Surviving a murdered journalist in Mexico

For many years, Griselda, one of the first people to arrive on the street where Javier Valdez lay dead with 12 bullets in his body, cursed her husband: "Why did you have to sign that note?", "He was selfish who he didn't think of us” or “he didn't love us as much as he said...”, he reproached her one night and another when they turned off the light next to a small table full of medicines.

Five years and many hours as a psychologist after his murder, Griselda Triana (Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1969) begins to refer to him with the naturalness of someone who talks about his old partner with whom he spent 27 years and had two children.

During this time she has changed her house and city, she lives with escorts and she is terrified of any truck with dark windows, but she has managed to love this “fucking profession” that she took from her husband.

Until his murder on May 15, 2017 in Culiacán, Javier Valdez was the reference journalist to understand drug trafficking in northern Mexico, that is, the Harvard of world organized crime, where drugs move as much money as the country's external debt. .

Valdez was the journalist who knew the most about the cartels, the capos, the breakups, the betrayals, or the reasons for this or that massacre.

Founder of

contributor to

Afp

agency

, his name was respected in a guild accustomed to devouring each other for the honesty with which he practiced his trade.

He was the most informed, "although he did not publish even a tiny part of what he knew," says his widow, but also the most beloved because he did not act as a bloody oremus, but rather dedicated most of his eight books, including

or

finalist in the Black Week of Gijón

to explain its consequences in society.

Hat, book and personal articles of the journalist Javier Valdez exhibited in the library that bears his name in the Casa Refugio in Mexico CityHector Guerrero

Javier and Griselda had met 27 years ago at the University of Culiacán.

She was studying psychology and he was studying sociology, but they soon formed an inseparable couple in which she took charge of the family finances while he started the magazine.

"How lucky you are," Grisela joked when Javier came home with his meager salary of 1,500 pesos (75 euros) while the

project was being consolidated .

Together with another reference in Mexican journalism, Ismael Bojórquez, the magazine gradually grew as a rigorous medium that described - to the authorities and to the profession - the criminal panorama from the hottest area of ​​the country, Cualiacán, the capital of Sinaloa.

Soon,

became a reference publication like

of Tijuana or the

.

Media inhabited by journalists who work in newsrooms with bulletproof glass, armored doors to go from one section to another, or who count their years of existence by the grenades and shots received on their facade.

Then came the awards - the Moors Cabot from Columbia University or the Freedom of Expression Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York - but none of that made him forget that he was still in Culiacán.

Just a few days before his murder, when in early May 2017 the police arrested Dámaso López,

, one of the candidates to succeed El Chapo Guzmán, an EL PAÍS reporter wrote to Valdez to get his opinion on how it would be the structure of the cartel, but he asked not to respond.

"Sorry, I appreciate your interest, but for security reasons I can't give statements, the situation got shitty," he wrote in a message.

“Javier kept me out of many things so as not to worry me, but I knew that things were not right.

Since he interviewed

in February, everything began to break down and I spent the most distressing weeks of my life, ”he recalls.

I knew that it could have consequences and I asked Javier over and over again, when are you leaving Sinaloa? When are you leaving Sinaloa?

“I never told him, but during those weeks I felt an agonizing panic every time I got in the car with him.

But it seemed unfair to me that they deprived us of going out together in our free time.”

The capo who couldn't stand the criticism

On the morning of May 15, 2017, Valdez had the weekly meeting with his team to define the cover stories, he finished writing a text for

and at noon he left the newsroom, got into his red Corolla, drove a couple of streets until three hooded men blocked his path.

The gunmen spoke with the victim "for a minute or two," according to witnesses, and fired 12 times, leaving her bloody body under the intense Culiacan sun, along with her old wide-brimmed hat.

According to the prosecution's investigation, the order to kill Valdez had been given by a young local capo, Dámaso López Serrano, alias the

annoyed by a column by Valdez in which he described him as a mediocre narco and incapable of leading the cartel. that he directed and with whom he was facing the chapitos, the children of Chapo Guzmán who inherited his empire when he was arrested.

Valdez described the '

' as a 'prop gunman' who he used to pay “to have them compose corridos for him”.

Damaso López, ending the journalist cost 100,000 pesos (about 5,000 euros) and three pistols with their initials for those three unhappy people.

“

After he was killed I was filled with anger with him.

Now I don't but at the time I thought he didn't love us as he said, because if he really loved us he would have left and he would be alive.

For a long time I was angry and thought that he had been very selfish”, says Griselda after many years of therapy, talks, silences and changes of address.

“The bad guys are winning”

Sitting on a terrace in Mexico City, Griselda Triana is today a woman with an easy laugh who cries when no one is around.

When the bad news arrives, she isolates herself from her, she stops answering the phone, locks herself in her room, cries for hours at a time and only returns when she is sure she is transmitting smiles and hope.

Griselda has organized the first network of victims of murdered journalists that held her first meeting last year.

A meeting about which neither place, nor dates, nor attendees can be said “for security reasons”, she says, shaking her shoulders, because that is how things are and continue to be in Mexico.

Griselda brought together an important group of wives and children of the more than one hundred journalists killed in the last decade, 15 of them in the last eight months, to fight for them to have a pension,

that the criminals be persecuted or they can go to the psychologist.

“Every time a journalist is killed, a shiver runs through my body and I have a very bad time.

The first thing I think of is the children he leaves behind or his wives who are left alone and impoverished.

Most of them are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and do not have the resources to live, let alone pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or the institutions, ”he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

“Every time a journalist is killed, a shiver runs through my body and I have a very bad time.

The first thing I think of is the children he leaves behind or his wives who are left alone and impoverished.

Most of them are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and do not have the resources to live, let alone pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or the institutions, ”he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

“Every time a journalist is killed, a shiver runs through my body and I have a very bad time.

The first thing I think of is the children he leaves behind or his wives who are left alone and impoverished.

Most of them are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and do not have the resources to live, let alone pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or the institutions, ”he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

The first thing I think of is the children he leaves behind or his wives who are left alone and impoverished.

Most of them are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and do not have the resources to live, let alone pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or the institutions, ”he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

The first thing I think of is the children he leaves behind or his wives who are left alone and impoverished.

Most of them are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and do not have the resources to live, let alone pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or the institutions, ”he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

The majority are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and have no resources to live, much less pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or institutions,” he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

The majority are very humble families that depended financially on the murdered journalist who live in small places and have no resources to live, much less pay for a lawyer or navigate the bureaucracy or institutions,” he explains.

“The indifference of the Mexican government to what is happening is incredible.

It is as if their work did not serve to make a problem visible.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

As if what they do has not served for anything.

“The connection between our families is not because we are journalists, but because we are victims.

That's where the strongest connection is,” he explains.

Are the bad guys winning?

-Yes, journalists continue to die and there are more and more zones of silence in the country.

-What fails the connection with society?

In each murder, the same few colleagues always come out to protest.

- Javier said that, society, where is society?

He also died working for a fairer and less corrupt country

-There is hope?

-Yes.

It excites me to see young people who do journalism in groups to have more reach and give themselves security.

Groups of journalists such as

in Mexico City,

in Guerrero or Guadalajara.

“As if they spit in my face”

Last week Griselda received one of those pieces of news that left her crying for days.

Last Friday a journalist called her to tell her that her husband's killer was about to be released from a California jail after serving a 72-month sentence, after Judge Dana Sabraw determined that she had "cooperated enough" and had served his sentence at the San Diego Correctional Center.

Until then, the

He was imprisoned for minor crimes committed in the United States, but he collaborated with justice in the trial of El 'Chapo' Guzmán, which allowed him to reach the street.

“It was as if Javier had been killed again.

As if they spit in my face, ”he recalls.

"I felt the pain, frustration and helplessness of years ago, but this time, they also robbed me of hope that justice would be done," he says with the leisurely tone of someone who has been dealing with disappointments for years.

“When I heard the news I thought about sitting in front of the American embassy with a banner that said “The United States covers up the murderers of journalists”, but now I know that this is not the way to go.

I am in another moment of my life and my actions can have consequences in my children”, he explains.

Press accreditation of Javier Valdez and his notebook.

Hector Guerrero

Regarding the rest of those involved in the murder, Juan Francisco, alias

, was arrested and sentenced to 32 years for shooting the journalist.

The assassin who finished him off, Luis Ildefonso, alias

, was found dead weeks later and Heriberto Picos, alias

, who was driving the vehicle in which the group was traveling, was also arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The captures of him are an anomaly in a context that says that 98% of the murders of journalists end without any arrest.

The intellectual author, the

, has played his cards better and gave himself up to the United States where he became a collaborator of justice.

“I just want his extradition to become a priority for Mexico.

I just want his life to serve in a Mexican prison for what he did, ”he says with the calm of someone who has spent many years trying to reconcile with the country he lives in.

His pain has not prevented Mexico from being the most homicidal country for the world's press.

15 journalists have been murdered since the beginning of the year and statistics say that six more journalists will be murdered before Christmas.

Those same numbers confirm that this time there will be no detainees either, that nothing will be known about the investigation and that two weeks later another journalist will be murdered again.

Griselda's is a story of horror, violence, cruelty, murdered journalists and official contempt.

But it is also a story of love, courage, struggle and raising your head.

An example of the brave Mexico that refuses to turn statistics into a norm and that “silence never wins”, the phrase engraved on the bust raised to Javier Valdez in his land.

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