Since 1984 there had not been a attempt of such a high impact in Mexico City against a journalist like the one who suffered Thursday night Ciro Gomez Leyva, who unlike Manuel Buendía, he survived it. there is still one today public controversy about who ordered to assassinate Good day, and so it will happen in the Gomez Leyva case regardless of the outcome of the investigations carried out by the authorities of the capital. We are seeing it. Since Friday a social media campaign in accounts related to Morena where they claimed it had been a self-attack.
Such nonsense is not new. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador subtly, and its main propagandists clearly and repeatedly, have pointed out on other occasions, when violence embraces the country more strongly, that it is the result of a concerted action between the “conservatives” and drug cartels to harm him. In the specific case of attack on Gómez Leyva, the Hopscotch, a small editorial space that publishes daily La Jornada, asked on Friday: “And who benefits from an attack against the journalist?”
In the day several of López Obrador’s top political advisers work, who together with the propaganda team in the National Palace, have indicated that a “soft hit” against the president, promoted by businessmen and former presidents, with the support of the media, to derail the Lopez Obrador project. The question in the Hopscotch and the campaigns in networks, seek the same purpose: to divert attention from the responsibility of the federal government in the attack.
The responsibility of the federal government in the attack on Gómez Leyva does not in any way mean that it thinks that the order to attack the journalist came from the National Palace. That would be absurd because the one who does not benefit at all from what happened on Thursday night is the president. López Obrador implicitly recognized this in his morning conference on Friday, when he pointed out that “damage to a personality like Ciro generates a lot of political instability.” But at the same time, if not guilty, the president has a responsibility for what is happening.
In the column on February 6 of this year, it was published in this space: “That the president has decided that his enemies are journalists will not solve his problems, but may make them worse. Fighting, insulting them and disqualifying them creates high-risk conditions for the integrity of journalists and, at the same time, makes them vulnerable.
Perhaps Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not realized that the forest is on fire, but for purposes of argument it would be worth asking what would happen if one of those journalists he attacks… were assassinated? He would not be guilty of the crime, but he would be responsible. The political cost would fall mainly on him and there would be instability due to tension and pressure, as was the case in 1984 due to the assassination of Manuel Buendía”.
In 1994, precisely together with Gómez Leyva, we interviewed Miguel Montes, the first prosecutor in the Colosio Case, and asked him if he considered that President Carlos Salinas was responsible for the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio. Montes replied no, but he specified that the sociopolitical climates that the powerful build, yes. The context was the conflict that the campaign was experiencing over the leadership of Manuel Camacho, as a peace negotiator in Chiapas, which generated instability and anxiety in the campaign, and built an acrimonious environment of conflict.
Returning to the column, it was added: “For the head of López Obrador, we want to think, it does not cross the desire that a journalist die, but the way in which various communicators and intellectuals express themselves, with their increasing oral brutality, with epithets and harangues that encourage digital lynching, amounts to a call to action. The president acts like abusive language against journalists won’t have future repercussions, but he’s wrong. The borders of respect and civility are broken and anything can happen.”
It was an unfortunate coincidence that on the eve of the attack the president attacked Gómez Leyva again in the morning. On many mornings over the past four years, López Obrador has directly singled out journalists by name as his enemies, accusing them of being liars and of serving groups that, he says, lost privileges and want them back. What has the president done in practice? He has unexpectedly set targets for attacks.
If there are groups that want to destabilize his project, the president has identified in journalists where it hurts the most. López Obrador has the right to reply to the press and show his disagreement with what is published or what is thought. What he has no right to, because he violates the principle of proportionality and abuses the asymmetry of his word compared to that of the rest of the Mexicans, is to shoot against that group.
But it is not the only thing. The instant politicization of the attack on Gomez Leyva rushed the times. As a hypothesis that is being investigated, criminal organizations are behind the attack, which is equally serious. Following on that hypothesis, If a criminal gang set out to assassinate such a well-known journalist, it is because they must feel that they can get away with it, which reflects the environment of impunity for criminals that the president has built with his strategy of “Hugs, not bullets.”
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In any case, the attack will completely change Gómez Leyva’s life for an indefinite period of time. And if the president is lucky, there will not be another attack against the journalist, nor against any of those he has defamed in the morning.
We must insist on what was published here on February 17: “If you consider that you are right, argue and do not insult, persuade but do not attack. Confront your ideas because the country is not in a socio-political condition to process your attacks on the media and journalists”. President, don’t gamble with a destiny you clearly can’t control.
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