Until a little over a month ago, Alberto Amaro lived in Tlaxcala, a small state in central Mexico, located between Puebla and Mexico City, where his home was. But his life took a 180 degree turn that forced him to have an escort and end up leaving his country.
As a grandfather and father who were journalists, Beto had it clear from a very young age: he would be one too. What this 35-year-old Mexican perhaps did not count on is that fulfilling his life’s dream and setting up a digital newspaper would end up leading him and his family to live as refugees in Asturias in order to save their lives.
And Amaro’s story is that of so many journalists who are threatened or even murdered for the simple fact of practicing their profession, because Mexico is, due to its incessant violence against journalists, the most dangerous country for the press. in the Western Hemisphere, according to the report ‘No One Guarantees My Safety’, prepared by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Amnesty International.
The penultimate chapter in the history of this journalist who defends human rights, although initially he did not consider himself as such, began to be written in 2019, when he founded his own newspaper, the digital The Tlaxcala Presswhich began its journey with the objective of denouncing human rights violations, violence exercised against citizens by the authorities or any act of institutional or criminal corruption. And that in Mexico, you pay dearly.
I never charged the victims for publishing journalistic reports of their attacks, something very common in Mexico. When I received a complaint, my fingers itched with excitement to start writing.
Amaro says that the first of many surprises came when those who approached him to report cases of corruption or violence asked him the price for publishing that note (journalistic information) because in Mexico these things are charged. “I’m not going to charge you because you have been a victim,” Alberto responded, because his interest was not economic, but rather evidencing government violence and corruption. “When I received a citizen complaint, my fingers itched with the excitement of starting to write,” he says, since then he began to receive many complaints, including from police officers who had been victims of institutional violence.
The threats came soon. They started on social networks, but quickly became more. Alberto Amaro was returning in his car from covering the attack on a person, presumably a member of a criminal group that operated in the area, who had been shot in the face, when he noticed that a motorcycle was following him and accelerated his vehicle. At the time he was escaping, he received a call from a woman who recommended that he not publish that information and when he refused, she told him that there would be consequences.
From that moment on, the attacks and threats increased, not only against him but also against his family, his wife Laraine and two children, Beto and Natalia. They shot at him from a motorcycle while he was driving in his car; against his home on several occasions, one of them while his son was playing in the yard of the house; and they tried to accuse his wife of being a “narcomenudista” (small-scale illicit drug trade).
And so, in that same year 2019, Alberto became part of the Protection Mechanism, a tool launched by the Mexican Government when, after pressure from civil society groups and international human rights organizations, the Mexican Congress had to approve, in June 2012, the Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
Initially and after the first risk assessment, Alberto was assigned a “panic button” that, connected to a private company that alerted the police, he had to use when risk situations occurred, as well as a patrol that went around the area. around your home, once a day. But the attacks escalated, despite the fact that the supposed objective of the Mechanism was to develop a strategy that would reduce, even eradicate, risk situations. On two occasions he was threatened with death by a former municipal president, what here in Spain would be a mayor, in the presence of his children.
It is something very difficult to believe, explains Amaro, but according to statistics presented by the human rights organization, Article 19 Mexico and Central Americamore than 45 percent of attacks on journalists come from the Mexican government, whether federal, state or municipal, and 25 percent come from organized crime, that is, criminal groups and drug trafficking cartels. What is the explanation? This journalist who has taken refuge in Asturias is clear: it is due to the impunity for the attacks and murders of journalists, which makes this type of actions chronic and which is estimated at 89 percent, according to data presented by this same organization that also works to make visible attacks on journalists and against freedom of expression.
Despite the threats and attacks, he continued to practice journalism as a means of denouncing injustices and human rights violations, with all the courage and strength that circumstances allowed him to maintain, and one of the turning points in his professional career arrived. which would not be the last: at the end of 2021 he began to live with bodyguards, after being detained and beaten by the state police for recording several agents extorting third parties.
You are putting me to take care of those who I am making uncomfortable with my journalistic articles.
The paradox in Beto’s life, as in that of other journalists who make up the Mechanism, is that the one who threatens and attacks him is the one who has to defend him, that is, the State Police, whose corruption is what the journalist denounces in his articles, to the point of investigating the Secretary of Public Security, its top person, for a case of sexual abuse.
And therefore, when he realized that the patrol that had been assigned to protect him was photographing every movement that he and his family made, he approached them to ask them and the police recognized that they were following orders from their superiors, who demanded to know everything he did. , who he talked to and where he went. “Are you making me take care of the people that I am making uncomfortable with my journalistic articles?” he asked himself at that time.
The second and last turning point in Beto’s life came when he was threatened by a cartel if he did not stop publishing information that was harmful to them. Despite this, in 2023 the federal Protection Mechanism decided that he was no longer in danger after four years enrolled in the institution and informed him that it would remove his four bodyguards. Amaro filed and won an injunction to suspend this decision and be able to continue with protection, but the attack on his son came while he was playing in the yard of the house. Once again, the Mechanism once again minimizes this aggression, he asks a judge for protection and also obtains escorts for his children.
When Amnesty International crosses your path
At the beginning of last June, Alberto Amaro met Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International in Spain, and there began the relationship between the Mexican journalist and the movement for the defense of human rights around the world, which he ended up taking Mexico to Beto and his family.
The figures provided by the report prepared by Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) leave little room for hope because, although the statistics vary considerably, the journalists murdered in Mexico are counted in the dozens, in a country that It also has the highest rate of missing journalists in the world, according to CPJ data. Thus, at the end of 2023, the disappearance of 15 journalists had been confirmed, with Veracruz, Michoacán and Guerrero as the states in which the most disappearances occurred.
Since the Mechanism was founded in 2012, eight journalists who were under its protection were murdered and, although no murders were recorded during the first five years, between 2017 and 2022, at least one journalist under protection was murdered per year. .
The report ‘Nobody guarantees my safety’ includes the cases of three journalists who were under the protection of the federal Mechanism. Rubén Pat was murdered in July 2018, in Quintana Roo, just two months after registering in the Mechanism, and Gustavo Sánchez, murdered in Oaxaca, in June 2021, after spending thirteen months in the Protection Mechanism. The third of the journalists mentioned in this report is Alberto Amaro, the only one who, at the moment, is still alive, and who to preserve his life and that of his family has had to leave Mexico.
The Tlaxcala Press It continues to function, even without Alberto, although he has told his colleagues to “lower their profile” for safety, waiting for him to return to his country to practice that profession that he longs for so much and that almost cost him his life. Many times he has asked himself if it was worth continuing and, listening to his son Beto and his daughter Natalia, he found the answer, “from the bad to the good, my children have learned to defend and fight for what is fair.”
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