Mexico ramps up pressure on journalists

On March 15, the Mexican media conglomerate MVS Communications fired award-winning investigative journalist Carmen Aristegui after rejecting her demand that it reinstate two of her colleagues. Daniel Lizárraga and Irving Huerta were fired a week earlier by MVS Radio, which said the two were let go for using the company’s logo without permission in support of MéxicoLeaks, a new whistleblowing platform launched on March 10 by a consortium of five Mexican media outlets and two civic groups.

However, Aristegui and her staff of reporters previously did an investigative report on Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s opulent mansion, which was built by a real estate developer who later won lucrative government contracts. The firing of one of Mexico’s most prominent radio journalists has raised concerns about the country’s return to the “bad old ways” — when the Mexican government could count on the cooperation of media outlets to suppress critical journalistic voices.

In the hours following the 1968 massacre of student protesters by the military and security forces at Tlatelolco plaza in Mexico City, authorities moved swiftly to cover up the killings, confiscating films, unpublished reports and other documents from journalists who covered the demonstration. The government wanted the student problem and news of the bloodshed to disappear: Mexico was preparing to host the 1968 summer Olympics.

It was not until 2002 that the newspaper El Universal published photos from that day from an undeveloped roll of pictures kept secret for decades. The cover-up of the Tlatelolco massacre took place at a time when the media were willing allies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) regime, which ruled Mexico for seven consecutive decades. This is one of the main reasons the Tlatelolco massacre, along with countless other atrocities committed during Mexico’s “Dirty War” period, remained shrouded in secrecy for years.

As Peña Nieto and his PRI party’s approval ratings plummet, maintaining a culture of secrecy and silencing dissent appear vital to his political future. In a recent op-ed, “We are All Carmen,” National Autonomous University of Mexico professor John Ackerman made an apt connection between Aristegui’s firing and the upcoming midterm elections in June. Aristegui’s show regularly aired views of opposition parties and covered controversial topics, including the murder last June of 22 individuals in Tlatlaya and the kidnapping and disappearance of 43 students late last year from the Ayotzinapa teacher-training college in Guerrero state.

The scandal also comes at a pivotal moment in the struggle for access to government information on abuses of power in Mexico. Journalists are increasingly using the country’s Transparency Law, which includes a specific clause that mandates disclosure of otherwise classified information on grave violations of human rights, to expose state secrets, corruption and abuses of power. 

The fired MVS reporters cited this clause to obtain documents on the Tlatlaya killing and the army’s attempted cover-up. Similarly, Mexico’s information oversight body, el Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información (IFAI) ordered the army to disclose information relating to the missing Ayotzinapa students, citing the same clause. Following another IFAI order, last December the Attorney General’s office released a secret document on the 2010-11 San Fernando massacres, in response to a request I filed. The documents contained new information on the connections between police and the notorious Los Zetas drug cartel at the time of the massacres.

There are other cases in which access to government data could implicate Peña Nieto’s administration for complicity in gross human rights violations. The disclosure of state secrets opens up the government to widespread domestic and international scrutiny. But it is the kind of publicity that the Peña Nieto administration tries hard to avoid. Disclosure of information is a particularly delicate undertaking on issues pertinent to U.S.-Mexico relations, where billions of dollars in U.S. security assistance are at stake. Both governments rely on coordinated public relations campaigns to justify continued funding for Washington’s drug war.

Over the past year, the Peña Nieto government has waged aggressive PR campaigns, driving positive international coverage for the president’s sweeping economic reforms. Peña Nieto was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in February 2014 with a caption that read, “Saving Mexico.” The Economist has also championed the embattled president’s reform agenda. Even in the wake of the Ayotzinapa tragedy, The Economist continued to praise Peña Nieto’s structural reforms, defending the “promising presidency” while acknowledging that there was no rule of law in Mexico.

The firing of Aristegui and her staff, however, is a tipping point. There has been a shift away from the unquestioned international praise for Peña Nieto’s administration. For example, The Economist’s report on the Aristegui affair noted that the timing “raises the suspicion that the government — which is struggling to regain popularity less than three months before midterm elections — has put pressure on MVS Radio.” The New York Times noted that the scandal is being viewed as a “blow to freedom of expression,” directly linking the journalists’ dismissal to their reporting on Peña Nieto’s mansion.

Mexico might soon realize that it is not easy to silence the media in today’s digital age. The establishment of MéxicoLeaks sparked the series of events that led to Aristegui’s firing. MVS Radio refused to join the collaborative that created the platform and fired its reporters. In response, the cyber-activist group Anonymous hacked the MVS Radio website and announced that the company would participate in MéxicoLeaks “involuntarily,” suggesting that it intends to leak internal emails and other documents to the whistleblowing platform.

MéxicoLeaks hopes to expose political corruption, human rights abuses and other misuses of institutional and economic power. It is part of Mexico’s investigative journalism, which continues to thrive despite enormous obstacles. Investigative journalists have uncovered hidden information not only on the role of the federal police and military in the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students, but also on the government’s attempts to hide pertinent information, bury errors in their investigations and suppress undesirable conclusions. 

The missing Ayotzinapa students were preparing for a trip to Mexico City to commemorate the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre when security forces intercepted and kidnapped them. Important details on their fate remain unknown. I hope that Mexico’s journalists will overcome this culture of secrecy to ensure that the families of the victims and the Mexican public do not have to wait decades to learn the whole truth behind this tragedy.