The woman of the day. Lydia Cacho A journalist sentenced to exile

She has already paid in her flesh her commitments to the victims of the endemic violence that is ravaging her country, Mexico. Lydia Cacho now has no other choice than exile: a question of life or death. “I ask for Spanish nationality because, if I return to Mexico, they will kill me”, accuses this journalist whose investigations into child crime and prostitution networks have been shaking circles of power for thirty years. Many times already, she had to flee Mexico under the threat of hired killers. In 2005, the publication of a shock book, the Demons of Eden, in which she brought to light a network of pedophiles involving political leaders, industrialists and drug traffickers, had earned her a violent punitive expedition, with the complicity of judges and police officers: mock execution, torture, prison. Far from her country, the journalist continues to write – essays, novels, poems – and pleads tirelessly for the defense and protection of victims of sexual or domestic violence. Lydia Cacho is right to fear for her life: in 2019, out of 50 journalists murdered around the world, 10 were Mexican.