'In Mexico, reporters are hunted like rabbits'
It's tied for first place with Pakistan as the world's deadliest country for journalists
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 February 2012 17.54 EST


At the end of January I was at the Royal Courts of Justice to hear Jonathan Heawood, of English PEN, speak to the Leveson inquiry about the importance of a free press. By Friday I had moved continents, going from the unseasonably warm grey of an English winter to the unseasonably chill blue of a Mexican one. A strange dislocation but, by the time my week was done, I realised how strong is the thread joining its beginning to its end.

Mexico City is a grand old town. Its magnificent central square, the Zócalo, built out of the destruction of an earlier civilisation, is sinking slowly into the marshes from which it had once been claimed. A similar process has now all but buried free expression: Mexico has the dubious distinction of being tied for first place with Pakistan as the world's deadliest country for journalists.

In Britain we worry about the chilling effect of the over-regulation of the press: in Mexico they cut to the chase and shoot (or decapitate) the messenger. Since 2000, 67 Mexican journalists have been killed – a number that President Calderón's war on drugs has only helped to increase. In 90% of these cases, no one has been prosecuted, never mind convicted. Which is why I was there. I was part of a PEN International delegation that, in collaboration with Mexican PEN, aimed to draw worldwide attention to the culture of impunity that silences not only the people who speak out, but the word itself.

The trip turned out to be an eye-opener, revealing the way in which competing drug cartels, inept or corrupt government, the police and terrified media join together in the suppression of free expression. We met politicians and prosecutors, writers and journalists, ambassadors and NGOs, our visit culminating in a public event, "PEN Protesta", where dozens of Mexican writers gave eloquent insight into their country's malaise. The tone was set by one of the first speakers who, paraphrasing Mandelstam, told us that "if you kill poets it means you don't respect poetry but if you kill journalists you don't respect society." Mexico, said another, is a country that "vomits blood"; a third described it as "a magical country full of assassinated people and no apparent assassins". It's a country where, according to one of Mexico's pre-eminent writers, Elena Poniatowska, "reporters are hunted like rabbits."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/03/author-author-gillian-slovo?CMP=twt_gu

It's very sad. Many here and in the US spend their time trying to convince people it's not that bad, but it really is. Journalists are exterminated by both the narcos and police. Most of us that were born mexicans know there is not much difference in them.