MEXICO:
A Journalist's War Zone
By Sofia Gonzalez
Rocio Galvan got the call nobody wishes to receive on January 23rd, 2022.
By Sofia Gonzalez
Rocio Galvan got the call nobody wishes to receive on January 23rd, 2022.
Her friend and colleague photojournalist, Margarito Martinez, was shot outside his house just as he was leaving for work. Martinez was found dead by his 16 year old daughter after she heard three gunshots.
Six days later, another lifetime acquaintance and journalist friend, Lourdes Maldonado, was shot outside her house when arriving from work. A year prior to her death, Maldonado expressed how she feared for her life to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on live TV.
I'm here to ask for support, help, and labor justice because I fear for my life
“When someone so close to you is killed, you turn around and realize that they were both killed outside their homes,” Galvan said, “A lot of fear does get in you.” Galvan goes home just like many other journalists in Mexico, at pitch black hours of the day when the streets are empty and with a heavy heart that fears for its life. She makes sure she looks both ways before crossing a street but unlike you and me, it’s not for passing cars, it’s for parked ones.
Galvan is one of
44,364
journalists in Mexico who are increasingly facing violence and denied freedom of expression.
Being a journalist in Mexico has never been as dangerous as today. Not even in the drug wars of the early 2000s were there so many blatant killings of journalists, according to Leopoldo Maldonado, the Regional Director of Mexico and Central America for Article 19: an international legal defendant of freedom of expression and violence against journalists.
Former President Felipe Calderon’s administration from 2006 to 2012, was one of the bloodiest terms for journalists, with 48 journalists assassinated. However, President AMLO is four out of six years into his term and 33 journalists have been murdered already.
Mr. Maldonado explains,
If we compare the same period of 40 months of government with respect to Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, the number of murdered journalists has already been exceeded.
AMLO came into office in 2018, and has since made numerous blatant attacks against the media and called out journalists by name. Many journalists whom he’s referenced have thus experienced harassment from online fanatics according to Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, for the Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Maldonado worries that if the President’s behavior remains the same, these incoming two years will shed blood unforgivingly.
In his nine years with Article 19, Maldonado has never seen this magnitude of danger. Their 2021 report says that Mexican journalists experience attacks every 14 hours and shows how being a journalist in Mexico is more complicated due to the pressures they receive from their environment, political figures, and the
98% rate of impunity
for cases of crimes against the press. Mr. Maldonado says, “it’s devastating, because impunity is the main incentive for these attacks to continue being committed.”
Member of the Article 19 Office for Mexico and Central America Consultative Board and General Director for Semanario ZETA in Tijuana, Adela Navarro, was also acquainted with Margarito Martinez and Lourdes Maldonado.
Margarito was my compadre, a good human being, a very good human being, that is, very generous, very kind, very affable, very friendly, very loved by all.
General Director of Seminario ZETA
Navarro explains that journalists in Mexico are caught in an ‘undeclared war’ because there is illegal conflict between organized crime, drug traffickers, and the government, but the country does not have a revolution nor a declaration of war. Mr. Maldonado echoes this idea by adding that journalists, “say that suddenly they’re in the middle of a war and they did not know (existed).”
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) ranked Mexico as the most dangerous country to be a journalist in its 2019 annual analysis. 2022 is on its way to becoming the most dangerous country for the profession for a 4th consecutive year. Their database shows that since 2000, 57 journalists have been killed in confirmed and unconfirmed cases in Mexico.
However, Article 19’s data shows that:
2000
From 2000 - 2020
137 journalists were killed
In 2021
Seven journalists were killed
2022
From JANUARY - MARCH of 2022
Eight journalists have been killed. This is more journalists than those currently working to cover the war in Ukraine.
MEXICO CITY: journalists demanding justice and protection in 2010.
Source: Knight Foundation Flickr
These reports and statistics are only available to the public because private organizations like CPJ and Article 19 are investigating and keeping track of them. Mexican officials are not obligated to report on the details of homicide cases and there is no data recording mechanism. Thus, it is likely that these statistics are underreported because all organizations have different investigative processes.
Obviously there is also a very strong burden, very unfair, it seems to me, towards the organizations. They have to document and validate if the aggression has to do with journalism
Regional Director of Mexico and Central America for Article 19
Another colleague of Margarito Martinez and Lourdes Maldonado is independent journalist Jose Ibarra. The day he heard Martinez was killed, Ibarra not only lost a teammate but also a friend.
Director of Siempre en la Noticia
Most of us who are on the street, on a day-to-day basis, were affected because we would see him two to three times a week (at work)... it did hurt us, it was like a shock for all of us and just as we were just assimilating, they kill Lourdes a week later.
The last time he saw Lourdes Maldonado was at Martinez's funeral, where at one point she took the microphone and said a few words about the violence they were all facing.
May their cases not be in vain. Let it serve as an experience for society, so that they are not repeated in the future and, obviously, to try and continue demanding justice.
Ibarra was also Galvan’s student but now he owns his media company called Siempre En La Noticia, or Always in the News, where he mainly covers local stories. Ibarra decided to be an independent journalist for more economic and creative freedom. Ibarra says, “The two biggest problems with journalism in Mexico have everything to do with security and the economy.” After winning a scholarship in college to attend an international press conference in the United States, he realized his experience was unique. Speaking with other journalists, made him understand that his freedom of expression was not equal because
he wrote with caution and they didn’t.
Ibarra tries to keep a distance from hard investigative news because he doesn’t feel the need to cover those stories if it means his life will be put in risk. He explains that the majority of traditional media companies across the country do not offer any legal or physical protection to their writers because of the lack of funds and if he was going to be an on street reporter, he was planning on staying alive.
MEXICO CITY: journalists demanding justice for the violence caused by drug cartels against the press in 2010.
Source: Knight Foundation Flickr
Ibarra’s choice to not cover certain stories conflicts with the sole purpose of journalism: to uncover the truth. “Our environment makes it more complicated to carry out our profession due to the security implications,” he explains. “At the beginning of my career, I was more of a product of my youth, I got involved in everything and suddenly some turn of events come up and make you change your path and learn how to measure the risks.”
Leopoldo Maldonado adds that Ibarra is not alone in this choice because when a journalist is assaulted, those around them will take it as a hint for themselves. They’ll avoid covering topics related to organized crime and corruption, creating news deserts throughout the country and a lack of transparency. This deprives citizens of vital information and the aftermath is a decaying democracy.
There cannot be a democracy (in Mexico) with this amount of journalists murdered… Democracy is not viable here. It does not exist.
According to Galvan and Ibarra, young reporters are constantly subjected by newsrooms to a cycle of corruption. In his time working for a local traditional media company, Ibarra realized his wage as a street reporter was not enough for the work he did.
According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS), a reporter or photojournalist should receive a minimum wage of $387.09 pesos per day, which would represent a monthly income of $11,773 pesos, or $588.65 dollars.
However, after looking up reporter jobs in Indeed, where company employees can share their salaries, the average monthly income of a journalist today is $10,066 pesos, or $503.3 dollars, per month. The salary also depends on the city, for instance, Mexico City pays its journalists $591 dollars a month on average while those in San Cristobal de las Casas, in the state of Chiapas, are paid an average of $325 dollars per month.
Ibarra explains that newsrooms are constantly hiring recent graduates because they prioritize paying minimum wages over someone with more experience and higher salary. Their jobs include being a cameraman, producer, editor, and writer. They work long hours with no overtime pay and often risk their lives on dangerous assignments. Also, in Ibarra’s experience, the company he worked for had an unspoken rule of exclusivity. They forbade him to work with other companies because they were cautious about their reporters sharing opinions that did not align with their own. As a means of survival, reporters are then tempted to accept “chayote”, or payment, from political figures and government officials.
Once a journalist accepts “chayote” from public figures, they encounter a moral block that makes them choose between being ethical and vulnerable or financially stable and protected. If the reporter decides to maintain ethical practices and contribute transparent media, they will most likely live in poor economic conditions and face violence. “In our documentation, 42% of the attacks are committed by public officials,” adds Mr. Maldonado. When Ibarra started building a family, his wage was no longer sustainable for him and his dependents, so he started his own media company. Being an independent journalist and owning his platform, Siempre En La Noticia, has allowed Ibarra to reach financial freedom. However, the young reporter understands that no matter where he works and what stories he covers, he will always be vulnerable to the violence of his profession.
Being a journalist in Mexico is not for the faint of heart. It requires courage, flexibility, and above all else, passion. A 2018 study by the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, found that journalists covering issues related to drug trafficking and organized crime are highly prone to experiencing post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety.
“I got depressed from a lot of frustration, from a lot of anger,” said Adela Navarro, “In Mexico we do not have access to justice…I'm telling you that they murdered two of my colleagues and attempted against the life of another. And in none of the three cases do we have justice. We do not have justice in the case of Lourdes, we do not have justice in the case of Margarito.”
Rocio Galvan says she still cries everytime she hears about the death of a journalist but does not let fear get in the way of doing what she loves. Galvan says, “The truth is that we risk everything and I speak from Tijuana to any corner of Mexico… I love it because it makes me feel alive. And I love it because it allows me to help a lot of people.”
The Reporters Without Borders 2022 World Press Freedom Index ranked Mexico in 143rd place out of 180 countries. To put into perspective, South Sudan is ranked in 144th place and is currently enduring a civil war that has lasted almost a decade. It is also named the most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International, a global coalition fighting corruption.
In a 2019 national survey of journalists, 85% responded that they felt the federal government did “little” to “nothing” to protect them even with the government’s Mechanism for the Protection of Defenders of Human Rights and Journalists.
“Nobody protects us journalists. We go to work at our own risk,”
says Galvan. Leopoldo Maldonado adds that these programs are not sufficiently effective because the root cause of the problem is in the judicial system and its prosecutors. He says,“There has to be a profound judicial reform... so that we can move forward and build trust with our institutions because there’s no trust with these levels of impunity.”
Until then, Mexican journalists will continue working in a hostile environment to serve their community. The cases of Margarito Martinez and Lourdes Maldonado are just a sneak peak into the battle reporters face.
Ibarra concluded by saying, “If one day it’s my turn, well, I died happy. I died doing what I wanted and yes, I am aware that something could happen, but well…. I'm not going to stop doing it because of that. So, if it happens to me one day then it was my turn. But then life has that part too, it also has death right?”
conclusion
