Draft Summary of the Situation for Journalists in Mexico to Present
Draft Summary of the Situation for Journalists in Mexico to Present
By: Cara Gibbons and Beth Spratt
Freedom of expression has a precarious history in Mexico. For 71 years, Mexico was ruled by a single party which controlled all levels of political life. The PRI (Partido Revolutionario Institutional) maintained a tight grip on the media, and freedom of expression was extremely curtailed. During this period a pattern of impunity for human rights violations was established. Despite reforms, this historical pattern persists, including the present impunity for aggression against journalists. During the rule of the PRI through most of the 20th century, Mexico experienced significant economic growth coupled with extremely skewed income distribution. Marginalization from economic and political benefits resulted in the growth of dissident groups, such as student, labour and indigenous activists. From the 1960s to the 1980s, during a period known as La Guerra Sucia (the Dirty War), these challenges to PRI authority were met with extreme repression, including extrajudicial executions, massacres and forced disappearances. Impunity has persisted for the overwhelming majority of these crimes.
Extensive electoral reforms eventually led to the federal election of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) in 2000. While the government engaged in a series of reforms aimed at ameliorating the human rights situation in Mexico, including the protection of journalists’ freedom of expression, shadows of Mexico’s institutional history of impunity remain and in many respects there is not robust institutional support for human rights.
During this period of legal and democratic reform, Mexico has also suffered from significant growth in illegal drug trafficking organizations (“DTOs”). In recent years, their influence has spread throughout the country, bringing with it increasing violence and insecurity.
Mexico has a long history of reacting to threats to its stability with militarization. For example, Mexico relies extensively on its armed forces to engage in counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency measures, such as responses to the insurgency and perceived insurgency in Chiapas and other southern Mexican states in the 1990s. Mexican authorities consider local police forces to lack the technical expertise and professionalism required to undertake such tasks, in addition viewing them as highly prone to corruption. This approach has long received political and financial support from the United States, which has also traditionally viewed the Mexican military as more reliable than its police forces. Its financial aid to the Mexican military for counter-narcotics greatly increased in the late 1990s. At that time, much of the funding came from the International Narcotics Control Account, administered by the State Department.
After the election of President Fox and the PAN in 2000, violence related to the narcotics trade began to mount slightly with a small government offensive in the states of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, and along the U.S/Mexico border, with the purpose of fighting Mexico’s powerful DTOs in those regions. However, violence and the number of casualties has skyrocketed since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón’s newly formed government began a war on the DTOs in earnest.[1] According to The University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute’s analysis of data from Agencia Reforma Newspaper Group, since January, 2007, 28,228 people have died in drug related violence in Mexico.
In this atmosphere of violence, freedom of expression has been under steady attack. Journalists have been victims of threats, abduction, torture and murder at the hands of the DTOs, government officials, and others whose criminal activities have been exposed and undermined by journalists. According to the International Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression Mission in Mexico between 2000-2008, a minimum of 24 journalists and media workers have been killed, 8 have disappeared, and dozens of others have been threatened, intimidated, and harassed in connection to their professional work[2]. Prior to 2006, DTOs targeted journalists if they reported on issues integral to their operations. For example, DTOs would target journalists if they were exposing their corporate, police, government, military, or custom agent contacts.[3] After 2006, particularly after the beginning of Calderón’s war on the Mexican DTOs, these organizations began to take an interest in public opinion. In some areas, they have begun coercing journalists to suppress stories about their violence and paying journalists to play up the brutality of their rivals.[4] They have also attempted to decrease media coverage of drug-related violence for fear that such attention might garner public outrage and pressure for an increased crackdown on their activities.[5]
Unfortunately, Mexico’s history of systemic impunity has continued with respect to aggressions against journalists. Authorities have failed to successfully prosecute more than 90% of cases .[6] Most crimes against journalists fall under state jurisdiction. State authorities have systematically failed to investigate these crimes. Those crimes which are investigated are often investigated negligently and are marred by collaboration with criminal organizations and unlawful investigation methods, such as the fabrication of evidence, that lead to incorrect results.
The natural consequence that has arisen out of this atmosphere of violence and impunity has been widespread self-censorship on the part of Mexico’s journalists. In August, 2008, an international mission of press freedom NGOs confirmed that self-censorship amongst journalists was on the rise in Mexico, mainly due to fear of DTOs and mistrust of state and federal authorities, whose lack of response to these crimes many attribute to their possible links with crime .[7] Indeed, journalists labour under both perceived threats, arising from a state of utter impunity regarding crimes against the press, as well as direct coercion, both externally and internally from editorial boards and media owners. A failure to implement a program of state protection and training for journalists who work in such dangerous conditions leaves most journalists vulnerable to the violent tactics of their attackers. Low wages and fear tactics can increase susceptibility to bribes. Some media groups make the situation worse by keeping journalists as casual employees in order to avoid paying benefits and having to comply with labour rights legislation.[8] If a journalist accepts a bribe, they are then expected to treat the briber, favourably.[9]This already precarious situation is exacerbated by the dependence of many media outlets on government contracts, without which many would have to close. [10]
There is a lack of solidarity amongst journalists and others in the media industry, who might otherwise form lobby groups or unions to demand protection and important legislative changes. [11]This lack of solidarity is particularly great in areas of high risk, where there is a tendency to lay low in order to avoid becoming a target. In addition, DTOs have corrupted elements of the press media, which has served to create an atmosphere of mistrust between media workers and journalists.[12]
The efforts of the Mexican government to protect freedom of expression have been largely ineffective. In February 2006, the Chamber of Deputies created the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Journalists (“Special Prosecutor”). When it was created, the Fox government, still in power at that time, stated that the Special Prosecutor would be competent to direct investigations and prosecute crimes committed against journalists in cases where the crime was connected with their profession as a journalist. In reality, it is not empowered to tackle cases involving drug traffickers or organized crime, and it has no formal ability to investigate crimes or make charges.[13] The result of this setup has been that, in its first 4 years, the Special Prosecutor has averaged only one prosecution per year.[14] Its institutional weakness has been exacerbated by weak leadership. A new Special Prosecutor, Gustavo Salas Chávez, was appointed in February 2010. Mr. Salas Chávez is a lawyer, although he lacks both previous prosecutorial work experience and a background in human rights or freedom of expression. It was reported that he was instructed by the Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez to review the office’s backlog of cases, combat impunity and reorganize the office. In a recent hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Salas stated that the office was undergoing institutional reform to improve its operations in various areas. He also stated that the office is planning to expand its duties to include all crimes against freedom of expression and therefore is changing its name to the (Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos Cometidos contra la Libertad de Expressión).
In 2006, the federal Chamber of Deputies established a Special Committee for Dealing with Attacks against Journalists and News Media(Comisión Especial para el Seguimiento alas Agresiones y Medios de Comunicación). It had some success raising awareness about the issue. Although it was disbanded by the Chamber of Deputies in September 2009, it was reinstated in February 2010.
There is widespread support by Mexican journalists and freedom of the expression advocacy organizations for automatically placing all crimes against freedom of expression under federal jurisdiction in order to combat the impunity so often found at the state level. Since 2007, there has been some movement from the federal government towards this approach. A proposal for a Constitutional amendment federalizing crimes against freedom of expression was approved by the Chamber of Deputies in 2009, but has not yet been voted on by the Senate, apparently due to a lack of political will.[15] However, the recent killing of a 21 year-old intern photographer for the newspaper El Diaro in Ciudad Júarez and the paper’s subsequent plea to the DTOs in an editorial for an end to the bloodshed has led to a public uproar that has resulted in President Calderón stating, on September 24, 2010, that he will do what he can to expedite legislative reform in this area.
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[1] Article 19 et al., “Press Freedom in Mexico: The Shadow of Impunity and Violence” (August 2008), online: at 7.
[2] Article 19 et al., “Press Freedom in Mexico: The Shadow of Impunity and Violence” (August 2008), online: at 4.
[3] Sweeney, Bill & Lauren Wolfe & Lew Serviss, eds., “Silence or Death in Mexico’s Press: Crime, Violence, and Corruption Are Destroying the Country’s Journalism” (September 2010), online: Centre for the Protection of Journalists at 1.
[4] Sweeney, Bill & Lauren Wolfe & Lew Serviss, eds., “Silence or Death in Mexico’s Press: Crime, Violence, and Corruption Are Destroying the Country’s Journalism” (September 2010), online: Centre for the Protection of Journalists at 1.
[5] Sweeney, Bill & Lauren Wolfe & Lew Serviss, eds., “Silence or Death in Mexico’s Press: Crime, Violence, and Corruption Are Destroying the Country’s Journalism” (September 2010), online: Centre for the Protection of Journalists at 1.
[6] Sweeney, Bill & Lauren Wolfe & Lew Serviss, eds., “Silence or Death in Mexico’s Press: Crime, Violence, and Corruption Are Destroying the Country’s Journalism” (September 2010), online: Centre for the Protection of Journalists at 3.
[7] Article 19 et al., “Press Freedom in Mexico: The Shadow of Impunity and Violence” (August 2008), online: at 4.
[8] Estevez, Dolia, “Protecting Press Freedom in an Environment of Violence and Impunity” (May 2010), online: Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars Press Freedom.Estevez.pdf at 15.
[9] Estevez, Dolia, “Protecting Press Freedom in an Environment of Violence and Impunity” (May 2010), online: Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars Press Freedom.Estevez.pdf at 15.
[10] Sweeney, Bill & Lauren Wolfe & Lew Serviss, eds., “Silence or Death in Mexico’s Press: Crime, Violence, and Corruption Are Destroying the Country’s Journalism” (September 2010), online: Centre for the Protection of Journalists at 17.
[11] Article 19 et al., “Press Freedom in Mexico: The Shadow of Impunity and Violence” (August 2008), online: at 15.
[12] Article 19 et al., “Press Freedom in Mexico: The Shadow of Impunity and Violence” (August 2008), online: at 15.
[13] Estevez, Dolia, “Protecting Press Freedom in an Environment of Violence and Impunity” (May 2010), online: Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars Press Freedom.Estevez.pdf at 9.
[14] Estevez, Dolia, “Protecting Press Freedom in an Environment of Violence and Impunity” (May 2010), online: Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars Press Freedom.Estevez.pdf at 10.
[15] Estevez, Dolia, “Protecting Press Freedom in an Environment of Violence and Impunity” (May 2010), online: Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars Press Freedom.Estevez.pdf at 17.