Peter Gabriel, the musician and activist, implored Mexico President Felipe Calderon to show “real political will, muscle and budget” in investigating the hundreds of unsolved murders of young women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua Friday.

Speaking to a packed press conference through a translator, and flanked by Mexican film star Diego Luna and musician Saul Hernandez from the band Jaguares, Gabriel said that he asks no more young women have to suffer the same fate as more than the 300 girls and young women who have been murdered in the border town since 1993.

He also asked that “all those families who are still suffering an enormous pain have the chance to find out the truth of what happened to their kids, to their family members, and to get some kind of justice and reparation.”

Towards the end of the press conference, Gabriel was asked what he thought about the current levels of drug-related violence in Mexico and whether Calderon’s military strategy would be a success. The drug war in Mexico has killed more than 7,000 people since the beginning of 2008 — read more about it here.

Gabriel answered that a new, global approach was needed to fight the illegal drug trade, and that, in his opinion, legalization of drugs is the obvious solution.

“I would rather the doctors were administering the drugs than the drug traffickers,” said the musician.

Peter Gabriel is a prominent human-rights activist, and in 1992 founded the nonprofit group Witness, which uses video and online technologies to bring human-rights violations to light.

A press release from the federal government about the meeting between Calderon and Gabriel reported that “President Calderón pledged to combat any abuse of authority and to promote the repairs of damage to victims. At the same time, he confirmed his government’s will to combat impunity. He said that federal forces are collaborating with the local authorities to solve the cases of feminicides.”

See the video for footage from the press conference.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

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

Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most prominent journalists, disappeared from the Mexican radio airwaves last year in a cloud of controversy.

As Reed Johnson reported in January 2008, “Aristegui’s departure from W Radio set off a flurry of op-ed commentary in Mexico City newspapers. Several commentators have denounced the incident as an act of censorship and harassment by media and governmental interests.”

Now Aristegui’s back with a new radio news show –- this time on a different network. The journalist, who continued to host her nightly television news show on CNN Español during her radio hiatus, returns to the Mexican airwaves from 6 – 10 every weekday morning on MVS Radio.

She took some time out to speak to the Los Angeles Times about why her show got silenced last year, and the reality for journalists working in Mexico.

You can watch a video of protests over her departure last year here, and the Spanish-language version of the interview is below.

To see the whole, 40-minute unedited video in Spanish, click here.

Para ver la entrevista completa (40 minutos), haz click  aquí.

Jonathan Mirando García, age 7. Disappeared in the Tlapan neighborhood of Mexico City on Nov. 22, 2006. Distinguishing features: a mole on his nose.

Saul Hernandez Ramírez, 10 months old and 55 centimeters in size. Disappeared in Naucalpan, Mexico City, on an unknown date.

América Martínez Enriquez, 1 month old. Disappeared from Matamoros, in the state of Tamaulipas, on June 23, 2003.

The list of missing children in Mexico, crushingly, goes on for a lot longer. About 45,000 children are reported missing in Mexico every year, according to Aprenem (Asociación Pro Recuperación de Niños Extraviados y Orientación de la Juventud de México), an organization dedicated to trying to find them.

It was that staggering fact as well as the huge number of posters and ads for missing children around Mexico City that prompted Mexican artist Ilán Lieberman, 39, to create “Niño Perdido” (Lost Child). The exhibition, which will be accompanied by a book of the same name later this year, opened Tuesday in the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico in downtown Mexico City and is scheduled to travel to El Paso, Texas, in June.

Lieberman spent more than three years working on 100 drawings that are intricate copies of often bad-quality newspaper photographs of missing children, taken from the Mexican newspaper Metro. Using a pencil and a microscope, he labored over each postage stamp-sized portrait for two weeks –- almost as though he was paying personal homage to each boy and girl.

The result is a show of tiny drawings framed and hung in the upstairs gallery of the museum, and on Tuesday the exhibition’s first visitors inspected the detailed images with magnifying glasses provided as part of the work.

“What these images represent is a social reality in Mexican society,” Lieberman said.

The exhibition also features the newspapers from which Lieberman cut out many of the images that he so painstakingly copied. Often, ads for the missing children with basic information such as their age and where they disappeared were published alongside lists of recovered stolen
cars, or on the other side of a news page carrying bloody, attention-grabbing stories.

“That says everything there is to say about the issue,” Lieberman said. “A lack of information and a lack of care.

“The sensation that I got from those images was sad … that they seemed so forgotten.”

The show brings out the profundity of those tiny images — how the loss of something so precious is represented in such a poor way. It also reflects a very sad reality and one that, according to Aprenem, the Mexican government does little to change.

But Lieberman insists that the show is not a direct attempt to change government action on the issue, but to prompt society as a whole to reflect more on Mexico’s disappeared children.

“It’s not criticism specifically against the Mexican government, because it’s a problem within Mexican society -– it shows a lack of care on the part of our society as a whole and our social fabric.”

Lieberman also stressed that the project has an artistic angle, examining the concept of reproduction versus originals.

Past works by the artist have seen him labeled the “human photocopier” by reviewers. The 2005 New York show “Desperdicios,” or “Waste,” featured hand-drawn replicas of objects such as a yellow Post-it notes with a telephone
number scribbled across it, a restaurant customer’s bill, and a folded phone message slip.

“Niño Perdido” will be showing in the Museo de la Ciudad de México until May 10. After that, the exhibition will travel north to El Paso, on the U.S.-Mexico border, and neighboring Ciudad Juarez -– one of Mexico’s most violent urban centers. Not only is the city currently in the grip of extreme drug violence, but it has a long history of women being slain or disappearing.

Given the theme of the exhibition, Lieberman said, a showing next to Juarez made a lot of sense.

– Written for La Plaza

Top photo: The drawings in Ilán Lieberman’s “Niño Perdido” (Lost Child) exhibition in Mexico City are
best appreciated with a magnifying glass. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

Middle photo: Lieberman’s drawing of Rosario Pérez Monzalvo, age 1. Height 70 centimeters. Slim build. Brown
hair. Big, dark brown eyes. Distinguishing features include a rash on her legs. Disappeared from Ixtapaluca in the state of Mexico. Credit: Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico

Bottom photo: Museum visitors view the “Niño Perdido” (Lost Child) exhibition in Mexico City. Credit: Deborah
Bonello / Los Angeles Times

See more pictures from the exhibition here on Flickr.

When your humble correspondent arrived for the launch at the beautiful bookshop Libreria Rosario Castellanos, the raven-haired writer was posing for an all-male squad of newspaper photographers. In a country where journalists are killed for poking their noses into dark places and challenging the powers that be, Cacho has become something of a hero for doing just that and surviving, albeit by the skin of her teeth.

The photo session was brief, and then it was on with the business of launching her latest book — a manual for parents in Mexico to help them recognize if their children are being abused and, if so, what they can do about it. That might seem like a rather strange subject for a book, but it is the product of Cacho’s rather harrowing experience.

The sexual abuse of minors is a topic she has specialized in, and Cacho has been the victim of harassment due to her investigations into the issue.

She was a relatively unknown journalist until she published a book in 2006 that alleged the existence of a child sex ring in the southern state of Cancun, after which she was illegally arrested and harassed by some of the powerful men she implicated in “Los Demonios del Eden” (see more details of the case here).

She catapulted to fame when she challenged her aggressors by going public and filing a legal action against them — although it was ultimately unsuccessful.

Since then, Cacho has become something of a symbol for the issue of the repression of journalists and freedom of expression in Mexico. Her last book, “Memories of a Disgrace (Memorias de una Infamia)” detailed the events that unfolded after the publication of “Los Demonios del Eden.”

Speaking to a packed auditorium on Thursday, Cacho said that after “Los Demonios del Eden” was published, she was inundated by more than 3,000 e-mails from people who were worried their children were being abused, or who knew their children had been abused and didn’t know what to do about it. That prompted her to write “Not With My Child,” which she says is an effort to answer the questions she received from her anxious public.

“My intention was that it would be as though I was accompanying the people reading it,” said Cacho.

She was joined on Thursday by journalist Carmen Aristegui, herself no stranger to being silenced. Her prominent and critical morning talk show on the capital’s W Radio was cut last January after five years on air (read the details here).  At the time, the outspoken broadcaster, who continues to host a show on CNN Espanol, said that she suspected her head had been called for by powerful members of President Felipe Calderon’s administration. Aristegui launched a new show on a different network this morning.

She commended Cacho on Thursday for seeking solutions and changes to the problem of child abuse in Mexico.

“We know it”s there and is something that we have to confront,” she said.

“Not With My Child” includes chapters on the history of pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children, as well as how to negotiate Mexico’s ineffective justice system. Cacho says that building strong social networks is one of the most important means of detecting and putting a stop to child abuse in Mexico.

“Not With My Child” is published by Editorial Grijalbo, of Random House Mondadori.

– This post was written for La Plaza

Photo: Journalist Lydia Cacho holds up her new book for the cameras at a launch event in Mexico City.  Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.