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Eight bullets in a deserted street: journalists suffer criminal violence and harassment from authorities in Mexico

2021-05-03T15:34:29.351Z


The day he was killed, Israel Vázquez slept very little. His case is not unique in the most lethal country for informants. And nothing helps what happens in the National Palace almost every morning.


The day he was killed, Israel Vázquez slept very little.

Like many reporters in Mexico, he had two jobs because the salaries of many media are not enough to live: he worked until three in the afternoon at Pemex doing pipe maintenance at the Salamanca, Guanajuato refinery, but since he took off the helmet of the oil company and left the facilities dedicated to journalism.

He worked at El Salmantino, a web medium where he wrote reports and broadcast on Facebook;

what he liked best was covering sports and the red note, that is, reporting on police events.

It was common to see him doing his reports in the streets, and many people yelled "Isra!" When they saw him in the middle of the traffic.

According to his friends, the reporter was always ready to help.

At 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 8, 2020, he spoke for the last time with his boss to open a broadcast and tell the story of a man with polio who sold sweets on the streets of the city.

Devoted to human stories and urgent complaints,

Vázquez spent the last hours of that night covering the discovery of dismembered people

left in the atrium of a church.

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Desecration of corpses, torture, massacres, dismemberment, calcination, murder of minors, attempted lynching, femicides, mutilations, rapes and, of course, murders, are daily events for journalists who cover the escalation of violence in the country that, according to official data, it has recorded

the two blackest years in its history with 34,681 murders in 2019 and 34,552 in 2020.

In the early morning of November 9, Vázquez received a call because they found a bag with human remains and the head of a person in a bucket on the street of the Villa Salamanca 400 neighborhood. In the last semester of 2020, it was increasingly common that journalists from the area arrived at the crime scenes before the security forces.

"We do not know why that happens, the insecurity is very great, it is as if the same police were afraid to go to some places. Many times, the same neighbors contaminate the crime scene because they spend too many hours," explains Víctor Ortega, manager of El Salmantino, Vázquez's boss and friend, and one of the last people who spoke with the reporter.

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That was what happened shortly after 6:30 a.m. on that Monday, November 9.

The reporter, angry in the solitude of the street, parked his car, took some photos with his cell phone and was preparing to start the Facebook broadcast when, according to official sources, two men on a motorcycle passed nearby and shot him point-blank.

He received at least eight bullet wounds.

Faced with the alarm after losing contact with him, another colleague passed through the area and had to report that he was being taken away in an ambulance.

Twenty-seven minutes later he entered the Red Cross, where he died.

He was 31 years old and a great soccer fan — a fan of the León club, the city where he studied journalism — but not only did he stay in front of the television watching the classics, but he also sweated his shirt in long amateur matches.

Many times he

had to put the ball down and run to cover some bloody event.

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Causa en Común, a non-profit organization that records acts of violence in the country, places Guanajuato as the entity that

led the atrocity statistics in 2020 with 922 victims of extreme violence.

Celaya, another city in the state that is located about 30 miles from Salamanca, was considered the most dangerous city in the world in 2020, according to the ranking of the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice.

Last June, 20 murders were recorded in a 24-hour period there.

“We were very sad, we still are because he was just doing his job.

The violence has increased too much, ”says Ortega.

Vázquez's friends, the closest ones who between kicks and dribbles accumulated goals and fouls every weekend, fired him on the little field where he used to play.

They carried the coffin through the streets and opened the lid of the coffin as if it could see, for the last time, the green grass where it used to run.

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The deadliest country for reporters

Every May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, a date established by the United Nations to commemorate the Declaration of Windhoek, when a group of African journalists called for media pluralism and independence in 1991.

These are difficult times for journalism: in February, the Human Rights Watch organization warned in a report that

more than 80 governments used the health emergency to "justify violations" of fundamental rights such as freedom of expression

and assembly.

In April, the organization Reporters without Borders denounced that journalistic work suffers partial or total restrictions in two thirds of the world.

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"When a journalist is killed - in any region - for covering a matter of public interest, that is not only a message against the media outlet to which he belongs, but it

is a threat to the entire press and all of society.

The colleagues who They knew that I was investigating a corruption case or that I was behind a story of organized crime, they hear that message and they are going to think about it long before reporting those much-needed stories, "says Pedro Vaca, Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission. of Human Rights (IACHR), in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.

Some journalists have to travel the world to tell about conflicts and wars.

But, for many Mexicans, the massacres and shootings are just around the corner, in the neighborhoods where they grew up, in the cities where they live.

The murder of Vázquez continues to be investigated, but it was not the only one in 2020. At least eight reporters were murdered last year, which, according to Reporters Without Borders,

places Mexico as the most lethal country to exercise the information profession,

a macabre distinction that has been leading for years.

The journalist María Elena Ferral was shot - she was shot eight times in broad daylight - in Veracruz on March 30.

In the same state, Julio Valdivia was beheaded on September 9.

Jorge Miguel Armenta Ávalos was shot to death on May 16, 2020. Jaime Daniel Castaño, director of a media outlet in Zacatecas, took photographs of two bodies abandoned on the street and, shortly after, he was shot in December.

Víctor Fernández was dismembered in Acapulco and his remains were found in April.

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All these cases are still being investigated, and many hypotheses focus on the journalistic works that communicators carried out on the causes of violence, corruption or organized crime.

According to official figures, cited in a report by the US authorities, 

94% of crimes committed in Mexico are not reported or investigated.

The civic group Impunidad Cero, a civic organization, estimates that nearly 9 out of 10 homicides go unpunished.

"In Mexico we are experiencing a crisis of generalized violence, human rights violations, disappearances, femicides, executions and we are all victims. In the case of journalists, it becomes important to make it visible because when a reporter is attacked, the intention is to prevent them from your information reaches me, that it reaches society, "explains Itzia Miravete, prevention coordinator at Article 19, an organization that defends the rights of freedom of expression.

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Amnesty International's annual report denounces a series of actions promoted by the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, from his morning conferences, usually attacks national media such as Reforma or international media such as The New Tork Times or El País, which weaken the press and they favor the establishment of an

"environment conducive to censorship, administrative sanctions and the misuse of the law to intimidate"

the media.

"Many heads of state in the region forget that by voluntarily entering public debate they expose themselves to criticism and must be tolerant. But the most important thing is that they are guarantors of human rights, of freedom of expression, not only of those who applaud them, but those who criticize them, "reflects Vaca, who worries about the stigmatization of journalists in countries like Mexico.

"

The followers of the presidents can consider that denigrating speech as permission, an encouragement, to attack reporters.

And if that is done in a country considered the most lethal for the press in the world, I think that borders on the recklessness because in a certain way it has been shown that the maturity of the public debate is not achieved and leads to violence against the media ", concludes the expert.

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Using the laws to silence criticism

In 2020 alone, 39 cases of judicial harassment were committed against journalists in Mexico, according to the data that Article 19 cites in its new report entitled

Laws of Silence

.

Between 2015 and 2019, this organization registered

 69 cases of legal actions against journalists to intimidate them

and hinder their work.

"It is the wear of time and, finally, personal wear and tear that affects the most. Because the family worries, of course, even if it is an irrational, absurd, superficial demand, made by a character without credibility. The fact is that justice she is blind as to the motivations of whoever introduces the lawsuit, "says Sergio Aguayo, a Mexican journalist and human rights activist.

In July 2016, Aguayo was sued for non-pecuniary damage by Humberto Moreira, former governor of Coahuila and former national president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who considers that he was affected by the publication of an opinion column.

"The working hypothesis is that Moreira is demanding me as a way to inhibit or punish me for the research I have been doing on violence in the state of Coahuila. Of course, in part, during the time he was governor," explains Aguayo.

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In March 2019 the journalist was acquitted of all the accusations, but that court ruling was challenged by the former governor and the sentence was finally reversed and

the journalist was sentenced to pay 10 million pesos (almost 500,000 dollars) for moral damages in favor of of Moreira.

"The laxity of judges who accept extravagant claims like Moreira's is absurd. Not because it is a claim for non-pecuniary damage. I believe that such a mechanism should exist, but because they accept such an absurdly high compensation request," asserts Aguayo.

A 2016 ruling eliminated the maximum limits for sentences for non-pecuniary damage, a decision that was widely criticized by human rights organizations and that explains the disproportionate amount demanded of Aguayo.

His case has had a great media coverage and is in the Supreme Court of Justice, where it is expected that in the coming months there will be a final sentence.

"When I came in they gave me a beating"

Pedro Canché, Mayan journalist from Quintana Roo was unjustly deprived of his liberty accused of the crime of sabotage for documenting and disseminating the violent eviction of a sit-in of residents of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, which occurred on August 20, 2014. The people were protesting Outside of the state Potable Water and Sewer Commission.

Days later, on August 30, Canché was arrested and placed in the local jail.

He spent nine months in prison.

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"When I entered they gave me a beating," says the reporter, "they took me to the basketball court they have back there, outside the cameras and they beat me about 20. Each one with kicks, slaps and blows."

Despite the fact that there was police surveillance, Canché received a bloody physical punishment while they told him that "it was a commission" and that they had to use it "like a piñata."

As a result of the abuse, the reporter suffered injuries to his shoulder blade and lungs, and his arm was broken.

He still drags sequels that remind him of that day in 2014.

"I recently went to the doctor because I still have those very strong pains,

I have to take some pills for life because of the pain

. Sleeping is a problem because they destroyed my neck, so there is no way to position my head," says the journalist .

Although some implicated in his case have been sentenced, Canché feels impunity for the attacks because the justice system has freed some of the accused and puts many obstacles in the way of solving cases like his.

In addition, he continues to be attacked with smear campaigns and false accusations for his journalistic work focused on denouncing the abuses of power in Quintana Roo.

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"I do not want to revictimize myself on this issue, but I feel a hint of nostalgia for injustices. Like they were shelved by the federal judges and then

we did not achieve the legal compensation or the social justice that we wanted

in this process. And that frustrates a lot" Canché says.

Apart from fighting against impunity and multiple bureaucratic obstacles, various projects try to overcome oblivion by rescuing the biographies of the country's murdered and disappeared journalists.

Killing nobody

is a kind of digital memorial in which a hundred journalists and editors of the organization Reporteras en Guardia contribute to the demand for justice in the cases registered in the last 20 years.

The Cartel Project brought together an international network of journalists to continue the investigations of the Mexican reporters killed during their efforts to report on the country's criminal organizations and their connections to the rest of the world.

Like Regina Martínez, a journalist murdered in 2012, while investigating the links between politicians and criminal organizations in the state of Veracruz.

Recovering the memory, reporting so that all the sacrifices are not in vain, seems to be the last battle that many reporters in the country fight.

“In the end, what matters to us is that what is happening in our regions is known.

Don't forget all the corruption, all the outrages.

That's why we dedicate ourselves to this ”, Canché asserts, with resignation.

If you have information about cases of abuse against journalists in Mexico or Central America, you can write to 

albinson.linares@nbcuni.com.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-05-03

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