Impunity in Mexico: Remembering Javier Valdez

One month after Mexican journalist Javier Valdez was assassinated outside his workplace, we asked seven journalists to reflect on his murder and the impact of violence and impunity on their work. Below, Donna DeCesare introduces pieces by Melissa del Bosque, Javier Garza, Michel Marizco, Maria Teresa Ronderos, Christopher Sherman and ​Marcela Turati. Scroll down for excerpts, and click to the right to read the full pieces.

Introduction by Donna DeCesare

It’s been nearly two years since the Dart Center published an interview I did with our Mexican colleagues Marcela Turati and Javier Garza about the murder of Mexican photojournalist Ruben Espinosa. At the time, Ruben’s death marked an ominous turning point for Mexican reporters. He was the first journalist murdered in Mexico City in more than 20 years. Colleagues were especially worried about how his death would impact regional journalists who, up until then, believed that Mexico City offered reliable safe haven when they faced death threats in their regions.

Despite the intensified calls to end impunity and to protect the Press after Ruben’s murder, the situation for Mexican journalists has declined sharply. In 2016 Mexico experienced the highest number of journalist murders of any country outside a conflict zone. Only Syria and Iraq proved to be more deadly. And in the fifth month of 2017, after a series of especially brazen and devastating murders taking the lives of journalists Maximino Rodríguez, Miroslava Breach, Cecilio Pineda and Elidio Ramos, our colleagues in Mexico lost one of their country’s pre-eminent journalistic voices.

On this day a month ago, Javier Valdez, who won many international awards including a Maria Moors Cabot Award and CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was targeted and killed by assassins in broad daylight on the streets of his hometown. The silencing of one of Mexico’s most uncompromising and eloquent chroniclers of the ravages of the Drug War leaves a large hole in the heart of the entire journalistic community.    

I met Javier Valdez in Mexico City at a conference on press coverage of drug trafficking. His work and reputation were already established by then, but fame had not gone to his head. I found him to be utterly engaging and disarmingly generous.  On impulse, reacting to my photographic presentation about Central American gangs, Javier invited me to visit Sinaloa to photograph the world he reported on. Regrettably I never managed to make that visit. But I did discover the world of Culiacan in the passionate and poetic Malayerba Chronicles – some of which are translated into English by Patrick Timmons here – that Javier wrote for the scrappy newspaper he co-founded, Rio Doce, as well as in his many published books. His work greatly deepened my knowledge. Indeed it should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand contemporary Mexico. 

For the younger generations of Mexican journalists, he was a beloved mentor whose footsteps they were most eager to follow. His shoes may now seem both impossibly large and perilous to fill. As they mourn Javier Valdez, reporters are asking themselves how they can best honor him and continue their journalism.

The initiative #ourvoiceisourstrength led by a group of U.S. advocates and Mexican reporters aims to focus international attention on the gravity of the attacks on Mexico’s press. Their first action launches today with the en masse publication of one-month anniversary reflections on Javier Valdez’s murder. As part of the Dart Center’s support of this effort, we invited several of our Ochberg fellows and Dart Award winners who cover or are based in Mexico – Marcela Turati, Chris Sherman, Michel Marizco, Melissa del Bosque and Javier Garza – as well as one of Latin America’s leading journalists and proponents of press freedom, Maria Teresa Ronderos, to share their reflections about the impact of Javier Valdez’s life, his work and his murder, as well as steps that can be taken to strengthen and support Mexican journalists and journalism.

At the Dart Center, we are dedicated to the emotional wellbeing of our colleagues and to the mission of press freedom everywhere. By joining with #ourvoiceisourstrength, we commit to deepened international solidarity in the struggle against impunity. Please read Javier’s writings and the messages from our colleagues. Please spread the word and join these and other solidarity efforts. While journalists in the U.S. enjoy greater protections than their colleagues in Mexico, there are signs that these may be more fragile than many of us assume. Attacks on press freedom, wherever they occur, impact us all. They must be resisted. It is no time for silence.

MARCELA TURATI, CO-FOUNDER, PERIODISTAS DE A PIE

Javier was one of our most revered and beloved. He was like a big brother, a mentor who taught many of us how to cover drug trafficking. He was a generous and responsible guide to all the national and international investigative journalists who came to report on his native Sinaloa, the dangerous place notoriously known as the home of “El Chapo” and the cartel he led. We thought Javier was untouchable; of course we were wrong. His death sent shockwaves of terror through our community of journalists. 

Read Marcela's piece here.

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, MEXICO CORRESPONDENT, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Javier Valdez occupied a different stratum than most journalists in Mexico. I never met Javier, but I knew his reputation. Independent voices in Mexican journalism stand out and his was unmistakably one of them. For Mexican journalists, it takes more than fluid prose, good sources and a platform. It requires a daily, even minute-by-minute, word-by-word calculation of the risks and the public’s need to know. 

Read Christopher's piece here.

MICHEL MARIZCO, SENIOR EDITOR, KJZZ FRONTERAS DESK

Valdez taught me the nuance of reporting in that beautiful, savage Pacific coast city: how in a place like Culiacán, you can’t rely on press briefings, open source information and records laws. How a recorder could be perceived as a weapon and how a notebook should appear and disappear, never hovering too long. ​

Read Michel's piece here.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE TEXAS OBSERVER

We in the United States have more in common with our colleagues in Mexico than we’d like to believe. Our president calls us an “enemy of the people” for reporting the truth. A growing authoritarianism and corruption threaten our freedom of expression and our democracy, too. The death of a colleague in Mexico is a mortal wound to us all. What can we do?

Read Melissa's piece here.

Javier Garza ramos, NEWS EDITOR, Imagen Laguna

Javier believed in “safety in numbers” – that pushing other news organizations to replicate or follow up on the delicate stories Rio Doce published meant that information could travel far and wide. That, to him, made publishing worth the risk and also provided another layer of safety. Something else was probably also on his mind: That sharing a story creates a bond of solidarity between journalists. By helping to amplify the news, those who aren’t in danger help those who are, and that same favor may be returned one day.

Read Javier's piece here.

MARIA TERESA RONDEROS, DIRECTOR, OPEN SOCIETY PROGRAM ON INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

The more journalists from the mainstream media in Mexico and in neighboring countries join these brave pioneers, the safer everyone will be. A shared editor will help to make the stories better; publishing each identical story simultaneously in hundreds of different outlets will make them unbeatable. Journalists telling truths and using their multiple platforms to shout them with one voice: nothing could be more effective against those who want them silenced. This would be the best homage to Javier Valdez. Avenge his death with good journalism and solidarity, the two things he did best.

Read Maria Teresa's piece here.


Marcela Turati: They Are Killing Us

They Are Killing Us

By Marcela Turati

When I heard the news that Javier Valdez had been murdered, I was with a group of journalists discussing how we could support seven colleagues who had just been ambushed in Guerrero by 100 armed gunmen threatening to burn them alive as they stripped them of their equipment. Weeping was followed by panic. 

Javier was one of our most revered and beloved. He was like a big brother, a mentor who taught many of us how to cover drug trafficking. He was a generous and responsible guide to all the national and international investigative journalists who came to report on his native Sinaloa, the dangerous place notoriously known as the home of “El Chapo” and the cartel he led. We thought Javier was untouchable; of course we were wrong. His death sent shockwaves of terror through our community of journalists. 

That same day Javier was killed, the deputy director of a newspaper in Jalisco was attacked. His son died as a result.

Javier was murdered on May 15. A couple of months earlier, three other journalists were killed, including Miroslava Breach, the Chihuahua correspondent for La Jornada, the same national newspaper where Javier worked. When Javier learned of Miroslava’s death he tweeted a message that took on an ominous meaning, and then went viral in the aftermath of his own death: "If the sentence for reporting this hell is death, they will have to kill us all. No to silence.”

But in Sinaloa, Javier’s murder prompted journalists who now understood the heightened risk to plead for help to leave the country. They now count themselves among the displaced.

As Mexican journalists demanded that the authorities investigate Javier's murder, a masked person in Michoacán forced journalist Salvador Adame into a pickup truck. He continues to be listed as “disappeared.” And his story, which received scant coverage, is also invisible.

Of the many journalists who have been killed since 2006 in the wave of violence unleashed after the Mexican government declared a so-called "war against narcos,” Javier Valdez was best known. Consequently, the massive demonstrations demanding justice have focused on his murder.

But attacks on journalist are frequent. Murders and disappearances of Mexican journalists are now so numerous that they can be called habitual; and with this regularity comes invisibility, as many are never even covered in the press.

In the weeks after Javier’s death, we learned that someone cut off Carlos Barrios’ ear. The purpose of this brutal attack on a Quintana Roo journalist was to send a warning to his boss. Then, an indigenous reporter, Marcela de Jesús Natalia, was shot when she left the radio station where she worked. There are many more cases of threats and censorship. These are just a few of the attacks that have taken place over the past three months.

The outcry from Mexican journalists and our demand over the past decade has been for the government to deliver justice. But in Mexico, impunity is a state policy: 99.8% of crimes against journalists go unpunished. This record of impunity is an invitation to continue silencing journalists.

And silencing journalists is becoming a national sport. In Mexico there are so many attacks on the press that journalists jump from emergency to emergency. Before we finish tending to one crisis, there is another at our door.

"They are killing us." These are the words that a group of journalists painted at the base of the popular monument to the Angel of Independence, in the heart of Mexico City. "They are killing us" is the new slogan of Mexican journalists. And that is no hyperbole. According to official figures, more than 126 journalists have been killed since 2000, more than 20 are missing, and there have been at least 51 attacks on the media.

At night we come together to think through how to push back against impunity. We question and analyze every detail of the most recent crimes to understand their hidden messages. We rethink where we can and cannot publish our journalism. We share anecdotes of nighttime paranoia that follow us into the shadows, and we talk to press freedom advocates sharing our ideas, our fears and our plans of actions.

Along with many others, I have become a sort of air traffic controller trying to support actions that my colleagues have initiated, like publishing collaboratively en masse on anniversaries of killings, like this one, and encouraging people to read Javier’s work. We are papering the city with posters to remind everyone of what is happening, and running funding campaigns to support critical independent media. At the end of a recent press conference we asked our colleagues to leave their egos at the door and set competition aside so that all journalists will participate in conversations over the coming weeks to identify problems and construct solutions.

But, please know, this is also an SOS to the international community. We need your help, now.


Chris Sherman: Mentor to a Battered Profession

Mentor to a Battered Profession

By Christopher Sherman

Javier Valdez occupied a different stratum than most journalists in Mexico. I never met Javier, but I knew his reputation. Independent voices in Mexican journalism stand out and his was unmistakably one of them. For Mexican journalists, it takes more than fluid prose, good sources and a platform. It requires a daily, even minute-by-minute, word-by-word calculation of the risks and the public’s need to know.

For Javier and his courageous colleagues at Río Doce, the newspaper he co-founded, the goal wasn’t naming Culiacán’s new plaza boss or the narco lieutenant on the rise. There’s so much turnover in the drug world these days it hardly matters. Rather, like any good journalist should, Javier focused on giving voice to the voiceless: the families left behind, the teens dragged in, and in his most recent book Narcoperiodismo, the journalists intimidated, co-opted or killed into silence.

He also worked to shine a light in the darkest corners of Sinaloa state where the nexus of drug lords, politicians and big business flourishes. As Río Doce co-founder, Ismael Bojórquez, told my colleague María Verza after Javier’s death, “I want it to be clear: We don't give a damn who is running the criminal world. We're not fighting with any drug lord. For us drug trafficking is not a cause, it's a phenomenon that exists and we treat it journalistically in terms of its consequences on the economy, on culture, on politics, on the government, on the police.”

Javier was an inspiration and a mentor to a battered profession, so inevitably the silencing of such a voice has a strong psychological impact. But independent voices and aspiring journalists remain in Mexico. They should be supported and protected.

Organizations abroad should continue expanding scholarships and grants for training, not only to safely operate in their hostile environments, but also to carry out complex investigations. Their best work should continue to be recognized as Javier’s was. And those who have to strike out on their own to escape censorship at media outlets that depend on government money should be steered toward financial support for their endeavors and offered platforms to co-publish their work.

Unfortunately, expectations are low that the conditions for Mexican journalists will enjoy any significant improvement in terms of safety until there are a string of transparent and successful prosecutions of not only the triggermen, but the capos and politicians who ordered the hits. Those outside Mexico can pressure their own governments to make sure a Mexican politician does not meet a foreign counterpart without having to answer on this topic.

Finally, especially those in the U.S. should not forget our country’s role in this bloodshed. Drug revenue collected in the U.S. and funneled back to Mexico feeds this violence and makes possible the impunity that follows.  


Michel Marizco: No to Silence

No to Silence

by Michel Marizco

Javier Valdez had a way of sliding an old spiral notebook out of his breast pocket, jotting down a brief note, then sliding it back into hiding before you realized it had ever been out. Part reporter, part poet, he loved detail and he loved to decipher the meaning of symbols. Valdez was a voice for a city enshrined in organized crime: Culiacán, Sinaloa. It’s a city where the forefathers of nearly every Mexican crime family built either retirement homes, or their tombs. 

“They either live out the rest of their days here like Carrillo Fuentes,” he gestured at a rose-colored mansion belonging to the mother of the founders of the Juárez Cartel, its cupolas peeking over the top of a security wall one morning. “Or they have their tombs ordered. Either way, this is where they want to end up.”

He titled his newspaper column, Malá Yerba, which could mean “pot,” but also forms part of an old Mexican saying, “a bad weed never dies.” I was never clear on which, and he would never specify.

I first met Javier in 2005. Only two years before, he and a cohort had started a newspaper, an aggressive alternative weekly called Río Doce. Río Doce means the Twelfth River, and it stands for the river of ideas – one to supplement the other eleven rivers in Culiacán. A lofty title for a scrappy newspaper. For a reporter chasing the unsolved murders of Mexico’s journalists, it was a good place to learn.

I moved to Culiacán, Sinaloa, intent on following the career path of another young journalist, one who disappeared months earlier in the shadows of  the northern border state of Sonora. This young man, Alfredo Jimenez, got his start covering the spilled entrails of the Sinaloa Cartel on its home turf: the crippling death of El Chapo Joaquín Guzmán’s son in Culiacán; the killing of Ramón Arellano Felíx at the hands of the Mexican Army in Mazatlán, Sinaloa; and the cold murder of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, the heir apparent of the Juárez Cartel in 2004 that cracked the split into the timber of the old Sinaloan families like a blackening lightning bolt that would bring on a decade of destabilizing war.

Valdez taught me the nuance of reporting in that beautiful, savage Pacific coast city: how in a place like Culiacán, you can’t rely on press briefings, open source information and records laws. How a recorder could be perceived as a weapon and how a notebook should appear and disappear, never hovering too long. 

Around this time, Valdez, this foul-mouthed veteran, grim and laughing and obscene and hilarious and loving and caring, sat down to write about Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.

 His story:

First came one man, accompanied by two, three more. He spoke with a thick, loud voice; grabbing the attention of the diners who at that moment numbered maybe 30.

"Gentlemen, please," the man said. "Give me a moment of your time. A man is going to come in, the boss. We ask that you remain in your seats. The doors will close and nobody is allowed to leave. You will also not be allowed to use your cellulars. Do not worry; if you do everything that is asked of you, nothing will happen. Continue eating and don’t ask for your check. The boss will pay. Thank you."

The diners stayed where they were, surprised, expectant.

El Chapo, according to Valdez, paid a visit to Las Palmas restaurant in Culiacán’s notorious Colonia Las Quintas. Weeks later, the restaurant owner threatened to sue the paper; but the paper never ran a retraction and is open to this day, suggesting perhaps, that someone had backed down. And it wasn’t Valdez.

By 2008 his city had hardened into a stronghold against a Sinaloan drug lord breaking old treaties and terrorizing the country. The daily violence also hardened Valdez. 

A colleague of his was murdered in March: 54-year-old Miroslava Breach worked on the opposite side of those feral mountains of the Sierra Madre. 

Valdez tweeted in response that day: "If the sentence for reporting this hell is death, they will have to kill us all. No to silence.”

Six weeks later, two killers approached him. They shot him in the stomach and then in both arms after he raised them defensively. Then, when he fell forward, they delivered the tiro de gracía, the coup de grace shot to the head. 

It has been a month, and it’s growing increasingly likely that Javier’s case will never be solved. We’re left with no motive, no suspects, no arrests. The only clear details of his death are the manner in which he died.

But we’re also left with the details of his life. He spent much of that life capturing the dark soul of a savage country, and he left us with his judgment of that soul in the savage murders he wrote about, the odd and sometimes flagrant deals struck between Mexican politicians and the underworld that he alluded to, the rhythm and detail of what he saw in his city, encapsulated in his columns and stories. Valdez the poet captured Mexico’s soul. Valdez the reporter captured its people and their facts. There among both lies the clear possibility of a motive for his death.

No to silence.


Melissa del Bosque: “Te Van a Matar”

“Te Van a Matar”

by Melissa del Bosque

“They are going to kill you,” were the words Javier Valdez chose to begin his weekly column less than two months before the hired gunmen ended his life in front of Río Doce, the newspaper he’d helped found in 2003.

“Cabrón, cuídate. Estos güeyes no tienen madre. Son unos malditos.”

Valdez’s writing cut through the cynicism, the impunity, the mafia politics and malignant corruption like a switchblade. “I am not a journalist of silence,” he said in an interview with CPJ in 2011 after receiving the International Press Freedom Award. “There are newspapers that count the dead, that count the bullets … at Río Doce we count people.”

Valdez wrote stories about the powerful — the “smiling lawmaker who looked like a cash register” and “the mayor flush with funds.” And his pen took note of the working people who were “fucked over every time.” He kept writing the truth as he saw it, even as his colleagues were murdered one by one for doing the same: Regina Martínez, Miroslava Breach, Pedro Tamayo Rosas, Rubén Espinosa, Anabel Flores Salazar and so many others that the list grew over a decade to more than ninety. And almost none of the murders solved or even adequately investigated.

Increasingly, we in the United States have more in common with our colleagues in Mexico than we’d like to believe. Our president calls us an “enemy of the people” for reporting the truth. A growing authoritarianism and corruption threaten our freedom of expression and our democracy, too. The death of a colleague in Mexico is a mortal wound to us all. What can we do?

The U.S. government often jails Mexican journalists seeking political asylum — a practice that has worsened under the Trump administration. Only last month, Martín Mendéz Pineda who had received repeated death threats in Mexico, abandoned his petition for asylum in the United States after more than three months in detention. Write and call your congressional leaders and urge them to change this un-American practice. Also, support nonprofit groups that assist journalists in Mexico under threat. These organizations include Periodistas de a PieArticulo 19 and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). You can also buy Javier’s books, which will help his family.

Above all, we need to remember Javier’s example and speak out against corruption and impunity at every opportunity. We must resist, persist and unite against the attacks on freedom of speech no matter where they hit on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.


Javier Garza Ramos: Safety in Numbers

Safety in Numbers

By Javier Garza Ramos

In 2013, the newspaper where I worked, El Siglo de Torreon, was one of the most targeted news organizations in Mexico. We were covering a wave of violence unleashed by crime organizations in the city, and the shootings at our building, kidnappings and threats that began a few years before had become an expected part of our work. As Editorial Director, I tried to make sure we had adequate security procedures in place for our reporters and editors, especially for those covering crime.

Taking part in the discussion on journalist safety in Mexico at the start of the decade – just as the country was descending into a spiral of violence – steered me inevitably towards the brave and dedicated founders of Rîo Doce, Javier Valdez and Ismael Bojórquez. Those two were in the thick of it, doing investigative journalism in the cradle of Mexico’s narco-trafficking industry.

We would bump into each other at conferences on press freedom or speak on panels side by side about violence and the media. Away from the mics, the subject would change to the inner workings of the drug cartels. We all believed this to be the most dangerous time to be a journalist in Mexico’s modern history.

At a conference in San Diego in 2014, Javier Valdez was adamant that we keep one harsh truth in mind: that in Mexico, criminal groups set the news agenda, not the journalists and not their audience. He then made an important distinction: we could work to change that, however, as long as it was the reality, journalists needed to learn how to continue doing their jobs without risking their lives. Javier was deeply aware of the risk he faced, and he took various measures to protect himself. Unfortunately, in the end, this wasn’t enough.

Javier also believed in “safety in numbers” – that pushing other news organizations to replicate or follow up on the delicate stories Rio Doce published meant that information could travel far and wide. That, to him, made publishing worth the risk and also provided another layer of safety. Something else was probably also on his mind: That sharing a story creates a bond of solidarity between journalists. By helping to amplify the news, those who aren’t in danger help those who are, and that same favor may be returned one day.

As violence has engulfed the Mexican press, with more attacks every year, solidarity is one way to mitigate the trauma. Understanding that your colleagues will be there in times of need is invaluable when you have nowhere else to turn: not the government and, sometimes, not even your employer.

Javier Valdez was a big believer in fostering solidarity and relationships between journalists across Mexico. One of the reasons his murder has had such an impact – beyond his outstanding work or the international recognitions he received – is that he was known and admired by journalists all over Mexico, and he made it seem possible to continue doing our work, even amidst tremendous violence.

Javier truly earned the respect of his peers. And this, perhaps, is the greatest recognition possible.


Maria Teresa Ronderos: If Javier Fell, Who Can Stand?

If Javier, the fearless, the talented, fell, who can stand?

By Maria Teresa Ronderos

Despite his life cut short at 50 years and one month exactly, Javier Valdez’s life and death leaves a huge imprint on journalism in the Americas. Together with colleagues, he set up Rio Doce in Culiacan, Sinaloa, the rockiest place for an independent newspaper to survive. And, yet, it got under the skin of Sinaloans and became their voice. In its pages, the newspaper asked politicians hard questions about collusion with drug traffickers. It spelled out corruption in all its nasty characters. It recorded the “fragility of life” in their state (600 people assassinated just this year). It denounced the endemic impunity. Its cartoons laughed at terror, and its photos registered the pain.

In the several books he published, Javier wrote about ordinary people crushed by violence: victims and perpetrators, all sucked into this killing machine. His literary journalism was brutally honest: he laid bare how the residue of the ‘narco’ influence tarnished social values and disgraced the culture.  

Over years, Javier, like the best journalists of the Americas, resisted the insanity not just with truths and beautiful journalism, but also with a great deal of humor. He weathered the hard life of these tough lands matter-of-factly, and even taught his wife and kids to duck in case machine-gun fire sprayed their windows as had once happened. He never posed as the hero he was. It was as if he felt protected by the many people who loved him and cheered him onto continue to write; like he was certain that as long as he and his colleagues stuck together and were willing to speak out, the colluding forces of the narco-political threat could be exposed.

This is why, I believe, Javier’s assassination was such a blow to journalists in Mexico and all over the continent. Indeed, as colleagues have shouted out, Javier’s death was one too many: he was the 14th journalist to be assassinated in the last five years because of their work, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. But it’s not just that. Everyone thought that his talent and daring somehow shielded him. If Javier, the fearless, the playful, the internationally-acclaimed writer, the caring colleague, fell, then who can stand?

Despite the sadness and sense of loss, how Javier lived his life and how he told stories are shedding light on what to do next. Alongside many other efforts, some of his Mexican colleagues are together trying to get as close to the truth about what Javier was reporting on. Others are proposing to jointly investigate other cases of  reporters killed on duty this year, among them, Maximino Rodríguez, Miroslava Breach, Cecilio Pineda and Elidio Ramos.

The more journalists from the mainstream media in Mexico and in neighboring countries join these brave pioneers, the safer everyone will be. A shared editor will help to make the stories better; publishing each identical story simultaneously in hundreds of different outlets will make them unbeatable. Journalists telling truths and using their multiple platforms to shout them with one voice: nothing could be more effective against those who want them silenced. This would be the best homage to Javier Valdez. Avenge his death with good journalism and solidarity, the two things he did best.