. A pistol? Yes, he said, it isn’t to kill them, it’s to kill
myself if they come for me. Because now they don’t just kill you – they
torture you as well.
Whenever I recall these stories I think of how many
journalists would be feeling that same solitude. Not knowing whom to ask
for help. Too many are resigned to the fact that death is their
destiny.
So the question of what we can do acquires a different
resonance. You can do many things. But I believe that we must do
journalism, because that is what we are, journalists. We must expose the
business, the drugs and arms trafficking networks, the corrupt
authorities, we must follow up on judgments to piece together the puzzle
of who are their partners and where the disappeared people end up. We
must follow the narco-money on both sides of the border.
Again, this isn’t just about helping us, it’s about helping yourselves as well.
In an IRE workshop, I learned that reporters from Laredo or
McAllen, Texas, have also been threatened not to cross the border.
Correspondent Alfredo Corchado was threatened in a bar in Texas.
What you can do? A friend in Sinaloa, in the investigative
magazine Riodoce, perhaps said it the best way:
Don’t abandon us. I say
the same to you.
As the great Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski once said: In the struggle against silence, human life is at stake.
Thank you.
Marcela Turati is an investigative reporter for the Mexican magazine Proceso.
In 2007 she co-founded Periodistas de a Pie, a journalism network
created to support reporters covering issues such as poverty, civic
participation, and human rights. Later, its main mission shifted to
support journalists covering the war on drugs conflict and to defend
freedom of speech. In 2010, Turati published the book Fuego Cruzado: Las Víctimas Atrapadas en la Guerra del Narco (Crossfire: Victims Trapped in the Narco-War), about the impact of drug violence on Mexican society.
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