PT Data wrangler

Tag: #mxuk2015

  • The UK gets its FIL

    Translator Jethro Soutar reports from the 2015 Guadalajara International Book Fair, which this year took place from 28 November to 6 December and is the biggest annual literary event in the Spanish-speaking world.

    Part of PEN Atlas’s Mexico focus #MXUK2015.

    The Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico, known as FIL (Feria Internacional del Libro) is like no other book fair in the world. For a start, it’s enormous, second only to Frankfurt in terms of exhibitor numbers. But that’s not what’s most striking: the first thing you notice is the number of kids. According to the organisers, 792,000 visitors attended the festival this year, around 80% of whom were children and young people. Some come on school trips, though not reluctantly; many come off their own backs. They come to meet authors, hear stories, buy books; they come to run around and flirt; they come because it’s fun – because books are cool!

    It makes for a rowdy affair. As he took to the lectern at an event entitled ‘Inspired By Shakespeare’, Sir Andrew Motion said it was the noisiest backdrop he’d experienced in 35 years of poetry readings.

    Motion was joined on stage by John Burnside, Inua Ellams and Helen Mort, all part of the UK’s Guest of Honour delegation. The UK’s appearance marked the culmination of a year of cultural and trade exchange between Mexico and the UK.

    Salman Rushdie opened the festival, giving the keynote speech and receiving the Carlos Fuentes Medal of Honour. Rushdie lauded magic realism and lamented the state of modern fiction, in which ‘hunger games’ are played, Da Vinci is a code and Elena Ferrante writes about herself. He called for less realism, advising young writers to do the opposite of writing about what they know. This went down well with FIL’s audience, predominantly Latin Americans, magic realists par excellence.

    Rushdie also spoke of storytelling’s capacity to civilise, even to overpower tyrants and their assassins. Mexico, of course, has a rich history of reportage; very real stories being told in the face of extreme danger. On the final night of the festival, Sergio González Rodríguez was awarded the Fernando Benítez National Prize for Cultural Journalism. González Rodríguez, who appeared at the Edinburgh Book Festival earlier this year, has written extensively about femicide in Ciudad Juárez, and has repeatedly been threatened, beaten and kidnapped for his troubles. It was a sombre reminder that, for all the fun of the fair, Mexico has a number of urgent problems. Crime writers Val McDermid, Claire McGowan and Louise Welsh had been intrigued to learn from a taxi driver that Guadalajara is safe because it’s where the narco capos house their families.

    Earlier in the day, in a talk entitled ‘The Devil’s in the Detail: Forensic Evidence’, McDermid and McGowan had talked about miscarriages of justice that can arise from an over-reliance on science. Alas, such miscarriages could be considered a luxury in Mexico. Welsh was part of the ‘Capturing the Contemporary’ panel, alongside Laura Bates, Owen Jones and Sunjeev Sahota. They chatted engagingly about discrimination based on class, race, gender and sexuality. A Mexican audience member asked what could be done about women who subscribe to macho attitudes, and although Bates replied wisely and eloquently – that we shouldn’t blame women for having such attitudes, but should look to the societies that encourage them to do so – one couldn’t help but think of the gulf that exists between Mexico and the UK in this regard.

    Yet there was common ground to celebrate too. UK events were well-attended across the board, and those of Irvine Welsh were blockbuster affairs: hordes rushed to the stage at the end, waving books to sign, camera-phones to pose for. Yes, it had to do with Trainspotting, the movie, but also with what he writes about, the human dramas behind drugs and crime. Of course there’s much more to Mexico than drugs and crime, and events such as Naomi Alderman ’s ‘How to write a Blog’ tutorial likewise drew rooms full of young folk.

    The authors chosen to represent the UK were diverse, the range of genres and topics broad. There was an academic programme to complement the literary one, free concerts outside FIL every night, film screenings at the university and art at Musa (Museo de los Artes).

    The Musa building is home to two magnificent murals by José Clemente Orozco and played temporary host to exhibitions by David Hockney, George Blacklock and Gary Oldman. The bright colours and swirling shapes of Blacklock’s beautiful series of ‘Slipping Glimpsers’ seemed to echo Mayan body and temple painting; Hockney’s ‘Death in Harlem’, from his ‘Rake’s Progress’, brought Frida Kahlo to mind. Wilful interpretations perhaps: I was actively looking for connections, deliberately seeking parallels between the UK and Mexico. No bad thing. Surely that’s a hallmark of a successful cross-cultural event.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

    Jethro Soutar is a translator of Spanish and Portuguese. His translation of By Night The Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (published by And Other Stories) was shortlisted for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It also received a PEN Award, as did his translations of Hotel Brasil by Frei Betto (published by Bitter Lemon Press in 2014) and The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Silá (to be published by Dedalus in 2016). Jethro also co-founded Ragpicker Press and co-edited its debut title, The Football Crónicas, a collection of translated short-form writing from Latin America.

    Part of PEN Atlas’s Mexico focus #MXUK2015.

    Mexico is currently the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Find out more about English PEN’s campaigning focus on Mexico here.

    Other articles by Jethro Soutar:

     

  • 'No se mata la verdad' / 'You cannot kill the truth'

    Translated from Spanish by Sara Mellor

    A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a young colleague. Rubén Espinosa asked me how one spends so many years living in fear, how one learns to process an endless succession of death threats – some of them veiled, others direct and crystal clear.

    For this young photo reporter (a correspondent for Cuartoscuro photographic news agency and Proceso magazine), sleeplessness, loss of appetite and depression (which he called sadness in an attempt to downplay its punishing daily presence) were enemies he had to get used to living with.

    I recommended a therapist specializing in posttraumatic stress (PTSD), a disorder that is so often the collateral damage of the work of journalists and those professionally involved in defending human rights.

    PTSD is that shady figure who takes up residence in the life of anyone who experiences either sudden instances of violence or intense and systematic forms of it. PTSD puts both the bodily integrity and emotional wellbeing of the victim at risk.

    Rubén had learned to coach his colleagues in matters of security: how to graphically document injustices and civil protests, employing strategies to safeguard both their personal safety and photographic material (the hard evidence of reality).

    Along with some colleagues, both male and female, Rubén received help from the organization Article 19 to escape Veracruz and go into exile. Together with the other brave photojournalists who formed part of the #FotoperiodistasMX group, he decided not to give up, despite the very real and disturbing death threats he had received over the previous years for doing a good job in Veracruz; it’s all documented.

    Along with some colleagues, Rubén was forced to move to México City where he lived with a group of close friends, including the activist, artist and anthropologist Nadia Vera, who was part of Xalapa’s #YoSoy132 movement.

    ‘Considérate enemigo del pueblo [Consider yourself enemy of the people],’ Veracruz’s government spokesperson said to Rubén as he blocked his entry into a press conference in which governor Javier Duarte was due to speak.

    This happened after the publication of the now famous front cover of Proceso magazine, which depicts Duarte pulling a threatening, contemptuous face, and wearing a police cap. At the time the photo was taken, the people of Veracruz were already protesting against terrible government practices, corruption, impunity, and the lack of public safety. Their protests were vocalised in now well-known slogans which, according to Espinosa himself, enraged the governor’s security team: many of the slogans made reference to Duarte’s weight problem, and his irascible, violent, racist and sexist nature.

    The truth is that Rubén Espinosa was a good photographer. He took hundreds of important photographs. With a single image he achieved what no amount of words could have achieved in any serious way on a news page: without filters, he let the real Duarte shine through: the clenched-fist metalanguage, the furious gaze, his name and station embroidered onto his shirt. ‘Javier Duarte. Governor,’ read the red letters across his chest – and let no one question it.

    ‘Governor’ reads his cap, complete with police badge: a gold star, symbol of power and social control. Yet, according to the photo’s author, this wasn’t the root of Duarte’s anger: for the governor, the real affront was the close-up that clearly exhibits his morbid obesity (a source of insecurity to Duarte, who has always feared being the target of mockery). Hence why he has an official photographer, whose responsibility it is to always photograph him from favourable angles.

    It might seem trivial or ludicrous to state that many leaders take personal offence at the journalists (both male and female) who expose those unmistakable aspects of their personality that make them feel insecure, and which they take pains to conceal. We’re not only talking about physiology, but about the gestures that betray everyone, no matter how hard one tries to conceal them.

    Rubén told me that the same spokesperson relayed to him the governor’s outrage at another famous Cuartoscuro close-up in which Duarte’s eyes appear to be popping out of his face, like a kind of incensed gargoyle; in the same photo he can be seen launching his body at a group of journalists who are questioning him, and baring his teeth in a clear sign of attack.

    Over and over again, they warned Rubén not to stay in Veracruz, that he was on the enemies’ black list.

    Rubén never received therapy for his angst, or got to work through the anxiety he took on hearing the fears of countless colleagues and the daily threats they received, for being journalists or human rights activists. He was murdered on Friday 31 July alongside activist Nadia Vera – a brave young woman with a firm voice and a spark in her eyes – who challenged the powers that be and injustices in Xalapa, Veracruz. Their bodies, along with those of Alejandra Negrete, Yesenia Quiróz and Mile Virginia Martín, were found tortured and shot. The weapon used was a military 9mm firearm and the shots were clean: both firm characteristics of hired assassins.

    Only those who live under death threats know how the clock marks the hours differently. Not only does it imply living with fear, but it also goads the spirit of self-censorship that makes us ask: Is it worth it? Is exposing yet another atrocity in a country of despicable leaders really worth the risk? I can only answer that it is always worth telling the truth, always worth fighting against ignominy and trying to build a country in which it is worth growing up, living, loving.

    And then there is the ever-present guilt of us men and women who survive: we wear that guilt like a tattoo when the threats are shared, until one terrible night you learn of the openly forewarned death of that person you just spoke to on the phone; a person who had faith, who believed in ethics; a person with whom you repeated like a mantra: They won’t dare kill you: not after all the denunciations against him; not after you’ve openly pointed the finger at your potential murderer. They won’t dare kill you.

    I can hear Rubén’s voice, and the voices of many other colleagues singing along side by side at a solidarity march: ‘No se mata la verdad matando periodistas.’ / ‘You cannot kill the truth killing journalists.’

    You can read this piece in the original Spanish on Aristegui Noticias: http://aristeguinoticias.com/0308/mexico/no-se-mata-la-verdad-articulo-de-lydia-cacho/

    English PEN members have joined writers from around the world in condemning the murder of Rubén Espinosa. Read the letter here.

  • ‘No se mata la verdad’ / ‘You cannot kill the truth’

    Translated from Spanish by Sara Mellor

    A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a young colleague. Rubén Espinosa asked me how one spends so many years living in fear, how one learns to process an endless succession of death threats – some of them veiled, others direct and crystal clear.

    For this young photo reporter (a correspondent for Cuartoscuro photographic news agency and Proceso magazine), sleeplessness, loss of appetite and depression (which he called sadness in an attempt to downplay its punishing daily presence) were enemies he had to get used to living with.

    I recommended a therapist specializing in posttraumatic stress (PTSD), a disorder that is so often the collateral damage of the work of journalists and those professionally involved in defending human rights.

    PTSD is that shady figure who takes up residence in the life of anyone who experiences either sudden instances of violence or intense and systematic forms of it. PTSD puts both the bodily integrity and emotional wellbeing of the victim at risk.

    Rubén had learned to coach his colleagues in matters of security: how to graphically document injustices and civil protests, employing strategies to safeguard both their personal safety and photographic material (the hard evidence of reality).

    Along with some colleagues, both male and female, Rubén received help from the organization Article 19 to escape Veracruz and go into exile. Together with the other brave photojournalists who formed part of the #FotoperiodistasMX group, he decided not to give up, despite the very real and disturbing death threats he had received over the previous years for doing a good job in Veracruz; it’s all documented.

    Along with some colleagues, Rubén was forced to move to México City where he lived with a group of close friends, including the activist, artist and anthropologist Nadia Vera, who was part of Xalapa’s #YoSoy132 movement.

    ‘Considérate enemigo del pueblo [Consider yourself enemy of the people],’ Veracruz’s government spokesperson said to Rubén as he blocked his entry into a press conference in which governor Javier Duarte was due to speak.

    This happened after the publication of the now famous front cover of Proceso magazine, which depicts Duarte pulling a threatening, contemptuous face, and wearing a police cap. At the time the photo was taken, the people of Veracruz were already protesting against terrible government practices, corruption, impunity, and the lack of public safety. Their protests were vocalised in now well-known slogans which, according to Espinosa himself, enraged the governor’s security team: many of the slogans made reference to Duarte’s weight problem, and his irascible, violent, racist and sexist nature.

    The truth is that Rubén Espinosa was a good photographer. He took hundreds of important photographs. With a single image he achieved what no amount of words could have achieved in any serious way on a news page: without filters, he let the real Duarte shine through: the clenched-fist metalanguage, the furious gaze, his name and station embroidered onto his shirt. ‘Javier Duarte. Governor,’ read the red letters across his chest – and let no one question it.

    ‘Governor’ reads his cap, complete with police badge: a gold star, symbol of power and social control. Yet, according to the photo’s author, this wasn’t the root of Duarte’s anger: for the governor, the real affront was the close-up that clearly exhibits his morbid obesity (a source of insecurity to Duarte, who has always feared being the target of mockery). Hence why he has an official photographer, whose responsibility it is to always photograph him from favourable angles.

    It might seem trivial or ludicrous to state that many leaders take personal offence at the journalists (both male and female) who expose those unmistakable aspects of their personality that make them feel insecure, and which they take pains to conceal. We’re not only talking about physiology, but about the gestures that betray everyone, no matter how hard one tries to conceal them.

    Rubén told me that the same spokesperson relayed to him the governor’s outrage at another famous Cuartoscuro close-up in which Duarte’s eyes appear to be popping out of his face, like a kind of incensed gargoyle; in the same photo he can be seen launching his body at a group of journalists who are questioning him, and baring his teeth in a clear sign of attack.

    Over and over again, they warned Rubén not to stay in Veracruz, that he was on the enemies’ black list.

    Rubén never received therapy for his angst, or got to work through the anxiety he took on hearing the fears of countless colleagues and the daily threats they received, for being journalists or human rights activists. He was murdered on Friday 31 July alongside activist Nadia Vera – a brave young woman with a firm voice and a spark in her eyes – who challenged the powers that be and injustices in Xalapa, Veracruz. Their bodies, along with those of Alejandra Negrete, Yesenia Quiróz and Mile Virginia Martín, were found tortured and shot. The weapon used was a military 9mm firearm and the shots were clean: both firm characteristics of hired assassins.

    Only those who live under death threats know how the clock marks the hours differently. Not only does it imply living with fear, but it also goads the spirit of self-censorship that makes us ask: Is it worth it? Is exposing yet another atrocity in a country of despicable leaders really worth the risk? I can only answer that it is always worth telling the truth, always worth fighting against ignominy and trying to build a country in which it is worth growing up, living, loving.

    And then there is the ever-present guilt of us men and women who survive: we wear that guilt like a tattoo when the threats are shared, until one terrible night you learn of the openly forewarned death of that person you just spoke to on the phone; a person who had faith, who believed in ethics; a person with whom you repeated like a mantra: They won’t dare kill you: not after all the denunciations against him; not after you’ve openly pointed the finger at your potential murderer. They won’t dare kill you.

    I can hear Rubén’s voice, and the voices of many other colleagues singing along side by side at a solidarity march: ‘No se mata la verdad matando periodistas.’ / ‘You cannot kill the truth killing journalists.’

    You can read this piece in the original Spanish on Aristegui Noticias: http://aristeguinoticias.com/0308/mexico/no-se-mata-la-verdad-articulo-de-lydia-cacho/

    English PEN members have joined writers from around the world in condemning the murder of Rubén Espinosa. Read the letter here.

  • Ayotzinapa

    Ayotzinapa Rural Training College was set up in 1931 in the state of Guerrero, near the city of Iguala. It is one of several rural colleges in Mexico, whose primary objective was to promote social change, and whose classrooms have given rise to various social movements over the decades.

    Poverty is the most common condition. The support that Ayotzinapa Training College receives from the government amounts to nothing at all. Each student lives on 35 pesos a day (under $3), though they also help to cultivate crops and rear livestock on the former hacienda’s lands, to meet their basic daily food needs.

    Humble origins are always accompanied by generosity. Neighbours of Ayotzinapa frequently count on the students’ support, from help in the fields to rescue during hurricanes. What the students demand for themselves and their community are better living conditions, work opportunities, and that the College continues to exist, for they firmly believe that education is the most valuable route to achievement.

    They also denounce injustices that they have suffered at the hands of the state. For example, back in 2012, two students – Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús – died of gunshot wounds after being caught up in a joint police–army operation on the Autopista del Sol.

    The sense of outrage among the students today is stronger than ever, for 43 of their classmates are missing from their homes in Ayotzinapa. The current crisis started on 26 September 2014, when the College’s first-year students were mandated to attend an annual march in Mexico City to commemorate the Tlatelolco Massacre of 2 October 1968, in which hundreds of unarmed Mexicans, mostly student protesters, were gunned down by police and armed forces.

    Once the students had requisitioned the necessary number of buses they headed out to the highway to Chipalcingo, but three of the buses lost their way. Official reports, independent investigations and witnesses’ accounts are confused and contradictory, but there is no doubt at all that municipal police patrols blocked the path of the bus cavalcade and opened fire. Aldo Gutiérrez was shot in the head and died; he was the first victim. The surviving students confirm that it was the federal police who fired on and then detained them. They sought shelter, the wounded among them crying out for help, others using their mobile phones to call classmates at Ayotzinapa, calling for immediate assistance.

    A second round of firing damaged the buses which should have been on their way to Mexico City. Survivors report that it was again the federal police who fired on and then detained them. A few hours later fellow students arrived from Ayotzinapa and also fell victim. The police recovered the spent bullet casings, and arrested a number of young people at the scene.

    On the morning of 27 September there was little mention in the media of the attack mounted on the students, only of the unrest they had supposedly provoked. It was only later that it became known that 43 students had disappeared at the hands of the army and federal police. Among the various versions it was announced that the 43 had been handed over to a criminal gang of drug traffickers – the Guerreros Unidos. From that moment began the Calvary of their family members, who have still not been told of their precise fate.

    Just three months before the events at Ayotzinapa, we had learnt of the execution of 22 young people in a bar in the town of Tlatlaya. When the news was broadcast, it was presented in such a way as to look like a military victory over narco-traffickers and members of the Guerreros Unidos. In Esquire magazine Spanish journalist Pablo Ferri published the testimony of a witness to the massacre who related how members of the army had killed the young people. Later on it emerged that three soldiers had opened fire on the young people without the least justification; the three individuals are supposedly to be tried in court for their actions.

    Adolescent girls were left widowed mothers when their young husbands died in that Tlatlaya bar.

    In Mexico young people are annihilated as if they were a plague.

    Since 2005, 38 mass graves have been dug in Guerrero alone.

    In everyday speech, to disappear a citizen is commonly referred to as a levantón – slang for a raid or a snatch – a word without legal meaning and which cannot therefore lead to a prosecution. ‘Forced disappearance’ is not deemed a crime in some Mexican jurisdictions, even though it was defined as such in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1988.

    On 27 January 2015, the former Attorney General of the Republic of Mexico, Jesús Murillo Karam, announced that the students had died; their bodies had been incinerated at a rubbish tip in Cocula, Guerrero; and their ashes had been thrown in the river so as not to leave a trace. He confirmed that the assassins were members of the drug-trafficking gang Guerreros Unidos. Murillo Karam concluded: ‘This is the historical truth.’ Thus he intended to close ‘the Iguala case’ – but widespread indignation was not long in coming.

    Three levels of government – municipal, state and federal – have been ineffectual, ambiguous and evasive about the Ayotzinapa cases. The parents themselves have searched for traces of the 43 young people. They have been reinforced by volunteers, journalists and students of numerous other universities, not only in conducting searches but also with the mass demonstrations that have spread through all the main streets and avenues of the country. These spontaneous and passionate protests have been organised on social media and have proved to be a magnificent example of civic consciousness-raising. Across the world there have been demonstrations in 60 capitals demanding to know the whereabouts of the 43 students. Ayotzinapa has spread beyond Guerrero’s borders, and ceased to be the local matter the authorities wish it to be.

    Impotence, sadness, pain and rage unite Mexicans marching in the streets of Mexico City and along the main avenues of other Mexican towns, every one bearing the photograph of a college student before them like a shield.

    The mother of a student named Julio César Mondragón Fontes suffered such a deep depression that she lost her voice and could scarcely find the strength to declare: ‘To those who administer justice, poor people like us don’t count. Julio César and the other 43 students mean nothing to them, any more than all the families left here to suffer such a barbarity, one we have no means to rectify.’

    On Thursday 19 March this year, a group of experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asked the Mexican government that the Ayotzinapa case be considered as one of forced abduction. Any failure to proscribe it would then become a crime against humanity and the authorities would be obliged to continue the investigation until the whereabouts of the 43 students is uncovered.

    The tragedy of Ayotzinapa has highlighted the thousands of cases that have not been investigated. In his essay published in El País on 30 October 2014, Juan Villoro wrote: ‘Mexico is united in indignation and there is an angry clamour for things to change… the Mexico of the armed forces is afraid of those who teach literacy,’ because a literate country is one that can demand and denounce. A literate country can be disobedient. Real students on the marches do not make use of chains, sticks, stones or aggression in order to demand justice. Students act in solidarity, they demand and reclaim what is true, because they know their rights and their responsibilities. According to the Italian journalist Federico Mastrogiovanni, winner of the Mexican PEN Prize in 2015, the massacre in Tlatlaya and the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students were significant because society (in Mexico and elsewhere) has reacted, as opposed to previous cases when people kept quiet for fear of reprisals.

    Many citizens have come out and demonstrated their condemnation. Francisco Toledo, a famous Mexican painter and artist, let loose 43 paper kites bearing the images of the 43 disappeared students in the Zócalo, the main square in Oaxaca. At the Guadalajara Book Fair in December 2014, there was a count-up, repeated four or five times daily, from 1 to 43. A poem by David Huerta, from where the following lines are taken, was read out at every opportunity:

    This is the country of graves
    Ladies and gentlemen
    This the country of howls
    This the country of children in flames
    This the country of martyred women
    This the country that yesterday barely existed
    And today doesn’t know where it went.

    Find out more about Elena Poniatowska’s novel Leonora.

    On 19 May the Euro Caravana 43, representatives of the 43 Mexican students who were kidnapped in Iguala, Guerrero in September 2014, will be in London. View the full programme of events and activities here. If you would like to send a message of support, please do so via cat@englishpen.org.

    On Friday 29 May English PEN will host an event to celebrate the publication of Mexico 20 – an anthology of contemporary Mexican writing. Laia Jufresa, Brenda Lozano and Daniel Saldaña París will be in conversation with Maya Jaggi. For more information and to book, click here.

  • Self-censorship and silence

    Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott

    ‘I’m alive because I know who’s in charge. People follow the orders of the Gulf Cartel around here,’ says Francisco, a journalist from the city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas, which is considered to be one of Mexico’s ‘narco-states’.

    Francisco does not only receive instructions from his editor. He also takes calls from the ‘boss of the plaza’, who orders him to put in or take out images of shootings and dead bodies: ‘If you care about your family, keep that shooting yesterday out of the papers. Otherwise, you’re fucked.’ And Francisco obeys – to save his life, to keep his job.

    Francisco, like so many others, suffers from ‘self-censorship’. This is an increasingly common phenomenon in Mexico, the most dangerous country in Latin America for journalists, and one whose citizens’ right to information is being severely violated by attacks on the press: more than 120 journalists have been killed in recent years, and 22 have disappeared. In this country, journalists are murdered because of what they publish and because of what they refuse to publish. Every 26 hours, a journalist will be the victim of an act of violence. Last year alone, 326 attacks on communicators were recorded, five of which were murders. And it isn’t only organised crime that’s killing journalists. Most of the attackers are officials or agents of the Mexican state.

    The murders are getting bloodier and crueller, and they involve every kind of torture. The violence against female journalists is particularly terrible, and often gender-specific: the majority of those killed were also raped or mutilated, and some were even decapitated. We’re tired of watching the bodies of our colleagues and friends being taken away, and the pain and suffering their spilt blood leaves in its wake.

    The relentless assault on freedom of expression is getting worse. By choosing not to guarantee the safety of journalists, Enrique Peña Nieto’s government has succeeded in silencing important independent critical voices. Bullets, censorship, self-censorship and government control of advertising and TV and radio concessions have led to a serious lack of correct and timely information, and a dearth of news about key issues such as state crimes committed by the army, the navy and the various police forces. There is not enough coverage of the phenomenon of narcopolitics, the collusion of corrupt authorities with the powerful drug cartels that dominate the Mexican territory, or the smuggling and piracy that have, with the cooperation of the police, passed into the hands of organised crime. State violence – forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture – hardly receives any attention in the televised media. There are parts of the press under the thumb of the government or the drug cartels. There are forbidden topics and forbidden journalists. The idea is to instil fear, horror and silence.

    Those of us who dare to break the barrier of silence have to confront all kinds of threats. We work in conditions of war, but without the protection that reporters covering armed conflicts would normally receive. Here there are no bullet-proof vests or helmets. Press signs on vehicles mean nothing, and neither do the press cards that are supposed to ensure your personal safety in neutral territory.

    Faced with the drug barons’ Kalashnikovs, we have only our pens. Among the mighty rifles of the army or the police, there are only our notebooks and computers. We are an easy target. It doesn’t cost much to kill journalists in Mexico, and the murderers know that it’s highly unlikely anything will happen to them afterwards. Impunity is the only constant. Over 90% of murders go unpunished, despite the existence of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Against Freedom of Expression, which last year recorded a backlog of 120 pending cases. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is a smokescreen. The Mexican state would rather carry on pretending than actually take action to protect the country’s journalists.

    This is an unequal war. As journalists, we have words. The people attacking us have bullets. Mexican journalism is wounded; information is mutilated.

    Why do we stay here, why do we carry on? Out of dignity and a commitment to the truth. Our mission is to search for that truth in spite of everything. Mexican journalists have learnt to work under hostile conditions, completely undefended. We live with persecution and harassment. But we don’t let fear paralyse us – on the contrary, it helps us to measure the risks and stay alive, to continue giving a voice to the voiceless and shining a light on dark secrets that are normally kept silent.

    Staying here and carrying on, that’s the mission, although we can smell the predator’s rotten breath, although we can hear the bullets, although we know that words cost lives. Freedom has a high price in Mexico, but it’s the only way we have of reaching the truth.

    Read this piece in the original Spanish here.

    Read ARTICLE 19 Mexico’s annual report ‘State of Censorship’, which examines freedom of expression in Mexico.

    Sanjuana Martínez is a featured writer in English PEN’s 2015 Mexico focus. Read about her case and take action here.

    To find out more about Sanjuana Martinez and her work, visit www.websanjuanamartinez.com.mx
    Follow her on Twitter: @SanjuanaMtz
    Visit her Facebook page: Sanjuana Martinez

  • Autocensura y silencio

    Read Annie McDermott’s English translation of this piece here.

    ‘Estoy vivo porque se quien manda. Aquí se hace lo que ordena el Cártel del Golfo,’ dice Francisco, un periodista de la ciudad de Matamoros, Tamaulipas, considerado un narcoestado de México.

    Las órdenes de trabajo para Francisco no vienen solamente del jefe de redacción, también atiende las llamadas del ‘jefe de la plaza’ quien le ordena quitar o poner imágenes de balaceras o cadáveres: ‘Si quieres cuidar a tu familia, no publiques nada de la balacera de ayer, si no, te va a llevar la chingada,’ le dice quien se ostenta solo como ‘jefe de plaza’. Y Francisco obedece para salvar la vida, para conservar su trabajo.

    Francisco como muchos, padece la ‘autocensura’, un fenómeno cada vez más común en México, el país más peligroso en América Latina, para ejercer el periodismo y donde el derecho a la información de los ciudadanos está siendo vulnerado severamente por la violencia contra la prensa: más de 120 periodistas han muerto en los últimos años y 22 permanecen desaparecidos. En este país, los periodistas son asesinados por lo que publican o por lo que se niegan a publicar. Cada 26 horas, un periodista será víctima de un hecho violento. Tan solo el año pasado, se registraron 326 ataques contra comunicadores y cinco fueron asesinados. A los periodistas no los asesina solamente el crimen organizado. La mayor parte de los agresores son funcionarios o agentes del estado mexicano.

    Los asesinatos son cada vez más sanguinarios y más crueles. Incluyen torturas de todo tipo. La violencia contra las periodistas es terrible, el componente de género está incluido, la mayoría de las ejecutadas fueron violadas, o mutiladas; algunas incluso decapitadas. Estamos cansados de ver pasar los cadáveres de nuestros colegas, de nuestros amigos. La estela de dolor y sufrimiento que va dejando la sangre derramada de nuestros compañeros.

    La guerra sin cuartel contra la libertad de expresión se intensifica. El gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto prefiere no garantizar la seguridad de los periodistas y de esta manera, ha conseguido acallar importantes voces independientes y críticas. Las balas, la censura, la autocensura o el control gubernamental sobre publicidad y concesiones de radio y televisión, han ido provocando un alto déficit de información veraz y oportuna, una ausencia de noticias y cobertura informativa sobre temas importantes como los crímenes de Estado cometidos por el Ejército, la Marina o las distintas policías. Tampoco hay suficientes noticias sobre el fenómeno de la narcopolítica, la connivencia de autoridades corruptas con los poderosos cárteles de la droga que dominan el territorio mexicano o el contrabando y la piratería que ha pasado a manos del crimen organizado en connivencia con los policías. Las desapariciones forzadas, ejecuciones extrajudiciales; la tortura, son parte de la violencia del Estado que difícilmente encuentra un espacio digno en los medios de comunicación televisivos. Una parte de la prensa está arrodillada ante el poder gubernamental o el poder del narcotráfico. Hay temas prohibidos y periodistas prohibidos. Se trata de instaurar el miedo, el terror y el silencio.

    Quienes nos atrevemos a romper el cerco de silencio, tenemos que enfrentarnos a todo tipo de amenazas. Trabajamos en condiciones de guerra, pero sin la protección que debe ser brindada a los informadores en  la típica cobertura de conflictos bélicos. Aquí no hay chaleco antibalas ni cascos. Tampoco funciona el aviso el aviso de ‘prensa’ colocado en los vehículos, o la acreditación que salvaguarda tu integridad física en territorio neutral.

    Frente a los Kalashnikov de los capos de la droga solo tenemos nuestras plumas. Entre los rifles de alto poder del Ejército o las policías, solo están nuestras libretas y computadoras. Somos un blanco fácil. Matar periodistas en México sale barato. Los asesinos saben que hay una gran probabilidad de que no les pase nada. La impunidad es la constante. Más del 90 por ciento de los asesinatos sigue impune a pesar de que existe la Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos cometidos contra la Libertad de Expresión, la cual, el año pasado, registró un rezago 120 casos. La fiscalía es una cortina de humo. El estado mexicano prefiere simular que actuar y proteger a los periodistas.

    Esta es una guerra desigual. Los periodistas tenemos la palabra. Ellos – los depredadores de la prensa – tienen las balas. El periodismo mexicano está herido. La información mutilada.

    ¿Por qué seguimos aquí? Por dignidad, por compromiso con la verdad. Nuestra misión es la búsqueda de esa verdad por encima de cualquier obstáculo. Los periodistas mexicanos hemos aprendido a trabajar en condiciones adversas de absoluta indefensión. Convivimos con la persecución, el hostigamiento y el acoso. Pero el miedo no nos paraliza, al contrario, nos ayuda a medir los riesgos para seguir con vida, para continuar dando voz a los sin voz y lanzar luz sobre las zonas oscuras de la información sometidas al silencio.

    Seguir aquí, es la misión, aunque el fétido aliento del depredador este cerca, aunque se escuche el sonido de las balas y las palabras cuesten la vida. La libertad, tiene un alto precio en México, pero es el único camino para llegar a la verdad.

    Read Annie McDermott’s English translation of this piece here.

    Read ARTICLE 19 Mexico’s annual report ‘Estado de Censura’, which examines freedom of expression in Mexico.

    Sanjuana Martínez is a featured writer in English PEN’s 2015 Mexico focus. Read about her case and take action here.

    To find out more about Sanjuana Martinez and her work, visit www.websanjuanamartinez.com.mx
    Follow her on Twitter: @SanjuanaMtz
    Visit her Facebook page: Sanjuana Martinez

  • The optimist's words

    Transformations require a big effort, even when the leaders of a country understand what’s at stake in a crisis and what needs to be done. But when the leaders of a country are entrenched and protective of their privileges, then transformation is not something that can be entrusted to them. That is exactly the situation in Mexico right now, where our economic and political elites don’t seem to understand what they have to do, or even what they have to say, in order to solve the two most urgent problems in the country: all-pervading impunity and rampant corruption.

    When President Enrique Peña Nieto visited the state of Guerrero for the first time after the kidnapping of forty-three students on 26th September 2014 by organized crime and the local police, he asked the public to make an effort to get over the ‘moment of pain’ and to rebuild the state with a ‘propositive and constructive attitude’.

    That was on December the 4th, less than two and a half months after the events. None of the students had been found by then. A few weeks before, the Attorney General had presented a hypothesis of what had happened: following orders by the mayor of Iguala, he said, the local police had kidnapped the students and delivered them to a group of narcos, who then murdered them, incinerated them and threw their remains into a river. But he had presented no hard evidence to support his theory. Still, the President decided it was time to get over the episode, a mere ‘moment of pain’.

    Moreover, the next time he referred to the case, on January 27th, still with no mention of where the students could be, he said that we must not ‘get trapped’ in the case, and asked the nation to move forward with optimism. Solving a case so horrendous and so symptomatic of the entanglement of politics and criminal business was apparently not urgent any more; it was a sort of ‘trap’.

    Following this logic, a few weeks ago a prominent businessman, Lorenzo Servitje, co-founder of one of the biggest junk food companies in Mexico, expressed his concerns about the social unrest, stating that some (unnamed) groups were taking advantage of a situation that had been blown out of proportion (‘se le ha dado una dimension que no tiene’). In this, he aligned himself with the leadership of the business council who, after initially demanding a thorough investigation, eventually pressured the government to put a stop to the growing protests around the country, to make them respect the law.

    But none of these people said a thing when it was revealed that many of their colleagues had been part of a laundering scheme by HSBC that included politicians, criminals and entrepreneurs from all over the world. Neither did they ask for ‘mano dura’ when the same bank was fined in 2012 for laundering billions of dollars for terrorists and drug cartels. So much for going after the ‘vandals’.

    All this has been happening in the context of another story that puts into question how our elites understand the rule of law. In the last few months there have been revelations that the President and several other high-ranking government officials have acquired properties with the help of huge government contractors. After weeks of simply assuring everyone there was no wrongdoing, the President appointed a Minister of Public Service whose first task was to look into the cases and determine if there had been any conflict of interest. The problem is that the person he appointed is not an independent investigator but a bureaucrat on Peña Nieto’s payroll, who also happens to be a close friend. Upon finishing the press conference in which he announced this, the President looked a bit embarrassed by the silence that hung in the room. Pointing at the press corps, he said to one of his aides, ‘I know they don’t applaud.’

    It’s easy to mock a politician for a lack of cheering, or his mispronunciation of the place where the kidnapped students come from (he repeatedly referred to ‘Ayotzinapan’ instead of ‘Ayotzinapa’, as if he didn’t know what he was talking about). Scorn towards the powerful is healthy, but sometimes it doesn’t allow us to see what’s behind their ‘slips’ and ‘fumbles’. People used to make jokes about how the former President Calderón said that he never pronounced the word ‘war’ to define his irresponsible strategy towards organized crime, even though he did precisely that on at least eight occasions. But when a man in charge of an army declares war and then forgets about it, it’s more than a funny story about his forgetfulness.

    The words of a president are more than his personal quirks; they are the explanation of his policies, no matter how clumsy those words may be. So, when our current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, says that a tragedy as horrendous as the one that took place in Ayotzinapa is just a ‘moment of pain’, and when he expects to be applauded for pretending that he is doing something against corruption, it is not surprising that he and his billionaire allies see the protesters —and not the people who have been financing mass murderers for years now— as the biggest danger to our stability. Mexicans cannot feel frustrated with their ‘leaders’, because they have been very clear about their priorities. But we have to be clear that, when they talk about reforms, they are just talking about minor adjustments to business as usual.

    Signs Preceding the End of the World is available to buy from Foyles book shop.

    Read English PEN’s open letter to President Nieto on the occasion of his visit to the UK.

  • The optimist’s words

    Transformations require a big effort, even when the leaders of a country understand what’s at stake in a crisis and what needs to be done. But when the leaders of a country are entrenched and protective of their privileges, then transformation is not something that can be entrusted to them. That is exactly the situation in Mexico right now, where our economic and political elites don’t seem to understand what they have to do, or even what they have to say, in order to solve the two most urgent problems in the country: all-pervading impunity and rampant corruption.

    When President Enrique Peña Nieto visited the state of Guerrero for the first time after the kidnapping of forty-three students on 26th September 2014 by organized crime and the local police, he asked the public to make an effort to get over the ‘moment of pain’ and to rebuild the state with a ‘propositive and constructive attitude’.

    That was on December the 4th, less than two and a half months after the events. None of the students had been found by then. A few weeks before, the Attorney General had presented a hypothesis of what had happened: following orders by the mayor of Iguala, he said, the local police had kidnapped the students and delivered them to a group of narcos, who then murdered them, incinerated them and threw their remains into a river. But he had presented no hard evidence to support his theory. Still, the President decided it was time to get over the episode, a mere ‘moment of pain’.

    Moreover, the next time he referred to the case, on January 27th, still with no mention of where the students could be, he said that we must not ‘get trapped’ in the case, and asked the nation to move forward with optimism. Solving a case so horrendous and so symptomatic of the entanglement of politics and criminal business was apparently not urgent any more; it was a sort of ‘trap’.

    Following this logic, a few weeks ago a prominent businessman, Lorenzo Servitje, co-founder of one of the biggest junk food companies in Mexico, expressed his concerns about the social unrest, stating that some (unnamed) groups were taking advantage of a situation that had been blown out of proportion (‘se le ha dado una dimension que no tiene’). In this, he aligned himself with the leadership of the business council who, after initially demanding a thorough investigation, eventually pressured the government to put a stop to the growing protests around the country, to make them respect the law.

    But none of these people said a thing when it was revealed that many of their colleagues had been part of a laundering scheme by HSBC that included politicians, criminals and entrepreneurs from all over the world. Neither did they ask for ‘mano dura’ when the same bank was fined in 2012 for laundering billions of dollars for terrorists and drug cartels. So much for going after the ‘vandals’.

    All this has been happening in the context of another story that puts into question how our elites understand the rule of law. In the last few months there have been revelations that the President and several other high-ranking government officials have acquired properties with the help of huge government contractors. After weeks of simply assuring everyone there was no wrongdoing, the President appointed a Minister of Public Service whose first task was to look into the cases and determine if there had been any conflict of interest. The problem is that the person he appointed is not an independent investigator but a bureaucrat on Peña Nieto’s payroll, who also happens to be a close friend. Upon finishing the press conference in which he announced this, the President looked a bit embarrassed by the silence that hung in the room. Pointing at the press corps, he said to one of his aides, ‘I know they don’t applaud.’

    It’s easy to mock a politician for a lack of cheering, or his mispronunciation of the place where the kidnapped students come from (he repeatedly referred to ‘Ayotzinapan’ instead of ‘Ayotzinapa’, as if he didn’t know what he was talking about). Scorn towards the powerful is healthy, but sometimes it doesn’t allow us to see what’s behind their ‘slips’ and ‘fumbles’. People used to make jokes about how the former President Calderón said that he never pronounced the word ‘war’ to define his irresponsible strategy towards organized crime, even though he did precisely that on at least eight occasions. But when a man in charge of an army declares war and then forgets about it, it’s more than a funny story about his forgetfulness.

    The words of a president are more than his personal quirks; they are the explanation of his policies, no matter how clumsy those words may be. So, when our current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, says that a tragedy as horrendous as the one that took place in Ayotzinapa is just a ‘moment of pain’, and when he expects to be applauded for pretending that he is doing something against corruption, it is not surprising that he and his billionaire allies see the protesters —and not the people who have been financing mass murderers for years now— as the biggest danger to our stability. Mexicans cannot feel frustrated with their ‘leaders’, because they have been very clear about their priorities. But we have to be clear that, when they talk about reforms, they are just talking about minor adjustments to business as usual.

    Signs Preceding the End of the World is available to buy from Foyles book shop.

    Read English PEN’s open letter to President Nieto on the occasion of his visit to the UK.