| | |  Editorials | Opinions | June 2009 
Not All US Journalists are Painting a Negative View of Mexico
 Molly Molloy - New Mexico State University
June 09, 2009
 |  | While it may be relatively safer in Puerto Vallarta than in Juarez or New Orleans or even that great symbol of urban violence - Chicago - do the ex-pat residents of Mexican resorts willfully deny the lack of a justice system, an equitable education system, a free press, and the fact that every institution in Mexico is fueled by corruption? |  | | |
Regarding the article Mexico: One Journalist’s View by Linda Ellerbee:
While I certainly share the writer's view that the majority of the Mexican people one meets are warm and friendly, I do not think she knows much about the situations faced by many of those same people.
Just a look at this story in the June 8, 2009 edition of El Diario tells us that 25% of the young people of Juarez who pass their exams to go to preparatory school (high school) will be rejected because there is no space for them. Unless they can come up with the money to attend a private school, their schooling is over with about the equivalent of a 9th grade education in the US.
In addition, Diario has a story that says of the 719 murders so far in 2009, only ONE case is being investigated by the PGR (the Federal Attorney General) even though about 52% of these killings are said to be related to "organized crime," and thus according to the state prosecutor, should be handled at the federal level.
The article also says that of the 1,607 killings in 2008, only FOUR cases are being investigated by the PGR. Even the case of Armando Rodriguez, the Diario crime reporter gunned down in front of his house in November 2008, is still in "limbo" awaiting some kind of transaction to be officially taken on by the federal agency especially created to handle cases of murdered journalists. Click HERE to read the full article (in Spanish.)
I suppose it is possible to be an intelligent, literate, well-to-do retiree living in Mexico and not know these things. In fact, this point of view is shared by many journalists, academics and by many other well-informed people both outside and inside of Mexico.
Ms. Ellerbee says she'd be less safe in New Orleans. Well, New Orleans does have the highest murder rate in the USA (somewhere around 60 per 100,000.) And there are many places in Mexico that are probably safer. Juarez, on the other hand, last time I did the arithmetic, had a murder rate somewhere between 80 and 120 per 100,000. One of the highest in the world.
And while it may be relatively safer in Puerto Vallarta than in Juarez or New Orleans or even that great symbol of urban violence - Chicago - do the ex-pat residents of Mexican resorts willfully deny the lack of a justice system, an equitable education system, a free press, the fact that every institution in Mexico is fueled by corruption that funnels money to those at every level of power on the fabled pyramid of power? (see Octavio Paz)
But the same country that provides delightful enclaves in places like Baja California or Puerto Vallarta also endures the murders of somewhere around 2,426 people (the numbers of people reported murdered in Juarez since January 2008) with practically no arrests, investigations or convictions. And that is just in ONE border city.
And the violence is not just on the border. There are towns and villages all over the state of Chihuahua (the largest in the country) where large numbers of people have had to flee from violent attacks by criminals and/or by the Mexican Army. These places are almost never mentioned in the English-language press at all.
In Acapulco over the weekend, shootouts between "sicarios" and the army killed at least 18 people. In Michoacan southwest of Mexico City, home state of President Calderon, the current wave of violence is said to have broken out in late 2007 and continues.
A few weeks ago, ten mayors of municipalities in the state were arrested for supposed ties to organized crime. A bomb tossed into an independence day celebration in September 2008 killed many people in the plaza of the state capital.
In addition to the murder statistics, clandestine graves are periodically found in the countryside and in the cities where 10, 20 or more bodies appear and these dead are seldom identified or included in statistics reported by the official state entities. Organizations of families estimate the number of missing in the thousands, but these people are seldom given a respectful hearing by the federal or state authorities.
Perhaps ex-pat journalists and others could put their knowledge and voice to use to help more people in the United States learn about the Mexican reporters who have had to flee the country for doing their jobs after receiving serious credible threats from the Mexican army, police or other powerful political entities. Or talk to the lawyers and police and businessmen and women who are targeted by direct threats from criminal enterprises. And that doesn't even require that one know or believe that the criminal organizations, the police, the political parties and the army are all part of the same power structure.
Just in the last several weeks, there have been stories in the English-language press about reporters seeking refuge in the US and Canada. I personally know several who have left Mexico and are living in exile in the United States and not in a nice ex-pat enclave either, but sharing houses with other families here in the border region, or having to accept the kindness of strangers because they are no longer able to make a living.
And these people still receive threats and the people who help them in the US also receive threats. And these people do not have the freedom, much less the means to travel home to see their families, to take care of their properties or to in any way live a normal life.
Molly Molloy is a Border & Latin American Specialist at the New Mexico State University Library in Las Cruces, NM. Contact her at mollymolloy(at)gmail.com. |
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