10 Dec 10 | Americas, Mexico
As in every country affected by Wikileaks, Mexico is trying to figure out what to learn from the released cables that undress what U.S. officials think of this country and its politicians.
In the released documents US Ambassador Carlos Pascual, and other US officials, openly discuss their doubts about the effectiveness of Mexican security institutions.
But what has sent people into a spin are revelations that US agencies were the ones that had the intelligence that led Mexican Navy units to ambush and kill a powerful drug trafficker in December last year. One cable also reveals that it was US forces that hand-picked the Mexican Navy to carry out this and other attacks against wanted drug traffickers.
But for those who do not get offended by the fact that their next door neighbour is prying into internal affairs, the cables have contributed to provide the common citizen with more information on how their government is carrying on with the drug war.
The progressive newspaper La Jornada published a very thoughtful editorial last Sunday which argued that the cables confirm many truths often denied by the government of Felipe Calderon in its battle against drug traffickers. One cable revealed that there was serious in-fighting between the two government organs that oversee justice and police work. The head of the Public Security Ministry, Genaro Garcia Luna and former attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora, went at each other´s throat for most of the first half of Calderon’s presidential term between 2007 and 2009. The revelations in the cable feed into Mexico’s penchant for conspiracy theories. For the last three years rumours printed in columns by prestigious journalists talked about the fight between the two top government officials over operations, intelligence and the President’s ear, but the rumours were never clarified by the government and were always denied.
Today with the Wikileaks revelations, the public that has taken the time to read the stories on the revelations is better informed, but the government has lost face as it enters its last two years in office and confronts its worst public image. According to a recent poll by Consulta Mitofsky, three of every four Mexicans queried believes they live in a worse situation now than a year ago. The president closes his fourth year in office with a dismal approval rate of 54 percent.
Wikileaks here helped keep the electorate informed with old news, but the impact is still the same–more transparency.
The same is occurring in Bogota, Colombia, in an internal scandal in which the security apparatus of the former President Alvaro Uribe allegedly organised phone tapping of leading politicians, jurists and journalists.
The information was first revealed in documents leaked to the prestigious magazine Semana last year. But Wikileaks tops those past revelations. In one cable, it is none other than General Oscar Naranjo, Colombia’s National Police Director and a well respected official around the world, telling the US Ambassador that the phone taps were ordered by the private secretary of President Uribe, Bernardo Moreno and the presidential advisor, Jose Obdulio Gaviria. Both officials were often thought to be behind the dubious activities that marked the government of President Uribe’s last year in office.
But again, the fact that the US Embassy and one of Colombia’s top police authorities reveal those charges as strong possibilities gives Colombian citizens more information than they had directly from their government officials.
Thus the contributions of Wikileaks are opening a window of transparency in societies where common citizens are not provided with the necessary information to make informed decisions about how their governments are operating.
24 Sep 10 | Uncategorized
Mexico continues to be an important destination for press freedom organisations. The Inter American Press Association and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists visited Mexico this week to promote legal changes on the prosecution of crimes against journalists, and a protection plan for journalists under threat, similar to the one implemented in Colombia in early 2000. Under current law, murder cases are presided over by provincial authorities, and international groups have been pushing for crimes against journalists to be brought under the federal government´s control. President Felipe Calderon told both groups he will put in place a government sanctioned plan to protect journalists, which will include early warning alerts, extension of the statute of limitations for crimes against journalists, a programme to transfer threatened journalists to other residences, police protection for threatened reporters, and establishment of a government-media group that would identify motives behind attacks on the press.
IAPA, meanwhile, gave a vote of confidence to Calderón’s protection plan, but warned about a lack of resources for putting the plan into action.”There aren’t necessary resources to cover the magnitude of the problem,” the IAPA Vice President, Gonzalo Marroquín.
The group held a public meeting at Casa Lamm, a grand old house located in the Colonia Roma of Mexico City, where editors from Ciudad Juarez, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Tijuana and Zacatecas told the meeting that they practiced self censorship. Some of the editors were told the group that they would not accept government protection. “How can we ask the government to protect us if they cant protect themselves” Ismael Bojorquez, editor of Rio Doce, Sinaloa asked rethorically .”They can’t protect themselves,” he added, mentioning that a number of state government officials have been killed in Sinaloa.
The debate over protection measures for journalists in Mexico will continue, especially because journalists in the provincial cities, called states in Mexico, need to understand how these measures will work.
Ana Arana is Director of the Fundación Mexicana de Periodismo de Investigación
24 Sep 10 | Americas, Mexico
Mexico continues to be an important destination for press freedom organisations. The Inter American Press Association and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists visited Mexico this week to promote legal changes on the prosecution of crimes against journalists, and a protection plan for journalists under threat, similar to the one implemented in Colombia in early 2000. Under current law, murder cases are presided over by provincial authorities, and international groups have been pushing for crimes against journalists to be brought under the federal government´s control. President Felipe Calderon told both groups he will put in place a government sanctioned plan to protect journalists, which will include early warning alerts, extension of the statute of limitations for crimes against journalists, a programme to transfer threatened journalists to other residences, police protection for threatened reporters, and establishment of a government-media group that would identify motives behind attacks on the press.
IAPA, meanwhile, gave a vote of confidence to Calderón’s protection plan, but warned about a lack of resources for putting the plan into action.”There aren’t necessary resources to cover the magnitude of the problem,” the IAPA Vice President, Gonzalo Marroquín.
The group held a public meeting at Casa Lamm, a grand old house located in the Colonia Roma of Mexico City, where editors from Ciudad Juarez, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Tijuana and Zacatecas told the meeting that they practiced self censorship. Some of the editors were told the group that they would not accept government protection. “How can we ask the government to protect us if they cant protect themselves” Ismael Bojorquez, editor of Rio Doce, Sinaloa asked rethorically .”They can’t protect themselves,” he added, mentioning that a number of state government officials have been killed in Sinaloa.
The debate over protection measures for journalists in Mexico will continue, especially because journalists in the provincial cities, called states in Mexico, need to understand how these measures will work.
03 Sep 10 | Uncategorized
The visit by the two rappourteurs of freedom of expression from the Organisation of American States and the United Nations, Carolina Botero and Frank La Rue, two weeks ago, and a flurry of activity related to press freedom and the protection of journalists, seems to have injected a sense of purpose in a group of journalists in Mexico who are trying to find ways of creating policies that last beyond the headlines.
Experts like Roberto Rock, the former editor of the daily El Universal and a member of the Inter American Press Association´s press freedom committee believes there is an atmosphere that will allow Mexican media to “develop better coordination”. According to Rock the Mexican media is still feeling “raw” and will try to continue to find a way of coordinating responses to attacks against the press because of the kidnapping of four journalists last July.
It is a daunting task to figure out how to respond to the continuing attacks which, although not as severe as the July kidnapping, have continued throughout the country. Recently the main targets have been regional offices of the national television network Televisa.
Television is an important media in Mexico, reaching more than 60 percent of the Mexican public. At least four Televisa installations have been hit with bombs or grenades . The hits have occurred in the northeastern states of Nuevo Leon and Taumalipas, which are areas of operation of the drug trafficking groups Gulf Cartel (named after the Gulf of Mexico, where it was born) and the vicious Zetas Cartel, a former enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, but now operating on its own and waging a tight fight against its old partner. Those who read into reasons for the attacks and the fact they are occurring in the northeast say it could be an attempt by those cartels operating in that area to jump into the fray of attacking the country´s most important news organisation.
An attack on September 1 on the Noroeste newspaper in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa was the backlash from the battle going on in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, between two cartels, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Drug Cartel. Sinaloa has grown to be one of the most powerful drug gangs during the last six years. The group is challenging Juarez for control of the US-Mexico border
crossing in Juarez, which is among the profitable crossings because it links the Mexican territory with impressive road connections to five American cities important for drug trafficking networks, from Los Angeles in the west coast to New York in the east. The battle in Juarez has unsettled the press, with journalists basically enforcing self-censorship and setting up security precautions such as never arriving at a crime scene alone, because the killers might still be there. Or as they do at El Norte newspaper in that city, rotating reporters daily for the coverage of crime stories.
The attack in Sinaloa was by La Linea, the enforcement group for the Juarez Cartel. That they are going after the Noroeste, a respectable newspaper in Sinaloa, which is critical and tries to cover drug trafficking with various security measures, is worrisome, and opens up the question whether the Juarez Cartel wants to attack the Sinaloa Cartel in its home turf. That they started this incursion by attacking the press is even more disconcerting and could spell worst violence in the future.
The July kidnapping of four reporters was carried out by the Sinaloa Cartel, perhaps the most powerful drug group in Mexico, which operates in the western part of the country.
Some analysts say the attacks are probably a “local phenomenon” and not a uniform message. But in the mixed bag of drug cartel messages, which go from banners hanging from public bridges, to messages scribbled on cardboard and left pinned to the bodies of victims, everybody makes their own assessment.
The press is trying to face the situation with increased solidarity between the national press and the provincial news media. Two weeks ago, Televisa, and the national newspapers El Universal and Milenio published and broadcast a story on threats received by local journalists in the state of Zacatecas. The effort was similar to those carried out by Colombian media in the 1980s and 90s. Mexican media representatives are also discussing the implementation of other mechanisms of protection that worked in Colombia. The Colombian model included providing government paid bodyguards for threatened journalists, transferring reporters from provincial cities to the capital or foreign countries in case of death threats, and coordinated publishing and broadcasting of dangerous stories.
Those who are now feeling positive about the advances made in press freedom measure the changes with glee. Just a few months ago, it was difficult to put together in a room representatives from the major media networks and newspapers because of deep seated mistrust. The need to face the threat of the drug cartels has almost united a difficult group.
