Mexico's press under siege: The rising journalist death toll
July 11, 2023
The body of Luis Martin Sanchez Iniguez was found wrapped in plastic, hands tied, a message pinned to his chest with a knife. Authorities did not reveal what the messages said, but such notes are frequently left by drug cartels with the bodies of victims. The 59-year-old correspondent for La Jornada was kidnapped in the Mexican state Nayarit last Wednesday, and found dead on Saturday. He is the third correspondent for the daily newspaper to have been murdered in recent times, and the second in 2023.
According to Mexico's attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, two further media professionals have disappeared in the past few days. While one has since been found alive, the other is still missing without a trace. It is suspected that both were working on a story together.
A sad record
In Mexico, violence against journalists has risen to the point that the country is now a sad record-holder. Multiple organizations, including Reporters Without Borders (RSF), have deemed Mexico the deadliest country for journalists in North and South America. In 2022, Mexico was the country with the most murdered journalists worldwide (11), according to RSF.
In addition to murders, human rights organizations such as Article 19 also track daily attacks against journalists, and found that in June 2022, a journalist or media institution was attacked every 14 hours in Mexico.
One third of all attacks from the state
Article 19 estimates that many attacks on journalists in Mexico originate from state or local authorities. Since 2007, the Mexican administration — be it at the federal, state, communal or local level — is the most common aggressor against media. In the first half of 2022, authorities committed 128 attacks, or about 38,67% of all attacks the organization documented.
In Mexico, assaults on journalists have long been a depressing reality. The first report of a journalist murdered in Mexico is from 1860. Vicente Segura Arguelles, co-founder of the satire magazine Don Simplicio, publisher of two further papers and representative of political-conservative journalism, was shot by liberal troops in Mexico City. Since then, hundreds of journalists have been murdered. So far, since incumbent President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador assumed office in 2018, 44 journalists have been killed — of whom Sanchez Iniguez was the most recent.
'We know the risk'
In other cases, attacks have ended less tragically. On December 15, 2022, unknown motorcyclists fired at the prominent news anchor Ciro Gomez Leyva in Mexico City in a drive-by. The bullet-proof encasing of his car shielded him from three direct shots.
"We know that we are pursuing journalism in a violent and dangerous country, and that we are exposed to risks," Gomez Leyva said at the time. But he added that the Mexican capital had not seen anything like it since the 1980s.
He pointed out that the violence was usually directed more at local journalists and smaller media outlets than at renowned journalists working for Mexico's largest outlets.
Was this a direct attack on Gomez Leyva, or an ordinary assault in a country marred by daily violence? In 2022, the country recorded more than 30,000 murders and more than 109,000 disappeared persons. Gomez Leyva was reluctant to draw any hasty conclusions: "There is no certainty, only uncertainty.”
Desensitized to the violence
The violence seems to have become so commonplace that Mexico's population has shown little outrage and even less protest. "As long as I am safe, and my family is safe, it doesn't matter what happens around me," investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez described a common attitude.
"This apathy, this indifference of the people towards the suffering of others creates more space for impunity and leads to more violence against all of us, including journalists."
"This brute force, the intimidation and subjugation of the people at gunpoint — be it by narcos, the armed forces, or the police — forces a nation to its knees in the face not only of violence, but of authoritarianism. This life on bended knee will have consequences for generations to come," Hernandez, who won DW's Freedom of Speech Award in 2019, concluded.
Hernandez, like Gomez Leyva, is well-known in Mexico.
She argued that the progress Mexcio had made in the field of human rights in past decades was now at stake, jeopardizing not only journalism, but also the nation's democracy.
This article was translated from German.