Journalists in 40 Mexican cities protested earlier this week, not just for three colleagues who were killed this month, but to bring attention to the grave danger that journalism suffers in the country.
According to the Committee to Protest Journalists (CPJ), as many as 148 journalists have been killed since 2000, making it the deadliest country in the Western Hemisphere in which to practice journalism.
Of those 148, 28 journalists have been killed since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018, according to Articulo 19, an independent organization in Mexico and Central America that advocates for freedom of expression and information.
For context, 47 journalists were killed between 2012 and 2018 under former president Enrique Peña Nieto. Mexican presidents serve one six-year term.
The protestors deplored that to kill a journalist in Mexico is like killing no one. Far from serious investigations being carried out by state and federal prosecutors, from knowing why journalists are killed in this country and from justice, [instead] the [number] is on the rise.
In Mexico, state violence — that includes organized crime, colluded by governments at different levels — has caused zones of silence where there are no conditions to carry out our work.
They have murdered, disappeared, threatened, and forced journalists to leave their [cities and homes]. In a [femicide state] like Mexico, where 11 women are murdered every day, the murder of a female journalist should challenge us and mortify us at the social level as it touches the most sensitive fibers of a place where the social fabric has been torn.
Journalists chanted “No se mata la verdad” (“You can’t kill the truth”) and shared personal stories of harassment, violence, fear, and stories about colleagues whose murders remain unsolved and unpunished.
During at least two protests — one in Mexico City and one in the Southern state of Chiapas — journalists read out a statement outlining and reprimanding the government’s inaction to a longstanding problem.
