You may remember this story I did a few months ago on survival techniques for journalists. I also produced a video on that course for the non-profit that runs it, Article 19, which you can see here as well as on their website.

Last weekend I spent a couple of days on a course with Mexican journalists in Toluca, just outside Mexico City. The training was put together by Article 19, a non-profit working here in Mexico trying to lobby and protect the rather besieged journalistic community which is under fire from all sides.

You can read my full report here, but here’s an extract:

Raymundo Arellano wears a pair of dog tags around his neck. His name, blood type and next of kin have been indented on the silver plates.

“My greatest fear is that I’ll be killed and they’ll bury me somewhere and no one will recognize my remains,” he says.

Arellano is a Mexican television reporter trying to do his job in a country wracked by drug-related violence. More than 30 journalists have been killed or disappeared since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; ten of them in the last year alone.

When Calderon came to power five years ago, he unleashed the Mexican army and police against the country’s drug cartels and organized crime networks – a strategy that has resulted in more than 35,000 deaths so far. Both drug gangs and Mexican officials target journalists reporting on events surrounding organized crime, according to non-profits.

One thing I didn’t write about was a feeling of guilt – guilt that as yet no foreign journalist has been targeted by either organized crime or government officials whilst trying to cover the country’s raging drug-related violence. Meanwhile, Mexican journalists are kidnapped and killed with impunity.

Why?

I asked most of the journalists I interviewed on the course that question, and most of them gave the same answer – that the foreign press don’t cover the “inside-baseball” side of the story, and it’s those details that get local reporters in trouble. In general, the reporting of foreign journalists here (some of which is incredibly insightful, not to mention brave)  puts the drug-related violence in a country-wide context.

That said,  Tracy Wilkinson, head of the Los Angeles Times bureau here in Mexico City, pointed out to an audience during a panel of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) and the American Society of News Editors (ASNE);

“What we’re dealing with – the foreign or international press – is nothing compared to what our Mexican colleagues have to deal with, who are really under pressure, and take risks that – thank god – don’t affect us at the same level.

But, she said, “foreign correspondents have had to radically change how we work in Mexico. Before, we could travel all over without thinking twice about it – now we still travel all over but with military-style planning.”

Violence against media workers in an old problem here in Mexico – you can see some reports I did on the same issue, same course, a couple of years ago here and here. But despite that, the impunity enjoyed by those who commit those aggressions remain. Self-censorship is now commonplace amongst reporters trying to stay alive, whilst drug-related violence that has claimed more than 35,000 lives since 2006 continues to consume the country. With the nation’s army roaming the streets, under the orders of President Felipe Calderon to catch those big bad drug lords, the army too stand accused of human rights violations against innocent civilians. And non-profits say that government officials are equally as responsible for abusing journalists as organized crime networks.

Mexico’s people desperately need quality journalism if they’re to understand what’s going on in this huge terrain. It’s my guess that as general elections approach in 2012, the suppression of reporters is only going to get worse.

You can see a video I produced for Article 19 on this course here.

Image: Mexican journalists enjoy first aid training during a training course on the outskirts of Mexico City in early April 2011. Deborah Bonello / MexicoReporter.com

This post also appeared on the Frontline Club network.

Published February 25th 2011

• Mexico’s migrant monarch butterflies in the state of Michoacan see less visitors as tourists are put off by press reports of narco violence.
• After being fired for asking Mexico President Felipe Calderon to respond to rumors that he has an alcohol problem, outspoken broadcaster and journalist Carmen Aristegui returned to the airwaves.
• Drug-related violence for the first time claimed the life of a US security agent – we ask what it means for US/Mexico relations.

Related links

Killing of US Customs and Immigration officer

• Drug Raids Across U.S. Net Hundreds of Suspects (NYT)
• Nine Arrested in ICE Agent’s Killing, but Questions of Torture Persist (BorderReporter.com)
• DEA sweep targets cartels in response to agent’s slaying in Mexico (Washington Post)
• Mexico’s Calderon not so happy with U.S. drug war cooperation (Los Angeles Times)
• Mexico Says U.S. Agent’s Killing Was Case of Mistaken Identity (WSJ)
• Oakland homes raided after federal agent’s death in Mexico (The Detroit News)

Carmen Aristegui:

• Carmen Aristegui on her dismissal (Spanish link to PueblaYa) and rehiring (LAT)
• MexicoReporter.com interviews Aristegui about the dangers for journalists in Mexico, June 2009
• Targeting the media in Mexico (AlJazeera)

Monarch Butterflies:

• Cartels have butterfly effect on Mexico’s monarchs (Houston Chronicle)
• Kings of the sky: The cautious comeback of an intrepid insect (Economist)

This is the first edition of MexicoReporterTV. Please leave your thoughts, suggestions and comments below – this is a work in progress. If you’re a journalist based in Mexico and want to be involved, ping me an email.

Acknowledgments and credits

With thanks to Laura Carlsen at the Americans Program and Dario Ramirez at Article 19 here in Mexico City, and editorial assistant Ulises Escamilla Haro.

Video shot, written and edited by Deborah Bonello. Shot on a Sony Z1 and the Canon Rebel T2i and the JuicedLink DT454 preamplifier/XLR adapter, using Manfrotto tripod and monopod, and edited on Final Cut Pro.

MexicoReporter.com graphics by Pablo Puga.

Mexico’s second annual human rights film festival, supported by a number of organizations here including the Mexico branch of Amnesty International, the Ambulante documentary film project and Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission, opens at the end of the week.

The series of documentary and fiction features, as well as short films, come from 23 countries and will run on screens Aug. 14-20 in two of the city’s Cinepolis cinemas. The cinema chain’s Fundacion Cinepolis is the event organizer.

Unlike last year, this year’s festival will have two competitive sections: best Mexican documentary and best Mexican short.

Mexico has no shortage of human rights issues for documentarians to tackle, and among the fare at this year’s festival are themes such as migration, global warming, freedom of expression, child prostitution and the slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez.

Productions included in the program range from films such as “Los Que Se Quedan” (“Those Who Remain”), “Voces Silenciadas” (“Silenced Voices”) and “Sin Nombre” (“Nameless”), which have already made the film festival rounds, to less prominent documentaries.

Last year’s event attracted fewer than 4,000 visitors, and about 1,000 of those attended an open-air film broadcast in Mexico City’s Zocalo. In a city of more than 20 million people, that’s not a great turnout.

This year, organizers are going to charge 20 pesos per ticket, unlike last year, when screenings were free.

It’s hoped that charging for tickets might encourage more people to come and see the films. Lorena Guille, executive director of Fundacion Cinepolis, said, “There is a cultural perception here that what’s free isn’t of good quality.”

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Deborah Bonello reporting for MexicoReporter.com

May 30 2009 – My breath is tearing out of my lungs and my leg muscles are screaming for a reprieve. I just scaled a 60-degree hill coated in thorny brambles and poisonous plants whilst being pounded by rain. In the dark. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. Later that night, my fellow journalists and I were kidnapped by masked guerillas who jumped onto our bus.

Our only comfort? That none of this was real. But it could have been, which is the point of the survival course 18 journalists who live and work in Mexico attended last week in Toluca, just outside of Mexico City.

During the five day survival program, the journalists dodged tear gas and Army tanks and learned how to survive in the wilderness. The psychological stresses were addressed, too; they learned strategies for dealing with emotions.

In Mexico these days, that may be the most important lesson of all.

“Once in Apatzingan a cameraman and I were taken,” says Miguel Garcia Tinoco, a 40-year-old journalist and owner of the Notivideo video news website based in Michoacan.

“They took us to talk with a drug-trafficking boss on a street in Apatzingan, and they wanted to make us write what they wanted, what they wanted to communicate.”

This group of traffickers gained infamy three years ago when they tossed the severed heads of six enemies onto the dance floor of a nightclub.

“They wanted us to publish an explanation of why they’d murdered those six people. What we told them was that we couldn’t make a decision in terms of what we published or didn’t publish in the newspaper – that it was up to the editor. And in the end my editor decided not to publish anything at all.”

Antonio Ramos Tafolla, a 58-year-old reporter in the same state as Garcia, was kidnapped and beaten up by a group he says he was never able to identify.

“It limited me and the boldness that I had before to write. It limited me but it didn’t shut me up or stop me thinking, but I have more reservations now.”

Some don’t get granted any conditions. Ramos said that a colleague of his went missing two years ago and has never reappeared. Garcia says the same of two other fellow journalists in Michoacan. They are three of the eight journalists currently listed as missing in Mexico.

It’s not only reporters covering Mexico’s drug traffickers and organized crime networks that run the risk of reprisals. These journalists recounted tales from covering everything from car accidents, massacres and assassinations, to shoot-outs, kidnappings and election campaigns.

Run-ins with the federal police, the army and local governors are common for any reporter who questions local power networks.

“Sadly, the army has seen us, to a certain point, as enemies,” Garcia said.

“They close their operations and don’t let us film, they don’t let us into some crime scenes to get information … And they also take away our gear and they assault us.”

Back in the classroom Dr. Ana Zellhuber gives the journalists some practical guidance in dealing both with people who have just come out of emergency situations, as well their own emotional reactions to tough circumstances.

“You’re not heroes,” she says. “You’re reporters. Everyone has a duty to perform – do yours. Don’t turn yourselves into one of the victims.”

Stories unfolded in the classroom. One of the four women on the course, a reporter from Tijuana, talked about  the time she was approached by a man who said the Mexican Army had massacred people in his town.

She didn’t know what to do because as the man told her his story she knew she was going to cry but she worried that crying would draw attention to herself.

“There are no wrong emotions,” said Zellhuber. “And there are always emotions.”

Monica Franco is a 31-year-old journalist working in Puebla.

“Intimidation is a daily reality for us,” she told me.

“We’re not just intimidated by the police – we’re intimidated by government spheres, by press officers, intimidated by politicians and by civilians who now don’t see us as allies.

“A lot of co-workers end up losing the point of why we’re here, which is to inform and give a voice to those people who don’t have one. And that’s what leads a lot of people to see us as enemies of society.”

Franco hits on an interesting point. Some of the journalists that have been killed here in Mexico over the last few years (see here for more numbers) were targeted as a direct result of reports they’d filed.

But in Mexico, where training is in short supply, wages are pitifully low and reporters aren’t protected or helped by their employers, it’s easy to see how they themselves can fall prey to corruption.

Franco says that someone broke into her home in Puebla. The burglars only stole journalism gear, nothing else.

“Instead of helping us we were intimidated by the police and told that due to our jobs, they could break into our homes, she said.”

They never learned who did the break in, Franco says.

“We just put up a stronger gate on the front door.”

Article 19 and the Rory Peck Trust organized the survival course, which took place between May  17th – 22nd in Toluca, Mexico.

Journalists in Mexico can have a pretty hard time doing their jobs, especially those who cover Mexico’s narco-trafficking and organized crime problems.

May 29 2009 – A couple of non-profits who work on press freedom and protection issues here in Mexico, the Rory Peck Trust and Article 19, got together and ran a course just outside Mexico City this month for 18 journalists living and working here.

During the five-day course, the participants, who came from states all over Mexico, from Michoacan all the way to Tijuana in Baja California, were “kidnapped”, dodged tear gas, learned first aid, and received psychological training on how to deal with emergencies.

See the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Toluca, Mexico for La Plaza

Video: Mexican journalists put through their survival paces, by Deborah Bonello.

The special prosecutor’s office for crimes against journalists, created in 2006 by the Mexican government of then-President Vicente Fox, is ineffective, lacks independence and is poorly funded, according to a report by the international freedom of expression nonprofit group Article 19.

Speaking at a news conference in the Casa Lamm cultural center in Mexico City on Friday, Dario Ramirez, head of Article 19 here, said the role of the FEADP, or Fiscalia Especial Para la Atencion de Delitos Cometidos Contra Periodistas, had not been adequately defined.

“That means that the scope of prosecution and protection is limited and ambiguous,” Ramirez said.

Article 19 says that 29 journalists have been killed and eight have disappeared in Mexico since 2000. Most cases remain unsolved, in part because of the inefficacy of the FEADP, according to the nonprofit. It and other organizations claim that a “culture of impunity” exists in Mexico, created by the failure to bring to justice those who kill or harass journalists.

“The inability to resolve these cases not only contributes to the climate of impunity, but it encourages future aggressions,” Ramirez said.

Sanjuana Martinez, a Mexican journalist who received death threats after reporting the alleged sexual abuse of young boys by Catholic priests in the United States and Mexico, also attended the launch of the report.

”We have a saying here in Mexico: If you want to hide something, create an attorney general’s office,” she said.

Only a few months ago, the head of the FEADP, Octavio Orellana Wiarco, said that reports of violence against journalists in Mexico were being exaggerated and that “there is a mistaken perception that Mexico is the country where the largest number of homicides of journalists takes place. This is not true.”

His comments sparked incredulity among Mexican journalists and their defenders.

Ramirez was keen to stress that the purpose of the Article 19 report is not to demand the termination of the FEADP but rather to adjust it to make it a stronger, more effective institution.

The statement from the nonprofit recommended — among other things — changing the focus of the legal body from protecting journalists to protecting freedom of expression and to improving the FEADP’s transparency and accountability.

– Written for La Plaza

Here in Mexico, we keep our eye on the frequent press-freedom reports that come out, given the high levels of violence against journalists in the country and the culture of impunity that abounds.

Tuesday’s release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, sadly, held no surprises.

The organization ranked Mexico among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists:

“Growing violence associated with criminal organizations has made Mexico one of the world’s deadliest countries for reporters. Since 2000, at least 24 journalists have been killed, eight in direct reprisal for their work. Seven other journalists have disappeared since 2005.”

About Latin American in general, the organization reports:

“Powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, gangsters in Brazilian slums, paramilitaries in Colombia,and violent street gangs in El Salvador and Guatemala are terrorizing the press. Self-censorship is widespread.”

The U.K.-based Frontline blog begins on a positive note about Colombia’s journalists, remarking that “according to the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom of the Press, no Colombian journalists were killed in 2008 for the first time in 23 years.”

But it goes on to say that a total of 130 journalists were killed in Colombia in the past 30 years. The CPJ reports:

“While violence in Colombia has eased in the last four years, it remains one of the world’s most murderous countries for the press. Forty reporters, photographers and editors in all have been killed since 1992, and the country has the highest per capita rate of unsolved journalist murders in Latin America.”

And 2009 has already got off to a bad start for Colombian journalists, continues Frontline.

According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, Maria Eugenia Guerrero, a Colombian journalist, was found dead on the outskirts of the Ecuadorian city of Tulcannear earlier this month,

“[Guerrero], who was working for the Integracion Estereo station in the southern Colombian city of Ipiales, was brutally assaulted and killed and her body was left in a remote area outside Tulcan. … The body, according to the forensics report, showed signs of sexual assault, and it is presumed the journalist was killed in a violent manner because a portion of her skull was not found and had presumably been detached as a result of a severe blow.” link

– Written for La Plaza

A television, radio and print advertising campaign called “What you don’t know can hurt you (“Te hace daño no saber” in Spanish)” is to launch here in Mexico in an attempt by press freedom groups to raise public awareness about violence against journalists and to demand more action from the government of President Felipe Calderon.

At a candlelit presentation Tuesday night in the Interactive Economy Museum in downtown Mexico City, domestic and international organizations announced the campaign to an audience of several hundred people. They hope to bring an end to what they claim is impunity for those who commit crimes against journalists in Mexico.

Since 2000, 28 journalists have been killed in Mexico and eight have disappeared, according to Article 19, one of the organizations sponsoring the advertising campaign. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says the figure is actually higher and that 45 journalists have been killed in the same period. Mexico is the deadliest country in the Americas for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders, and reporters who cover organized crime are especially at risk.

In recent weeks, Miguel Angel Villagomez Valle, editor of the newspaper La Noticia, was killed in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state. Also killed were David Garcia Monroy, columnist for El Diario, in Chihuahua, and reporter Jose Armando Rodriguez Carreon, also of El Diario, in Ciudad Juarez.

“The response of the Mexican state in all of these cases has been the same — immunity for those behind the crimes,” said Brisa Solis, executive director of the National Center of Social Communication (CENCOS), another of the groups supporting the campaign.

Expressing solidarity were several Mexican journalists, including Lydia Cacho, who has become a symbol of the persecution of journalists here in Mexico.

Cacho says that she was arrested illegally, taken to the end of a pier and told to jump by state police from Puebla after she published a book alleging the existence of a pedophile ring in Cancun in 2005. Her case against her alleged aggressors went all the way to Mexico’s Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled, controversially, that although there was evidence of crimes against Cacho, her rights weren’t violated enough to warrant further action.

“The defense of our reporters is a vital factor in the guarantee of our access to information, and to make decisions in a free, autonomous way,” Cacho said during last night’s event.

The first phase of the campaign — which opens in the media today — will be aimed at raising awareness, and the second phase will take more of an advocacy approach. The campaign is being supported by a number of press freedom nonprofits: The Global Latin America Community Radio Assn. (AMARC), the Mexican Assn. for the Right to Information (AMEDI), Women’s Communication and Information (CIMAC), Fundacion Manuel Buendia, the Institute for Security and Democracy (INSYDE), Reporters Without Borders, The National Journalism Prize, the Mexican Press and Democracy Foundation (PRENDE), Universidad Iberoamericana, the Rory Peck Trust and the National Press Editors Assn. It is being funded by CENCOS and Article 19.

TV spots for the campaign show the names of journalists who have been killed or disappeared in Mexico. The names appear over a white background, until they eventually obliterate all of the white.

This post was written for La Plaza, LATimes.com.

Photo: One of the campaign ads, which asks: “If they’re not there, who is going to inform us?” Credit: Article 19.

*Edited Dec 5th, 2008, 9:35a.m Mexico City time. The campaign is being supported, but not funded, by a range of non-profits. It is being funded by Article 19 and Cencos.

But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report from Amnesty International on human rights around the world.

You can access the report here and click on the links at the top for specific country reports.

Techniques traditionally used by Latin American countries to oppress political dissidents have been turned on human rights defenders and, in countries such as Mexico, journalists.

The war in Colombia continues to hit civilians the hardest:

“Civilians continued to bear the brunt of Colombia’s long-running internal armed conflict. Although the number of those killed or kidnapped continued to fall, all parties to the conflict – the security forces, paramilitaries and guerrilla groups – continued to commit serious human rights abuses. Hundreds of thousands of people were again displaced by confrontations between the warring parties.”

The United States seems to be softening on th death penalty:

“For many years, US policy on the death penalty has run counter to the abolitionist trend in the rest of the region. While 2007 saw death sentences imposed in the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the USA, the USA was the only country to carry out executions. However, even in the USA, there are signs that support for the death penalty is softening.”

And there seems to have been some progress on women’s rights:

“Latin America continued to take important and innovative steps to stamp out violence against women and make gender equality a reality. Mexico and Venezuela, for example, passed new laws to combat violence against women. These laws broaden the definition of violence against women and provide a more comprehensive framework of protection mechanisms. Some initiatives to tackle violence against women – for example the pioneering women’s police stations in Brazil – continued to be hampered by a lack of adequate resources and continuing misconceptions about the nature and extent of the problem.”

Impunity however, is still rife in the region due to corruption, inefficiency and a lack of political will on the part of each country’s justice system.

Although there are some effective justice processes taking place in Argentina, Peru and Chile for past abuses during the dirty wars on those countries – see this week’s post La Plaza on that – perpetrators of human rights abuses, particularly agents of the state, went unpunished:

“Human rights violations committed by agents of the state continued to be poorly investigated in most countries. In Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Jamaica, for example, human rights violations committed by law enforcement officials were rarely, if ever, prosecuted.”

See last year’s post on Amnesty’s Mexico Report.