Mexico is a dangerous place for journalists. Its president is making it worse

“It’s the oldest trick in the book: kill the messenger. Because he can’t kill the message,” said Bravo, who called the attacks on Loret de Mola and MCCI another conflict of interest and an “abuse of power.”

María Elena Morera, executive director of Causa En Común (Common Cause), a Mexico City-based nonprofit that works to hold government officials accountable for matters of public security, called López Obrador’s invectives against members of the press “hate speech” that only serves to further polarize an already extremely divided Mexico.

López Obrador regularly calls journalists “mercenaries” and “conservative coup-stagers” in his daily morning press conferences.

“This discourse of hate is very negative for Mexico. It doesn’t contribute to the development of the country to generate less violence,” said Morera. 

The journalistic community in Mexico is feeling the effects of this discourse more strongly than ever. The country saw 10 journalists murdered in 2021, and with seven murdered in the first three months of this year, 2022 is shaping up to be even deadlier for the profession. 

The London-based organization Article 19, which advocates for freedom of expression and information, called for immediate action from the Mexican government after four journalists were murdered in January alone. 

Several journalists murdered in recent years had been registered in the federal government’s Mechanism for Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, a 2018 reform meant to strengthen a 2012 law to protect activists and journalists. The magazine Expansión reported in February that 151 people working in these sectors had been murdered since López Obrador took office in 2018. Two journalists have been killed since that report. 

One problem with the mechanism is that the very authorities meant to protect journalists are often a threat themselves.

Derek Flores was registered in the mechanism for three years while working the police beat, known in Mexico as la nota roja (the red news), in the city of Ecatepec, México state, one of the most violent cities in the country. 

He was often barred access to crime scenes by local police, sometimes forced to climb walls or find other ways of getting past them in order to do his job. 

“I did not feel protected under the mechanism, because when you press the ‘panic button,’ as it’s called, it’s the very police who come to protect you who end up assaulting you,” said Flores. He felt that the system should call on federal law enforcement, rather than state or local police, in order to help avoid the problem of local corruption.

Another problem was that the service only worked where he had cellular coverage through the telecom company Telcel. If he wasn’t in the service area, that panic button was useless.

A study conducted by Causa En Común tallied 5,333 acts of atrocity in Mexico in 2021. The organization defined “atrocities” as massacres, clandestine graves, torture, mutilation, burns and murders of several vulnerable sectors of the population, including journalists, activists, women and children, among other acts of extreme violence. 

However, neither the record-high levels of violence the country is experiencing nor López Obrador’s public revilement of “conservative coup-staging journalists” and “pseudo-environmentalists” will likely deter his supporters, said Bravo, the political analyst.

He described a situation of diminishing expectations of politicians in Mexican society. After the disastrous drug war started by President Felipe Calderón in 2006 and the scandal-ridden presidency of López Obrador’s predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, for example, it’s almost as though the president's supporters are too tired to lose faith in him.

“If you’re a disappointed López Obrador voter, you don’t really have anywhere to go,” said Bravo. “People stay in crappy jobs. People stay in crappy marriages. People tend to stay when there’s nowhere to go.”

So instead, they cling to the hope the president promised but has been unable to deliver. 

“But hope is a very hard drug, and there’s a point at which it stops functioning as something that inspires or as a light that can orient you in the darkness. It can end up blinding you to reality,” Bravo said, not with resignation, but with anger. 

“Fuck hope. That kind of hope. It’s not constructive at all. Quite to the contrary. It’s complicit with destruction.”

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