Not covering a drug war
Reynosa, Mexico — which lies just south of the U.S. /Texas border, but about 100 kilometres west of the Gulf of Mexico — is in the grip of a vicious drug war.
However, you won’t find the local news media covering it, or local government officials commenting (albiet with good reason, given the level of violence being directed at reporters).
What’s a citizen to do?
“You begin to wonder what the truth is,” said one of Reynosa’s frustrated and fearful residents, Eunice Peña, a professor of communications. “Is it what you saw, or what the media and the officials say? You even wonder if you were imagining it.”
Angry residents who witnessed the carnage began to fill the void, posting raw videos and photos taken with cellphones.
“The pictures do not lie,” said a journalist in McAllen, Tex., who monitors what is happening south of the border online but has stopped venturing there himself. “You can hear the gunshots. You can see the bodies. You know it’s bad.”
The Mexican government’s drug offensive, employing tens of thousands of soldiers, marines and federal police officers, has unleashed ever increasing levels of violence over the last three years as traffickers have fought to protect their lucrative smuggling routes. Journalists have long been among the victims, but the attacks on members of the media now under way in Reynosa and elsewhere along a long stretch of border from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros are at their worst.
Traffickers have gone after the media with a vengeance in these strategic border towns where drugs are smuggled across by the ton. They have shot up newsrooms, kidnapped and killed staff members and called up the media regularly with threats that were not the least bit veiled. Back off, the thugs said. Do not dare print our names. We will kill you the next time you publish a photograph like that.
“They mean what they say,” said one of the many terrified journalists who used to cover the police beat in Reynosa. “I’m censoring myself. There’s no other way to put it. But so is everybody else.”
When they are not issuing threats, journalists say, the drug runners are buying off reporters with everything from cash to romps with prostitutes. The traffickers are not always so press shy. When they post banners on bridges expounding on their twisted view of the world or commit some particularly gory crime, they often seek out coverage.
But not now. And the current news blackout along the border has only amplified fears, as false rumors of impending shootouts circulate unchecked, prompting many parents to pull their children from school and businesses to close.
On Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued this news release:
The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a wave of drug-related violence in the Mexican city of Reynosa, near the Texas border, which is endangering the news media and causing widespread self-censorship. In the past two weeks, several journalists have been abducted and one reporter has died in unclear circumstances, according to press reports and CPJ interviews.
“We call on Mexican authorities to fully investigate the abduction of reporters in Reynosa and ensure that these crimes do not remain unpunished,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ senior program coordinator for the Americas. “We urge the government of President Felipe Calderón to provide safety guarantees for the press, and to make the protection of free expression a top priority.”
The Dallas Morning News reported on Monday that eight Mexican journalists were abducted in separate episodes in the Reynosa area, near McAllen, Texas. One reporter died, two were released, and the rest were missing, the Morning News reported.
The Morning News and CPJ sources identified the deceased man as Jorge Rábago Valdez, a well-known Reynosa journalist. Rábago, a journalist with the Reynosa-based daily La Prensa and local broadcasters Radio Rey and Reporteros en la Red, died on March 2 at Christus Muguerza Hospital in circumstances that are not yet clear. The state prosecutor’s office ruled the death was by natural causes after Rábago had suffered an embolism and lapsed into diabetic coma. But several reporters told CPJ that Rábago had been badly beaten. The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a wave of drug-related violence in the Mexican city of Reynosa, near the Texas border, which is endangering the news media and causing widespread self-censorship. In the past two weeks, several journalists have been abducted and one reporter has died in unclear circumstances, according to press reports and CPJ interviews.
“We call on Mexican authorities to fully investigate the abduction of reporters in Reynosa and ensure that these crimes do not remain unpunished,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ senior program coordinator for the Americas. “We urge the government of President Felipe Calderón to provide safety guarantees for the press, and to make the protection of free expression a top priority.”
The Dallas Morning News reported on Monday that eight Mexican journalists were abducted in separate episodes in the Reynosa area, near McAllen, Texas. One reporter died, two were released, and the rest were missing, the Morning News reported.
The Morning News and CPJ sources identified the deceased man as Jorge Rábago Valdez, a well-known Reynosa journalist. Rábago, a journalist with the Reynosa-based daily La Prensa and local broadcasters Radio Rey and Reporteros en la Red, died on March 2 at Christus Muguerza Hospital in circumstances that are not yet clear. The state prosecutor’s office ruled the death was by natural causes after Rábago had suffered an embolism and lapsed into diabetic coma. But several reporters told CPJ that Rábago had been badly beaten.
Here is some background on coverage of Mexico from Columbia Journalism Review and its website:
- CJR, November-December 2009 – Myths of Mexico: The media’s simplistic depiction of the ‘drug war’
- CJR.org, Oct. 7, 2009 - The most misreported country
- CJR, November-December 2008 – At risk in Mexico: Drug violence is silencing the press