Mexico Paper Asks Drug Cartels: What Do You Want From Us?

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Photo: Trends Updates
The entire state of Chiahuahua, where Ciudad Juarez is located, is out of control. Juarez itself is a virtual ghost town with no tourism, almost completely under the control of violent drug cartels.

​A Mexican newspaper in the midst of the country’s Drug War has asked cartels for guidance on whether, and how, it should publish stories on the conflict.

El Diario de Juarez has become known for its excellent reporting from the blood-soaked streets of border town Ciudad Juarez, a haven for the violent drug-smuggling cartels, reports the BBC.
But the murder of their 21-year-old photographer last week prompted the newspaper to run a front-page editorial asking: “What do you want from us?”


Photo: El Paso Times
A photography intern for El Diario de Juarez newspaper was shot and killed Thursday, September 16, outside the Rio Grande Mall in north Juarez.

​Human rights groups say Mexican journalists are regularly being targeted by drug gangs for what is perceived as unfavorable or unfair coverage, or simply for mentioning the wrong name.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a U.S.-based advocacy group, said that more than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006.
Many of those murdered had been reporting on crime or corruption, according to the group, which added that this climate of fear has led to a widespread culture of unhealthy self-censorship among fearful journalists.
El Diario‘s editorial, published on its front page on Sunday, was its second since Luis Carlos Santiago, 21, was shot in Ciudad Juarez on September 17. Santiago later died of his injuries. An intern who was also shot, Carlos Sanchez, survive the attack.

Photo: El Paso Times
Relatives of slain photojournalist Luis Carlos Santiago embrace next to a police officer standing at the scene where Santiago was shot do death at a shopping mall parking lot.

​Still wearing press badges and with their equipment handy, Santiago and Sanchez had just learned camera tricks at a workshop. They were about to get a bite to eat when they were riddled with bullets just outside a busy mall, reports Andiana Gomez Licon at the El Paso Times.
As Santiago’s sisters and relatives arrived at the crime scene, they screamed, “But why? Why?” They broke into tears and kneeled on the pavement in shock and sorrow.
It was just not another murder scene for fellow El Diario reporters and photographers. Some were crying, horrified by the bloody scene.
Santiago was a starting photographer who had been at El Diario about six months.

Photo: El Paso Times
El Diario de Juarez photographer Christian Torres, colleague of Luis Carlos Santiago, who was killed, reacts at the scene of the crime.

​Work friends at Diario — who were afraid to be identified, fearing retaliation — said Santiago was a good young man. “He was always joking,” a fellow intern said.
El Diario editor Pedro Torres said Santiago was an energetic reporter eager to work.
“To see his aspirations shatter like that is very sad,” Torres said.
“It is an outrage against freedom of the press,” said Adrian Ventura, president of the journalists association of Juarez.
“After this episode, it is clear now that journalists walk on the razor’s edge,” Ventura said.
The management of El Diario, meanwhile, as wondering if the cost of doing their jobs — reporting the news — has just become too high.
“The loss of two reporters from this publishing house in less than two years represents an irreparable sorrow for all of us who work here, and in particular, for their families,” the editorial said.
The newspaper, calling drug lords the “de facto authorities” within Ciudad Juarez, asked the cartels: “We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect.”

Photo: El Paso Times
The body of photojournalist Luis Carlos Santiago, bottom, who worked for El Diario de Juarez newspaper, lies in his car after he was murdered by gunmen in a shopping mall parking lot last Thursday, September 16, 2010.

​The editorial highlighted the lack of progress in the investigation of the 2008 death of Armando Rodriguez, shot dead in view of his family just outside his home.
This is not “a surrender,” the paper insisted, saying it had simply become “impossible to do our job in these conditions.”
There is a war going on in Mexico that journalists did not ask for, said Herardo Rodriguez, an editor at El Diario. Rodriguez expressed anger at the lack of progress of official murder investigations
, and criticized the Mexican government as well as the drug cartels.
“We are looking for a peace agreement,” he said. “No story is worth the life of anyone anymore.”
The newspaper had previously decided to not stop publishing stories on the Drug War, according to Rodriguez, but would consider doing so if the answer that came from the cartels indicated that was their wish.
Rodriguez described El Diario as a “very aggressive” news organization that “searches for the truth.” He conceded that the paper might have to back way from Drug War coverage if the violence does not stop.
“We may consider stopping in exchange for the lives of our reporters,” he said.
The newspaper’s decision is regrettable, according to Carlos Lauria of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Even in one of the places where violence is worst… El Diario was still doing a lot of good reporting on crime,” he told the Associated Press.
Lauria described the paper’s editorial as “an indication that the situation is out of control.”
Ciudad Juarez is one of the bloodiest cities in Mexico’s drug battles, and violence has risen sharply in the country’s north in recent weeks.
Opposition groups said that a government crackdown on cartels, which began three-and-a-half years ago, has done nothing to stop the flow of drugs to the United States.
More than 28,000 people have died in cartel-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed the army against the cartels in 2006. The violence has even spilled over into Central America.
But Calderon defended his policy, claiming the rise in violence is s sign the cartels are becoming more desperate.
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