‘The Italian mafia’s best students aren’t the Colombians, they’re the Mexicans’

Sinaloa is synonymous with El Chapo Guzmán, narcotrafficking and terror. In Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state, an open door and a bare staircase lead to the headquarters of Ríodoce, the newspaper founded by Ismael Bojórquez. It is a modest space with polished stone floors, a few computers and piles of dusty newspapers. The weekly newspaper is about to mark 20 years of denouncing the rot of corruption and violence. It was the workplace of the internationally acclaimed journalist Javier Valdez, who was on his way to the office when he was shot and killed in 2017. He became a symbol of all the journalists killed in the country. Posthumous homages to Valdez still abound, and reporters hold up his image as a referent for their ongoing struggle. Bojórquez continues to fuel the fire of Valdez’s memory. Five journalists continue to work in the Ríodoce office. Below on the street, as Bojórquez poses for photos, everyone seems suspicious: the man eating a sandwich in a dilapidated black car; the driver that speeds past; the workers sitting on the sidewalk. The handgun could appear at any moment.

Question. Mexico is tragically known for the murders of journalists. There have been nine this year so far, and the country is about to break a record. How have we gotten here?

Answer. This evolved along with the narcoviolence. A significant part of crimes are committed by the narcos in coordination with politicians or vice-versa. This problem didn’t exist 20 years ago, but everything got worse with the death of Francisco Ortiz Franco in Tijuana, and Alfredo Jiménez Mota’s disappearance a year later. He worked with me at Noroeste. Everything started to devolve for the press then. In Tamaulipas, in Veracruz, nothing could be published that wasn’t authorized by the narco, not even a death. That’s when the concept of silent zones started to develop. Publishing information could cost you your life. Impunity motivated many of those murders. And we’re still in the same place. With Andrés Manuel [López Obrador, the current president], we were hopeful, but things are even worse, with the added aggravation that the president is complaining about the media all the time, a permanent aggression that adds to this context of impunity for violence against journalists. The government observes that in 45% of crimes someone from the state is involved: municipal police, mayors, officials, a devious local politician. That explains the levels of impunity. If someone who sits at the decision-making table, or a representative who’s looking to get to Congress, is involved, the investigation in the prosecutors’ offices doesn’t move forward.

Q. Who is winning the war?

A. The press isn’t winning, nor is the freedom of speech. The narco is winning. When the media stays quiet, they achieve their goal. There’s no general conspiracy by organized crime to silence the press. They are cases that, put together, give you a general panorama. Now there is less reporting on the street, because people are afraid to go out, and they’re horribly paid.

Q. Why are people still doing journalism in Mexico?

A. Almost everyone does other things. They’re taxi drivers, or riders on motorcycles who take a photo and sell it. Or they work simultaneously for three media outlets. There is a real problem of labor abuses that hasn’t been addressed. The narrative has focused on the insecurity, but there is also frightening abuse by media outlets that have a lot of money while the journalists don’t even have social security.

Q: Why did you become a journalist?

A: I started when I was old, in 1990. I was really involved in the left, in the revolutionary struggle, but the Berlin wall fell and I found my trenches in journalism. I love the profession.

Q: How do you see the immediate future?

A: We don’t see this as inevitable. This didn’t exist three decades ago, so it doesn’t have to be like this forever. There need to be ways for journalists to work safely, but that’s true for any profession. In Mexico, more journalists and taxi drivers and women and lawyers are killed than journalists. We need public policy. Crime is not being fought. Andrés Manuel says that we have to go to the root causes. For him, that means giving 3,000 pesos [€142] to a working-class person, but it turns out that if you follow a military convoy, behind them there are three or four men on motorcycles, without license plates, with their radios, warning the narco boss where the convoy is going. These are the people receiving those 3,000 pesos from the president, and that doesn’t make them stop working for the cartel as well. The root causes need to be attacked, yes, but crime needs to be fought right now. We need a holistic policy. Andrés Manuel preferred hugs over bullets, and these three years have been like a truce for the narco. During truces, armies re-arm themselves and reorganize.