With 29 reporters murdered so far in 2022, the practice of journalism in Mexico is high risk. Those who have been threatened and live to tell about it, narrate the damage it represents in their lives, even with protection measures from the Government. From living in fear to affecting their families and losing their working life; the damage is not only for reporters, but for freedom of expression in general.
When you receive death threats and close colleagues have been murdered, for your risk to decrease you have to stop being a journalist, that’s what has to happen, says Cynthia Valdez, a journalist from Sinaloa who spent three years as a refugee in Mexico City and today he tries, without success, to resume the exercise of his work in his native state.
“I feel frustrated because I haven’t been able to join the field to work because I feel insecure. Yes, it scares me, although I know it’s not the same risk as three years ago, I’m still scared and it’s not the same”, she says desperately.
Three months after she and her partner received death threats from a criminal group in Culiacán, Javier Valdez, a well-known colleague of the entity, was shot to death in May 2017.
It was then that Cynthia took the threats more seriously and had to flee. The Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists – a body of the federal government – extracted Cynthia from Sinaloa along with her entire family and gave them refuge in Mexico City, as well as economic resources to survive.
What happened to Cynthia is just one case of many that reflects the danger of being a journalist in Mexico. So far in 2022, in less than a month, just between January 15 and February 10, five journalists have been murdered in the country, crimes allegedly related to their informative work. This wave of homicides has aroused the anger and indignation not only of the journalistic union, but of the entire Mexican society, as well as the condemnation of the international community, including the UN, the European Union and different associations for the defense of journalists.
The organization Article 19, dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression, has documented, from the year 2000 to date, 150 murders of journalists in Mexico, possibly related to their work. So far in the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, there have already been 29 homicides.
But they are not only homicides, in 2021 the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) registered 92 files for acts committed to the detriment of journalists, such as “threats, harassment, criminalization and smear campaigns, use of criminal types against them such as the insults, defamation and slander, disappearances and murders, among others”, according to the president of the organization, Rosario Piedra Ibarra.
The Government of the Republic has recognized the need to review the operation of the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which currently protects 1,506 people, 88% more than at the beginning of this six-year term.
Of these, 495 are journalists (136 women and 359 men) and 1,011 human rights defenders (543 women and 468 men).
Beyond the Protection Mechanism
“The federal mechanism serves you in the first instance to save your life. Many say ‘It is that the mechanism does not work’. No, it does work, it works so that the moment you suffer the threat, it saves your life”, specifies Cynthia Valdez. But it also reveals the flaws of that instrument.
“It is not the same that they threaten a male journalist than a female journalist and especially when you are the mother of a family. Why? Because you drag your whole family because of the victimizing fact that you suffer. It was my case, my children lost their schools, I lost my jobs, I had four jobs before all this happened. There is no comprehensive support from the mechanism, it does not exist, ”she laments.
Today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists
Desperate for the situation, and aware that it is not the same to practice journalism far from where her sources and her environment are, Cynthia decided to return to Sinaloa, for which, she points out, the government made a pilot plan.
“I no longer feel like a journalist because since I returned to Sinaloa I no longer go out to events, conferences or police events. I have not been able to go out ”, he reproaches.
Paula Saucedo, an officer of the Protection and Defense Program of Article 19, warns that, in effect, “today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists, hardly. If measures are not taken such as combating impunity, investigations of who perpetrated the first threats or the violence or the attacks that caused the displacement, there are no measures, really, of return.”
And the problem – he refers – is that after a certain time, the journalists “return to their places, to their entity, to their municipality, and since there was no whole process of combating impunity, of investigations, of repairing the damage, because the aggressors are usually still there”.
And it is that, according to Reporters Without Borders, more than 60% of attacks come from public officials. The Government, meanwhile, acknowledges that impunity in cases of murders of journalists is 94 percent.
A “borrowed life”
“I can tell you that in my life there is a before and after August 2017,” says Omar Bello, a journalist from the state of Guerrero.
“They stopped me in a public square and threatened me. They told me ‘We already know that the other (criminal) group gives you orders and that you obey them –according to them–, continue like this and we are going to kill you’. And 10 days later they gave the order to kill me and that is why I had to leave Zihuatanejo.”
Since then, Omar has been a refugee in Mexico City, at the request of the Federal Protection Mechanism, and assures that “living with precautionary measures is living with a borrowed life, because this is not my environment, this is not where I grew up. , this is something that is borrowed, this is something that perhaps the Government at some point will tell me ‘You know what, it’s over,’” he says with regret.
At the time of suffering the death threats and after he had previously been “picked up” and beaten, he was almost eight years old, formally in the ‘ABC’ newspaper of Zihuatanejo. He today he does not have a source of employment in journalism.
“One of the consequences of being displaced and being under the mechanism is that you lose, among other things, your working life. Because finally this does not solve your life. On some occasion you are going to have to get out of this and come back again to want to resume your role, but you can’t, you can’t because nobody gives a job to someone who comes from displacement, “he laments.
Today Omar created his own news website and tries to keep it up to date by gaining readership. His goal is to stay current in what he knows how to do and what gives meaning to his life: journalism.
In Mexico City he feels safe, although he recognizes that precautionary measures such as the “panic button” provided by the mechanism are of little use.
“This –he says, showing his ‘panic button’– is just so they know where you left off. Really from now until I press the button here and they realize, they’ve already killed me, right? A bullet travels super fast.”
He clarifies, however, that the mechanism, although it is not the solution, “is the only thing there is and it is what has saved our lives.”
However, Omar does not see himself returning to the streets of his native Zihuatanejo to do journalism “on the ground”, because – he assures – the conditions do not exist.
Omar regrets that in Mexico “if you kill a journalist nothing happens, that’s why they are killing us.” For this reason, at least in the case of the reporters who have been threatened, “either you continue to carry out journalism with self-censorship – and that is to the detriment of your work – or you accept the consequences of what is going to happen to you” .
In this sense, Paula Saucedo warns that “Mexican society loses because there is a lot of information that we are not having, precisely because of the effect that violence against the press has on Mexican society.”
With 29 reporters murdered so far in 2022, the practice of journalism in Mexico is high risk. Those who have been threatened and live to tell about it, narrate the damage it represents in their lives, even with protection measures from the Government. From living in fear to affecting their families and losing their working life; the damage is not only for reporters, but for freedom of expression in general.
When you receive death threats and close colleagues have been murdered, for your risk to decrease you have to stop being a journalist, that’s what has to happen, says Cynthia Valdez, a journalist from Sinaloa who spent three years as a refugee in Mexico City and today he tries, without success, to resume the exercise of his work in his native state.
“I feel frustrated because I haven’t been able to join the field to work because I feel insecure. Yes, it scares me, although I know it’s not the same risk as three years ago, I’m still scared and it’s not the same”, she says desperately.
Three months after she and her partner received death threats from a criminal group in Culiacán, Javier Valdez, a well-known colleague of the entity, was shot to death in May 2017.
It was then that Cynthia took the threats more seriously and had to flee. The Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists – a body of the federal government – extracted Cynthia from Sinaloa along with her entire family and gave them refuge in Mexico City, as well as economic resources to survive.
What happened to Cynthia is just one case of many that reflects the danger of being a journalist in Mexico. So far in 2022, in less than a month, just between January 15 and February 10, five journalists have been murdered in the country, crimes allegedly related to their informative work. This wave of homicides has aroused the anger and indignation not only of the journalistic union, but of the entire Mexican society, as well as the condemnation of the international community, including the UN, the European Union and different associations for the defense of journalists.
The organization Article 19, dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression, has documented, from the year 2000 to date, 150 murders of journalists in Mexico, possibly related to their work. So far in the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, there have already been 29 homicides.
But they are not only homicides, in 2021 the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) registered 92 files for acts committed to the detriment of journalists, such as “threats, harassment, criminalization and smear campaigns, use of criminal types against them such as the insults, defamation and slander, disappearances and murders, among others”, according to the president of the organization, Rosario Piedra Ibarra.
The Government of the Republic has recognized the need to review the operation of the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which currently protects 1,506 people, 88% more than at the beginning of this six-year term.
Of these, 495 are journalists (136 women and 359 men) and 1,011 human rights defenders (543 women and 468 men).
Beyond the Protection Mechanism
“The federal mechanism serves you in the first instance to save your life. Many say ‘It is that the mechanism does not work’. No, it does work, it works so that the moment you suffer the threat, it saves your life”, specifies Cynthia Valdez. But it also reveals the flaws of that instrument.
“It is not the same that they threaten a male journalist than a female journalist and especially when you are the mother of a family. Why? Because you drag your whole family because of the victimizing fact that you suffer. It was my case, my children lost their schools, I lost my jobs, I had four jobs before all this happened. There is no comprehensive support from the mechanism, it does not exist, ”she laments.
Today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists
Desperate for the situation, and aware that it is not the same to practice journalism far from where her sources and her environment are, Cynthia decided to return to Sinaloa, for which, she points out, the government made a pilot plan.
“I no longer feel like a journalist because since I returned to Sinaloa I no longer go out to events, conferences or police events. I have not been able to go out ”, he reproaches.
Paula Saucedo, an officer of the Protection and Defense Program of Article 19, warns that, in effect, “today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists, hardly. If measures are not taken such as combating impunity, investigations of who perpetrated the first threats or the violence or the attacks that caused the displacement, there are no measures, really, of return.”
And the problem – he refers – is that after a certain time, the journalists “return to their places, to their entity, to their municipality, and since there was no whole process of combating impunity, of investigations, of repairing the damage, because the aggressors are usually still there”.
And it is that, according to Reporters Without Borders, more than 60% of attacks come from public officials. The Government, meanwhile, acknowledges that impunity in cases of murders of journalists is 94 percent.
A “borrowed life”
“I can tell you that in my life there is a before and after August 2017,” says Omar Bello, a journalist from the state of Guerrero.
“They stopped me in a public square and threatened me. They told me ‘We already know that the other (criminal) group gives you orders and that you obey them –according to them–, continue like this and we are going to kill you’. And 10 days later they gave the order to kill me and that is why I had to leave Zihuatanejo.”
Since then, Omar has been a refugee in Mexico City, at the request of the Federal Protection Mechanism, and assures that “living with precautionary measures is living with a borrowed life, because this is not my environment, this is not where I grew up. , this is something that is borrowed, this is something that perhaps the Government at some point will tell me ‘You know what, it’s over,’” he says with regret.
At the time of suffering the death threats and after he had previously been “picked up” and beaten, he was almost eight years old, formally in the ‘ABC’ newspaper of Zihuatanejo. He today he does not have a source of employment in journalism.
“One of the consequences of being displaced and being under the mechanism is that you lose, among other things, your working life. Because finally this does not solve your life. On some occasion you are going to have to get out of this and come back again to want to resume your role, but you can’t, you can’t because nobody gives a job to someone who comes from displacement, “he laments.
Today Omar created his own news website and tries to keep it up to date by gaining readership. His goal is to stay current in what he knows how to do and what gives meaning to his life: journalism.
In Mexico City he feels safe, although he recognizes that precautionary measures such as the “panic button” provided by the mechanism are of little use.
“This –he says, showing his ‘panic button’– is just so they know where you left off. Really from now until I press the button here and they realize, they’ve already killed me, right? A bullet travels super fast.”
He clarifies, however, that the mechanism, although it is not the solution, “is the only thing there is and it is what has saved our lives.”
However, Omar does not see himself returning to the streets of his native Zihuatanejo to do journalism “on the ground”, because – he assures – the conditions do not exist.
Omar regrets that in Mexico “if you kill a journalist nothing happens, that’s why they are killing us.” For this reason, at least in the case of the reporters who have been threatened, “either you continue to carry out journalism with self-censorship – and that is to the detriment of your work – or you accept the consequences of what is going to happen to you” .
In this sense, Paula Saucedo warns that “Mexican society loses because there is a lot of information that we are not having, precisely because of the effect that violence against the press has on Mexican society.”
With 29 reporters murdered so far in 2022, the practice of journalism in Mexico is high risk. Those who have been threatened and live to tell about it, narrate the damage it represents in their lives, even with protection measures from the Government. From living in fear to affecting their families and losing their working life; the damage is not only for reporters, but for freedom of expression in general.
When you receive death threats and close colleagues have been murdered, for your risk to decrease you have to stop being a journalist, that’s what has to happen, says Cynthia Valdez, a journalist from Sinaloa who spent three years as a refugee in Mexico City and today he tries, without success, to resume the exercise of his work in his native state.
“I feel frustrated because I haven’t been able to join the field to work because I feel insecure. Yes, it scares me, although I know it’s not the same risk as three years ago, I’m still scared and it’s not the same”, she says desperately.
Three months after she and her partner received death threats from a criminal group in Culiacán, Javier Valdez, a well-known colleague of the entity, was shot to death in May 2017.
It was then that Cynthia took the threats more seriously and had to flee. The Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists – a body of the federal government – extracted Cynthia from Sinaloa along with her entire family and gave them refuge in Mexico City, as well as economic resources to survive.
What happened to Cynthia is just one case of many that reflects the danger of being a journalist in Mexico. So far in 2022, in less than a month, just between January 15 and February 10, five journalists have been murdered in the country, crimes allegedly related to their informative work. This wave of homicides has aroused the anger and indignation not only of the journalistic union, but of the entire Mexican society, as well as the condemnation of the international community, including the UN, the European Union and different associations for the defense of journalists.
The organization Article 19, dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression, has documented, from the year 2000 to date, 150 murders of journalists in Mexico, possibly related to their work. So far in the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, there have already been 29 homicides.
But they are not only homicides, in 2021 the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) registered 92 files for acts committed to the detriment of journalists, such as “threats, harassment, criminalization and smear campaigns, use of criminal types against them such as the insults, defamation and slander, disappearances and murders, among others”, according to the president of the organization, Rosario Piedra Ibarra.
The Government of the Republic has recognized the need to review the operation of the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which currently protects 1,506 people, 88% more than at the beginning of this six-year term.
Of these, 495 are journalists (136 women and 359 men) and 1,011 human rights defenders (543 women and 468 men).
Beyond the Protection Mechanism
“The federal mechanism serves you in the first instance to save your life. Many say ‘It is that the mechanism does not work’. No, it does work, it works so that the moment you suffer the threat, it saves your life”, specifies Cynthia Valdez. But it also reveals the flaws of that instrument.
“It is not the same that they threaten a male journalist than a female journalist and especially when you are the mother of a family. Why? Because you drag your whole family because of the victimizing fact that you suffer. It was my case, my children lost their schools, I lost my jobs, I had four jobs before all this happened. There is no comprehensive support from the mechanism, it does not exist, ”she laments.
Today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists
Desperate for the situation, and aware that it is not the same to practice journalism far from where her sources and her environment are, Cynthia decided to return to Sinaloa, for which, she points out, the government made a pilot plan.
“I no longer feel like a journalist because since I returned to Sinaloa I no longer go out to events, conferences or police events. I have not been able to go out ”, he reproaches.
Paula Saucedo, an officer of the Protection and Defense Program of Article 19, warns that, in effect, “today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists, hardly. If measures are not taken such as combating impunity, investigations of who perpetrated the first threats or the violence or the attacks that caused the displacement, there are no measures, really, of return.”
And the problem – he refers – is that after a certain time, the journalists “return to their places, to their entity, to their municipality, and since there was no whole process of combating impunity, of investigations, of repairing the damage, because the aggressors are usually still there”.
And it is that, according to Reporters Without Borders, more than 60% of attacks come from public officials. The Government, meanwhile, acknowledges that impunity in cases of murders of journalists is 94 percent.
A “borrowed life”
“I can tell you that in my life there is a before and after August 2017,” says Omar Bello, a journalist from the state of Guerrero.
“They stopped me in a public square and threatened me. They told me ‘We already know that the other (criminal) group gives you orders and that you obey them –according to them–, continue like this and we are going to kill you’. And 10 days later they gave the order to kill me and that is why I had to leave Zihuatanejo.”
Since then, Omar has been a refugee in Mexico City, at the request of the Federal Protection Mechanism, and assures that “living with precautionary measures is living with a borrowed life, because this is not my environment, this is not where I grew up. , this is something that is borrowed, this is something that perhaps the Government at some point will tell me ‘You know what, it’s over,’” he says with regret.
At the time of suffering the death threats and after he had previously been “picked up” and beaten, he was almost eight years old, formally in the ‘ABC’ newspaper of Zihuatanejo. He today he does not have a source of employment in journalism.
“One of the consequences of being displaced and being under the mechanism is that you lose, among other things, your working life. Because finally this does not solve your life. On some occasion you are going to have to get out of this and come back again to want to resume your role, but you can’t, you can’t because nobody gives a job to someone who comes from displacement, “he laments.
Today Omar created his own news website and tries to keep it up to date by gaining readership. His goal is to stay current in what he knows how to do and what gives meaning to his life: journalism.
In Mexico City he feels safe, although he recognizes that precautionary measures such as the “panic button” provided by the mechanism are of little use.
“This –he says, showing his ‘panic button’– is just so they know where you left off. Really from now until I press the button here and they realize, they’ve already killed me, right? A bullet travels super fast.”
He clarifies, however, that the mechanism, although it is not the solution, “is the only thing there is and it is what has saved our lives.”
However, Omar does not see himself returning to the streets of his native Zihuatanejo to do journalism “on the ground”, because – he assures – the conditions do not exist.
Omar regrets that in Mexico “if you kill a journalist nothing happens, that’s why they are killing us.” For this reason, at least in the case of the reporters who have been threatened, “either you continue to carry out journalism with self-censorship – and that is to the detriment of your work – or you accept the consequences of what is going to happen to you” .
In this sense, Paula Saucedo warns that “Mexican society loses because there is a lot of information that we are not having, precisely because of the effect that violence against the press has on Mexican society.”
With 29 reporters murdered so far in 2022, the practice of journalism in Mexico is high risk. Those who have been threatened and live to tell about it, narrate the damage it represents in their lives, even with protection measures from the Government. From living in fear to affecting their families and losing their working life; the damage is not only for reporters, but for freedom of expression in general.
When you receive death threats and close colleagues have been murdered, for your risk to decrease you have to stop being a journalist, that’s what has to happen, says Cynthia Valdez, a journalist from Sinaloa who spent three years as a refugee in Mexico City and today he tries, without success, to resume the exercise of his work in his native state.
“I feel frustrated because I haven’t been able to join the field to work because I feel insecure. Yes, it scares me, although I know it’s not the same risk as three years ago, I’m still scared and it’s not the same”, she says desperately.
Three months after she and her partner received death threats from a criminal group in Culiacán, Javier Valdez, a well-known colleague of the entity, was shot to death in May 2017.
It was then that Cynthia took the threats more seriously and had to flee. The Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists – a body of the federal government – extracted Cynthia from Sinaloa along with her entire family and gave them refuge in Mexico City, as well as economic resources to survive.
What happened to Cynthia is just one case of many that reflects the danger of being a journalist in Mexico. So far in 2022, in less than a month, just between January 15 and February 10, five journalists have been murdered in the country, crimes allegedly related to their informative work. This wave of homicides has aroused the anger and indignation not only of the journalistic union, but of the entire Mexican society, as well as the condemnation of the international community, including the UN, the European Union and different associations for the defense of journalists.
The organization Article 19, dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression, has documented, from the year 2000 to date, 150 murders of journalists in Mexico, possibly related to their work. So far in the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, there have already been 29 homicides.
But they are not only homicides, in 2021 the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) registered 92 files for acts committed to the detriment of journalists, such as “threats, harassment, criminalization and smear campaigns, use of criminal types against them such as the insults, defamation and slander, disappearances and murders, among others”, according to the president of the organization, Rosario Piedra Ibarra.
The Government of the Republic has recognized the need to review the operation of the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which currently protects 1,506 people, 88% more than at the beginning of this six-year term.
Of these, 495 are journalists (136 women and 359 men) and 1,011 human rights defenders (543 women and 468 men).
Beyond the Protection Mechanism
“The federal mechanism serves you in the first instance to save your life. Many say ‘It is that the mechanism does not work’. No, it does work, it works so that the moment you suffer the threat, it saves your life”, specifies Cynthia Valdez. But it also reveals the flaws of that instrument.
“It is not the same that they threaten a male journalist than a female journalist and especially when you are the mother of a family. Why? Because you drag your whole family because of the victimizing fact that you suffer. It was my case, my children lost their schools, I lost my jobs, I had four jobs before all this happened. There is no comprehensive support from the mechanism, it does not exist, ”she laments.
Today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists
Desperate for the situation, and aware that it is not the same to practice journalism far from where her sources and her environment are, Cynthia decided to return to Sinaloa, for which, she points out, the government made a pilot plan.
“I no longer feel like a journalist because since I returned to Sinaloa I no longer go out to events, conferences or police events. I have not been able to go out ”, he reproaches.
Paula Saucedo, an officer of the Protection and Defense Program of Article 19, warns that, in effect, “today there are no guarantees for the return of displaced journalists, hardly. If measures are not taken such as combating impunity, investigations of who perpetrated the first threats or the violence or the attacks that caused the displacement, there are no measures, really, of return.”
And the problem – he refers – is that after a certain time, the journalists “return to their places, to their entity, to their municipality, and since there was no whole process of combating impunity, of investigations, of repairing the damage, because the aggressors are usually still there”.
And it is that, according to Reporters Without Borders, more than 60% of attacks come from public officials. The Government, meanwhile, acknowledges that impunity in cases of murders of journalists is 94 percent.
A “borrowed life”
“I can tell you that in my life there is a before and after August 2017,” says Omar Bello, a journalist from the state of Guerrero.
“They stopped me in a public square and threatened me. They told me ‘We already know that the other (criminal) group gives you orders and that you obey them –according to them–, continue like this and we are going to kill you’. And 10 days later they gave the order to kill me and that is why I had to leave Zihuatanejo.”
Since then, Omar has been a refugee in Mexico City, at the request of the Federal Protection Mechanism, and assures that “living with precautionary measures is living with a borrowed life, because this is not my environment, this is not where I grew up. , this is something that is borrowed, this is something that perhaps the Government at some point will tell me ‘You know what, it’s over,’” he says with regret.
At the time of suffering the death threats and after he had previously been “picked up” and beaten, he was almost eight years old, formally in the ‘ABC’ newspaper of Zihuatanejo. He today he does not have a source of employment in journalism.
“One of the consequences of being displaced and being under the mechanism is that you lose, among other things, your working life. Because finally this does not solve your life. On some occasion you are going to have to get out of this and come back again to want to resume your role, but you can’t, you can’t because nobody gives a job to someone who comes from displacement, “he laments.
Today Omar created his own news website and tries to keep it up to date by gaining readership. His goal is to stay current in what he knows how to do and what gives meaning to his life: journalism.
In Mexico City he feels safe, although he recognizes that precautionary measures such as the “panic button” provided by the mechanism are of little use.
“This –he says, showing his ‘panic button’– is just so they know where you left off. Really from now until I press the button here and they realize, they’ve already killed me, right? A bullet travels super fast.”
He clarifies, however, that the mechanism, although it is not the solution, “is the only thing there is and it is what has saved our lives.”
However, Omar does not see himself returning to the streets of his native Zihuatanejo to do journalism “on the ground”, because – he assures – the conditions do not exist.
Omar regrets that in Mexico “if you kill a journalist nothing happens, that’s why they are killing us.” For this reason, at least in the case of the reporters who have been threatened, “either you continue to carry out journalism with self-censorship – and that is to the detriment of your work – or you accept the consequences of what is going to happen to you” .
In this sense, Paula Saucedo warns that “Mexican society loses because there is a lot of information that we are not having, precisely because of the effect that violence against the press has on Mexican society.”