Wall of Silence

Index on Censorship http://ioc.sagepub.com/ Wall of Silence Sanjuana Martínez and Christina MacSweeney Index on Censorship 2009 38: 32 DOI: 10.1080/03064220902734319 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ioc.sagepub.com/content/38/1/32 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Writers and Scholars International Ltd Additional services and information for Index on Censorship can be found at: Email Alerts: http://ioc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://ioc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav >> Version of Record - Feb 1, 2009 What is This? Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 WALL OF SILENCE – SANJUANA MARTÍNEZ strategy obviously loses all legitimacy when information ends up being censored because it is not in the media companies’ best interests. In Mexico, there are taboo subjects that rarely find a space in the news agenda. These are topics related to the powers that be: the government with its links to organised crime; the Catholic Church with its high-ranking officials who enjoy privileges above the law; the army with its abuses of human rights. Journalists censor themselves in order to keep their jobs or to obtain a variety of perks, financial or otherwise. When a reporter dares to break the omerta, the vow of silence, she or he steps beyond the pale. First comes the censorship, then the sacking, followed by death threats and finally ostracism. How, then, can freedom of speech be defended? Only by social commitment and searching for free spaces. Four years ago, I began to research sexual abuse of minors committed by Catholic priests, who were moved between Mexico and the United States to avoid prosecution. In the early nineties, I was working as the Madrid correspondent of the magazine Proceso. While I was covering Vatican issues there were no problems, but when I began to investigate the alleged protection by the church of paedophile priests the censorship was total. I vainly fought to have my material published and was eventually fired for idisciplina laboral (‘indiscipline in the work place’), without the compensation legally due to me under the Federal Labour Act. What was I to do with that enormous amount of material stored in a box in my study? The truth could not be silenced in a waste bin. If a magazine with a reputation for free speech had censored me, who would be willing to publish my material on the movement of paedophile priests between the two countries? Braulio Peralta, a fellow journalist and publisher, suggested bringing it out as a book and I accepted his offer, thinking of my social commitment as a journalist. In 2006, I returned to Mexico after an absence of 20 years and, six months later, published Manto púrpura: pederastia clerical en tiempos del cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera (‘The Purple Cloak: paedophilia in the clergy during the primacy of Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera’, Editorial Grijalbo). It caused an international scandal. Individuals identifying themselves as the survivors of the paedophile cleric, Nicolás Aguilar, brought before the Supreme Court of California their claims against their aggressor and his presumed protectors: Cardinal Rivera Carrera and the cardinal of the diocese of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony. They were accused of ‘international conspiracy to conceal paedophilia’ and both deny the charges. The case is ongoing. Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 33 DISPATCHES The wall of silence was destroyed. La Jornada published my reports, as did the radio programme Hoy por Hoy, presented by Carmen Aristegui. This was not the case in most of the Mexican press, but the truth was finding its voice, although with great difficulty. During the promotion of the book, there were colleagues, newspaper executives, who simply said: ‘We can’t publish anything against the Church.’ Censorship, that many-headed monster, appeared in other forms: Sanborns, the major bookstore chain, owned by the magnate Carlos Slim, declined to sell both my first book and the second, entitled Prueba de fe: la red de cardinales y obispos en la pederasrtia clerical (‘Test of Faith: the network of cardinals and bishops involved in clerical paedophilia’, Editorial Planeta). In response to my protests, they finally accepted between one and three copies per store. Email and telephone death threats started. I was tailed by unmarked cars After 18 months of intensive news coverage, the affair has now practically disappeared from the media. Cardinal Rivera Carrera, who has begun to reappear at social events, retains his status, despite being investigated for offences related to the sexual abuse of minors. In Mexico, no public body has called him to account for his alleged crime. Moreover, although civil proceedings were brought before the Supreme Court of California against Nicolás Aguilar, he was never arrested, in spite of being accused of raping more than 90 children. This priest continues to be protected and lives openly in Puebla state. The power of high-ranking officials in the Catholic Church in Mexico is indisputable; they run three clinics within the country, where paedophile priests are supposedly ‘cured’ using extremely dubious methods. They are, I believe, safe houses for criminals, including some who have been investigated by Interpol, but left untroubled by the Mexican authorities. The Catholic lobby has influence with the greater part of the media. A number of journalists have lost their jobs as a consequence of their coverage of the clergy’s crimes and many others have been harassed and subjected to smear campaigns. In my own case, they undertook a 34 Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 WALL OF SILENCE – SANJUANA MARTÍNEZ veritable moral lynching: discrediting my work, demanding the book be taken off the market and that I offer a public apology to the cardinal, something I flatly refused to do. It was then that the email and telephone death threats started and I was tailed by unmarked cars. Months of anguish and fear followed until the Committee for the Protection of Journalists took on my case. Censorship and the armed forces The subject of paedophilia among the clergy is virtually off the news agenda, but abuses committed by members of the Mexican Army are not being properly covered either. A case in point is the elderly indigenous woman, Ernestina Ascencio Rosario, serially raped by soldiers in the Sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz state, in April 2007. In recent years, more than 200 women have reported being raped by soldiers. Yet the majority of these cases have gone unpunished since the army has its own military law and is not answerable to the same criminal justice system as other Mexicans. The attack committed on this woman was particularly serious and became a matter of state after the president, Felipe Calderón, ‘decreed’ that she had died of ‘undiagnosed gastritis’ and not serial rape. The case was covered in the Mexican press for two weeks. Seventeen witnesses attested that the elderly lady had accused the soldiers, forensic reports confirmed the rape, but the president of the Republic was attempting to save the ‘honour’ of the armed forces by imposing silence. After Calderón’s declaration, the matter practically disappeared from the media, with only two or three exceptions. I covered the affair for several months from the Sierra de Zongolica, a remote area where the indigenous people live in subhuman conditions. The first time I interviewed the witnesses, I was surprised to discover that only two other journalists had visited the region. The ‘Zongolica case’ had been widely reported in the greater part of the Mexican media, but the journalists had done so from the comfort of their desks, without going to the scene of the crime. Ernestina Ascencio Rosario was poor, indigenous and a woman: three discriminatory factors. Censorship covered the affair with a thick veil of silence. The Ministry of Defence initially emitted contradictory reports on the involvement of the soldiers in the murder, but after the president’s declaration the department firmly closed off access to crucial information. The self-censorship of those journalists who form public opinion, acting in fact as ‘political commissioners’ supporting the executive’s decisions, was decisive in burying the case and removing it from the public realm. Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 35 DISPATCHES Journalists covering the ‘Zongolica case’ moved on, so as not to have to write about something that obviously made the powers that be uncomfortable. The state preferred to leave the truth of what had happened uncertain and the murder went unpunished, the facts obscured. The same has happened in other cases of soldiers violating human rights. Three years ago, President Felipe Calderón decided to bring out the armed forces to patrol the streets due to the levels of violence: during 2008, over 5,000 people died in the territorial struggles between the seven drug cartels. With rampant corruption in government circles and police forces, the army represents one of the bulwarks of the executive, and one of the institutions most respected by the people. However, in the past the Mexican Army has been denounced by national and international human rights groups for serious violations of individual rights. Various atrocities have been attributed to the armed forces, including the ‘disappearance’ of hundreds of people. Since the end of Luis Echeverria’s presidential term in 1976, 597 disappearances have been registered throughout the country. The criminal activities of military personnel are not limited to the rape of women, harassment of social activists, summary executions, ‘accidental’ shootings or the kidnapping and forced disappearance of people, they also involve the links between the army and powerful drug cartels. Indeed, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, known as ‘Los Zetas’, are members of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Airborne Force, Gafe) and the Grupo Anfibio de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Amphibian Force, Ganfe), set up in 1994 to combat the Zapatista indigenous uprising in Chiapas and trained by the CIA. The Kaibiles, former members of the Guatemalan armed forces, have now been added to the group. The impenetrable nature of the Ministry of Defence prevents journalists from properly covering criminal behaviour within the armed forces. How is information about the accomplices of the drug barons and their protectors to be obtained if it is the army itself that is patrolling the streets? In January 2008, they detained Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, alias ‘El Mochomo’, head of the Sinaloa cartel, and there was talk of a list including the names of military personnel who had collaborated with him: a commanding officer, three officials and a rank-and-file soldier. The Ministry of Defence has refused to publish the list and stated, in a communiqué, that it had no information that would implicate further military personnel. Censorship had again raised its head in this shady, secretive institution. In the face of the censorship and self-censorship of crimes involving members of the armed forces in the Mexican press, a new form of 36 Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 Victim of a drug war: journalist Armando Rodriguez murdered in Ciudad Juarez, 13 November 2008 Credit: Reuters/Stringer Mexico communication has sprung up: the narco-banner. This is a system used by the drug traffickers to inform the populace about their alleged accomplices. Soon after taking up the presidency, Felipe Calderón was accused of having made a pact with the powerful Sinaloa cartel, headed by the famous Chapo Guzmán. Given this apparent support for one of the mafias, the Gulf cartel and the Zetas began a war that has already led to more than 11,000 deaths, including civilians, criminals and members of the security forces. The narcobanners, hung in various Mexican cities, accusing Calderón and the armed forces of supporting El Chapo, have received little media attention and have even been discredited for having been produced by criminals; they are, however, worthy of analysis. On 25 August 2008, Calderón gave his second presidential report, in the form of open televised messages in which he promised to restore Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 37 DISPATCHES ‘safety, authority and order to the streets and plazas of the country’. A day later, in a highly unusual campaign against the executive and the army, the narco-banners appeared. As an example, on the banner in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, the following words could be read: ‘Sr. President Calderón, if you want to end crime then stop the empty talk and you and General Jenosidio Loera, General Martı́n Cordero Lucresio, staff sergeants Cesario Carbajal Guajardo, Martı́n Cordero Luqueño, Marco Cobarruvias Aguilar, Sergio Aponte Polito and Roberto Miranda Sánchez should stop protecting Joaquı́n Archivaldo Guzmán, El Chapo, Juan Esparragoza Garcı́a, El Azul, Nacho Coronel, Ismael Zambaba Garcı́a, El Mayo, Noe Sandoval Alcazar, because those people have been operating for more than 40 years.’ The message was equally explicit in Cancún: ‘To the whole federal, state and municipal government, if you want to put an end to the violence stop covering up for El Chapo Guzmán, Mayo Zambada, Nacho Coronel and Oscar Valencia.’ In Monterrey, three banners appeared in the Central Bus Station, the Macroplaza and the Alameda. On the latter, the message read: ‘So that all citizens know about the corruption of the Mexican Army and the president – protectors of drug barons like Chapo Guzmán, El Nacho, El Coronel, El Mayo Zambada – and with top officials of the Sedena (Ministry of National Defence) not fighting them, all in exchange for juicy millions.’ In Saltillo, the banner criticised the president and the army, ‘allies of Sonora’ and ‘generals’ for protecting El Chapo, and in Piedras Negras, the message was: ‘If you want the drug trafficking anarchy to finish, why doesn’t your government attack narcos like Joaquı́n El Chapo Guzmán?’ These announcements have served the purpose of communicating their message to the people. In the meantime, Calderón is asking media owners to censor the narco-banners for ‘reasons of state’. Television duopoly and the manipulation of the news In Mexico, the television is controlled by two corporate groups and another six control the radio. The two television companies, Televisa and TV Azteca, and the radio oligopoly account for 93 per cent of the audience figures. This means that Mexicans only receive the information those companies are disposed to offer them, information which at times has in my view been manipulated, at others distorted. The anomalous media concentration in Mexico has one principal victim: plurality. Its absence particularly affects the right to information and 38 Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 WALL OF SILENCE – SANJUANA MARTÍNEZ most definitely harms free competition. Televisa receives three-fifths of government and business publicity budgets, with TV Azteca taking another fifth. Both companies publicly display loyalty to their advertisers, endorse the decisions of the governments that sponsor them and censor and manipulate information in accordance with their personal and business interests. The Television Law, which confirms deregulation of the digital spectre, thus benefiting the television duopoly, contravenes Article 28 of the Mexican Constitution and is an attack on democracy. Journalists, forcibly silenced or prisoners of a voluntary silence, are experiencing a regression of their rights, while the people’s right to be informed is vanishing. This is the right that forms free societies. r ß Sanjuana Martı́nez Translated by Christina MacSweeney DOI: 10.1080/03064220902734319 Sanjuana Martı́nez is a Mexican freelance journalist. She has won the Premio Nacional de Periodismo and the Ortega y Gasset prize. Her latest book is Prueba de fe: la red de cardinales y obispos en la pederasrtia clerical (‘Test of Faith: the network of cardinals and bishops involved in clerical paedophilia’). She is currently investigating offences in the Mexican Army Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com at SAGE PUBLICATIONS on December 6, 2012 39