Like a protected witness, like a double spy, like a woman at risk of a sexist crime.
This is how Adriana Vázquez lives, inventing a false life from the name that appears in this article.
Not to die.
To stay alive, she left her house in Acapulco one April morning in 2011 wearing what she was wearing, flip-flops.
“I'll be right back”, she told her father, and she took refuge in a hotel.
The next day she was in Mexico City.
She's still there.
In Mexico, some journalists are killed, while others are forced to live as fugitives, with a bankrupt economy and poor health.
Uprooted as a borderless migrant.
The power went out on the whole block that night.
Only the lit cigarettes were seen in the truck crossed at the door of the house.
The one who invited Jesús Medina to the mountains to document something that had happened with his camera was himself, he found out two years later, that he was trying to get a gun.
The next day, a truck tried to hit him when he was driving his motorcycle.
He sped up, looked for shortcuts, passed one town and another, it was no longer a matter of going home, they were getting dangerously close to knocking him down, he took detours and finally dodged them on a dirt track.
But he too was lost and the motorcycle stopped.
He managed to get to his parents, who knows how.
He shaved his beard, changed his clothes, and the next day he arrived in Mexico City.
He slept at the bus station.
The threats in Mexico are shots that have not yet hit the target.
It's better to run.
Some sources record 17 deaths, another 12, depending on the verifications that have been made, if it is a crime related to the exercise of the profession or of another tenor.
This 2022 has been bloody for journalists in the country of drug trafficking, which is the same as saying corrupt politicians and police or unscrupulous businessmen, there is no one to distinguish them.
For a handful of pesos, enough to dine in a good restaurant, a couple of hit men point at the car and go through the windows.
This is how they did it on December 15 against the vehicle in which one of the most famous journalists in Mexico was traveling, the radio and television announcer Ciro Gómez Leyva.
No one is safe, not even in the capital, always mentioned as a sanctuary of tranquility.
With the bullets the uncomfortable news ends.
Margarito Martínez and Lourdes Maldonado died with bullets in Tijuana.
Pedro Pablo Kumul and José Luis Gamboa in Veracruz, Fredid Román in Guerrero, Jorge Luis Camero and Juan Arjón in Sonora… Michoacán, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, there is no State that is free of gunpowder against journalists .
Against anyone, to tell the truth.
Christmas party for threatened journalists and their families, in Mexico City, on December 20. Mónica González Islas
The saddest Christmas party was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Mexico City.
Peanuts, tangerines, basket tacos and some sweets awaited the widows of reporters and journalists displaced from their places of origin.
A meeting day to not forget that their cases are still pending justice, to cover themselves in the absence of state aid.
And so that the children can hit the piñata and take a bath of sweets.
Widows also struck blind blows.
There isn't much else to do.
Impunity for crimes and threats is so high, around 90%, that justice becomes non-existent.
Many prefer not to report because the police and prosecutors are sometimes members of the inextricable skein that pulls the trigger.
The organization Article 19, specialized in this violence against the press, explains that almost half of the aggressors or inducers are public officials, that is, mayors, councilors, police officers, and the military.
The rest will be organized crime.
And some poor hitmen at the service of all.
Adriana Vázquez, 49, received verbal threats in 2017, with the classic dialectic of criminals: "You fucking old lady, what are you messing with the government, they're going to charge your dick [an unmitigated death threat]."
They left dead animals at the door of her house.
“Acapulco had become impossible.
My boyfriend said that it was my business, that I was crazy, oh, woman, you and your ideas.
But shots sounded in front of my house.
One day I went to see the prosecutor and he recommended that I give up: "If you report, you speed up your death and that of your parents, you better go."
And she came out with what she was wearing.
The hawks [informers and stalkers] joked that Tuesday at her door: “Are you leaving yet?” Said one.
And the other followed suit: "No, man, can't you see that she's wearing flip flops?"
It was either that or cut off "the tongue and fingers."
This is how a journalist is broken.
Three years passed until he returned to his home in Acapulco.
She tried six months before, but her fear kept her in a hotel, she did not get to see her parents on that occasion.
And all because he had written an article entitled
Las Favelas de Acapulco,
where he narrated the dirt, the lack of services, the insecurity, the drugs.
Was that what the local authorities had to show tourists?
It turned out that the aspiring local deputy was a compadre of the politician on duty, who in turn had a relationship with her neighbor... "The neighbors blew the whistle."
Vázquez does not have state protection.
The mechanism designed for that is exceeded, without resources or training, denounce civil organizations.
"If you're no longer a journalist, you don't meet the requirements, but how can we be, if they silenced us," complains Jesús Medina, 42, president of the Displaced Journalists Association of Mexico.
And he mentions many other obstacles to access help and protection.
Sometimes everything is fixed with a panic button in a country where killing is practically free.
Adriana Vázquez, journalist threatened, on December 20. Mónica González Islas
The Pacheco family fights every year to continue the protection measures in the house they rented in a state other than Guerrero, where their father, the journalist Francisco Pacheco, was assassinated.
For seven years they have lived surrounded by metal security sheets and concertinas, with surveillance cameras.
Seven years ago and they keep bothering them.
They left political and crime journalism, as almost everyone does, and continued with cultural news, far from home.
But they have continued the investigation into the murder and that has consequences.
They are already on the fourth prosecutor who deals with the case.
“The first was removed, the second resigned, the third was changed.
We still keep the box intact that the first one returned to us with my father's clothes and now they have asked us for expert reports, seven years later, ”complains his daughter Priscila,
30 years old.
In Guerrero, where they still keep their things under surveillance, they cut off their electricity, turn off their cameras, but the protection mechanism does not understand them as direct death threats, like the first ones that forced his exile.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
where they still keep their belongings under surveillance, they cut off their electricity, turn off their cameras, but the protection mechanism does not understand them as direct death threats, like the first ones that forced their exile.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
where they still keep their belongings under surveillance, they cut off their electricity, turn off their cameras, but the protection mechanism does not understand them as direct death threats, like the first ones that forced their exile.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
They turn off their cameras, but the protection mechanism does not understand them as direct death threats, like the first ones that forced their exile.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
They turn off their cameras, but the protection mechanism does not understand them as direct death threats, like the first ones that forced their exile.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
“Every year we have the same lawsuits with them to renew the protection.
This did not end with the death of my father, although we will always be the family of the murdered journalist.
We had to cut off the phone at home, of course they called, and they took down the banners asking for justice, even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
even though we are in another state.
We do notice the threat, but we don't know who to defend ourselves against, or why."
These families end up being experts in legal sciences from having to defend themselves almost by themselves.
They investigate, they get evidence, and that has consequences.
Two lightning bolts at dawn
, from the Ojos de perro versus impunity collective, is a miniseries with which the Pachecos fight against oblivion and demand justice.
After sleeping in the bus terminal that night in October 2017, Jesús Medina sought the help of other colleagues and a journalist from the newspaper
Proceso
told his case.
Social networks moved, support arrived and in four days he was able to reunite his family in the capital.
Today they are all displaced in another town that is not his in Morelos, from where he fled on a motorcycle.
He continues in journalism, trying to consolidate radio stations in various areas and helping other displaced persons from the association.
But the first few months he abandoned his pen and camera to sell avocados on the street.
There was no other.
His crime was to defend the peasants with his profession and with his knowledge so that they would not be robbed of their springs with bad tricks.
In these villages, journalists are sometimes also activists, spokespersons and defenders of a population without many resources.
Medina had studied at UNAM and "questioned the authorities about the social, environmental,
deeds wrongly done."
The perfect hornet's nest.
Those who distribute the public budgets do not want any know-how bothering them.
And much less that he counts it on the radio.
Then it was 2017 and Mexico had experienced an earthquake with dire consequences.
Humanitarian aid often ended up in corrupt hands, the same as rescue boots, diapers or medicines.
Medina knew it and told it.
Forced displacement of journalists is growing in Mexico.
The accumulated figures for recent years speak of dozens, between 30 and 60, or more, it is difficult to adjust the count.
Those who can leave the country, others leave the trade and live as they can.
In many cities, they call them zones of silence, the local press hardly counts the deaths that week and whether they occurred here or there, but does not go into depth.
There are entire States in silence.
“Protection is very poor for the displaced.
Faced with judicial impunity, many times journalists are sent to other cities or their families, rarely, but scholarships are not offered for the children, new job opportunities are not given, and the economic precariousness that the profession already drags increases. in Mexico”, says Paula Saucedo,
official of the organization's Protection and Defense program Article 19. “Neither are dignified conditions offered for return.
Pablo Morrugares returned to Guerrero in 2020 and in a couple of days they killed him,” says Saucedo.
The psycho-emotional impact of the displaced gradually reduces their health, sometimes to the point of death.
They don't even have money for medicines.
"I have known diabetics who put food before medicine, logically," says Saucedo.
"And family breakdowns, broken life plans."
When Jesús Medina is asked about this, he says that the word that he has had to learn through iron and fire is resilience.
“Families, wives, widows, children, are indirect victims and the State does not visualize the problem.
In my case, in five years we had to sell everything we had to survive.
We suffer the uprooting of family, friends, the social environment.
That's the biggest loss."
“Loneliness, silence and isolation”.
This is how Adriana Vázquez lives.
She tells her family in Acapulco that she is fine.
She tells her neighbors in Mexico City: “I'm married, I'm a housewife and my husband doesn't let me do anything.
It is my way of saying that I have stopped being dangerous for those who want to kill me”.
And the boyfriend she had there, the one who helped her leave the house that Tuesday in front of the informers… “He jokes that he is my husband… At first he came to see me, now we are just friends with her.
The projects we had in common are over.
My immune system has been compromised and I have polydeforming rheumatoid arthritis."
Her hands already show signs of seizing.
One day they will no longer be able to hold the pen.
Press credentials of Javier Valdez, journalist murdered in Culiacán. Mónica González Islas
In the center where the widows gathered this week in front of the dishes of peanuts and tangerines, they have set up a memorial for Javier Valdez.
They huddle their feathers on the shelves, silent.
The notes in his notebooks.
Two months before he was shot to death in Culiacán, he wrote a note condemning the murder of reporter Miroslava Breach, correspondent for La Jornada in Chihuahua, where he complained that no one attended the protests.
“Where is this society that demands brave and dignified journalism? That criticizes the corruption of reporters and complicity, where did it hide?
Those who from anonymity call us chayoteros, sellouts, corrupt, hypocrites, pro-government supporters, where are they?
[…] They are going to come for us, to dispose of us.
Stay like this, immutable, hidden, absent,
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