This is a liveblog of the talk between Alfredo Corchado and Ethan Zuckerman. Blogged by Luis Natera, with illustrations by @willowbl00.
Alfredo Corchado is a Mexican-American Journalist. He is the Mexico Bureau Chief of the Dallas Morning News and author of the book, “Midnight in Mexico.” Ethan Zuckerman introduces Alfredo as one of the leading journalists today trying to explain what’s going on in Mexico.
Alfredo, borned in Mexico and raised in the US, went back to Mexico in 2003 as part of the Dallas Morning News with the idea of continuing to cover the relations between Mexico and the US, but he quickly ran into the violence and was forced to deal with and report the issue.
Alfredo began his talk by reading from the intro of his book. He described how one of his contacts in the American police contacted him in 2007 to tell him about a death threat against an American journalist in Mexico. He was almost sure that it was against him.
Alfredo then turned to a chapter where he talks about his family and their relation to Mexico. He said that his editor told him to stop writing as a reporter and to start writing with emotion. He recalls a talk with his mother where she said “En México haces lo que puedes, no lo que quieres” (In Mexico you do what you can, not what you like to), even though Alfredo thinks that doing the right thing can help the country to change. In his remembrance of the past he said that sometimes he feels like a Mexican in America and an American in Mexico.
Ethan remarked that according to the numbers, Mexico is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist. He asked Alfredo what it is like to be a journalist in Mexico. Alfredo said that there are some places where journalists were self censored in 2007, and since the Fox Government gave way to the Peña Nieto government auto-censorship has been pervasive. The main change is that now people are getting hopeless and they don’t care anymore. Alfredo also talked about how freedom of expression is treated in Mexico, with one of the main examples being the dismissing of Carmen Aristegui -one of the most popular radio journalist in Mexico-. He said that it’s a very difficult time to be a journalist in Mexico.
Ethan asked Alfredo how he dealt with the death threats and how he feels about his fellow journalists in Mexico.
When the threat against Alfredo came he was planning a dinner with fellow journalist. He said that he had colleagues to rely on, and in 24 hours there was a press release from the US embassy describing the death threats. He was also covered by his editors in Dallas and could fly out of the country, but it’s completely different for the Mexican journalists—they don’t have the option of leaving. They live in Mexico with their families too.
Regarding citizen media, Ethan asked about the use of new media and how it has helped to inform about these sorts of threats, gunshots, and other dangers, as it was used with the twitter account @ValorPorTamaulipas.
Alfredo said that in Mexico people understood why journalists have needed to stand back, so ordinary people are using technology to inform and help the community. With @ValorPorTamaulipas people were informing each other about which areas of the city to avoid, but months later one of the contributors to the account was kidnapped and then assassinated.
In many ways the war is about information—the control of information. The “Z” cartel was the one that changed the picture in Mexico. They were ex-military who sided with the cartels side and brought with them more violence. The idea of the “Z” was to control the communities, so in the case of @ValorPorTamaulipas any information is a threat for the cartels.
Ethan asked about music and culture, and the use of narco-corridos. In Mexico the culture is shifting in some places to narco-culture, says Corchado. Ethan then asked about the Ayotzinapa missing students. Corchado says that Ayotzinapa became the second narrative. The first one was the bubble that the Mexican Government was constructing with the political, economic, energy and telecommunications reforms, but with Ayotzinapa this narrative was suppressed. The narrative of the violence and struggles that are going on in Mexico took its place.
There are so many allegations about the Ayotzinapa, Corchado said that we still don’t know what happened, the outcome of the Ayotzinapa is how social media picked-up the history of the missing students and the violence out of Mexico to the international press, also the event made the people realize what’s going on in Mexico, people went out to the streets.
Alfredo told the story of one brother of the missing students, when he asked him about what does he wanted the americans to know the answer was “We cannot do this alone, we need help from the international community”.
Ethan recalled the use of #YaMeCanse a hashtag to express the frustration of the people to the government, it appeared when the Mexico General Attorney said that he was tired in a press conference and soon became a social slogan, with this intro Ethan Asked about the trust in the government.
Alfredo said that he doesn’t think we can use the word trust with government in the same sentence, then he explains that with the beginning of the Fox presidency it was a general assumption that the government has changed, but it hasn’t, after 12 years of PAN governments instead of PRI (the PRI partie rule the country for +70 years until 2000) the country hasn’t change.
When asked about what the US could do Corchado talked about the legalization of drugs, he said that it will help in some point but it wouldn’t solve the problem, the problem is not only drugs, is also kidnappings and organized crime, and more important the real problem is that the law isn’t complied. The average mexican feels more in danger than before is getting dangerous because of the kidnaps and extortions.
Alfredo talked about the massacre in Villas de Salvárcar where a group of teenagers were massacred by the organized crime, he said that when he went there and talked to the parents they weren’t looking for asylum, instead they decided to stay at Ciudad Juarez and started to build a community, get football fields and provide the community with some other opportunities.
Edwina Portocarrero joined the conversation via skype from Mexico City, she talked about the telecommunications law and the censorship from the government, Alfredo commented that the censorship has been around for many years and that one way that the government control the media is buying advertisement, so if they don’t buy any more advertising the media outlets coul get financial problems, the government also controls the concessions of the media, that’s another way to put some control to them, the censorship is about controlling the media and the message.
Alfredo said that the violence had also got the best from the mexicans, the people are working together to build community in different places, he thinks that the solution is going to come from that collaboration between the citizens. He also noted that we cannot picture a country just for the violence, Mexico and the Mexicans are much more than that. When asked about leaders he talked about Margarita Zavala (the wife of President Calderón) and Marcelo Ebrard (Former mayor of D.F) as examples of political leaders.
Q&A
Luis: Originally from Mexico. What about the press releases the government is handing out for the drug lords? What is the relationship between the media, the cartels, and the government?
Alfredo: The relationship is fuzzy. The numbers in the government press releases are skewed. They’re trying to put out more accurate numbers, but silence has grown over the past few years.
Q: Any movie that could be relevant about the cartels?
Alfredo: There are some examples, El Infierno, from Luis Estrada and “Nosotros los Nobles” build a picture of some things that are going on in Mexico. With the soap operas Televisa tries to show some reality of the country, but it doesn’t always what it is.
Q: There are mains of control the journalist, killing them and advertising, could we compare them?
A: There has been killings of journalists in Mexico and during the last years the control of the media by advertising has been rising.
Q: I’m thinking about violence, people is getting really violent, how to improve the behavior, how to change the violence behaviour?
A: Alfredo said that with the dissemination of the cartels they are getting more violent and that as happened in Colombia the things had to change.
Follow up: In Colombia we are understanding that the problem is inequality, we are starting to invest in public education, parks, public space, etc.
Ethan: Monterrey is one example of building to bridge the inequality with the private sector and the government working together.
Alfredo: In Monterrey and in other cities there are getting more citizens to improve the city, involve the private sector with the government and the civil society could help to get a more equity city, but that happened when the American companies were thinking about leaving Monterrey and the local private sector started to worry about.
Q: Social media was used to alert about the cartels, where does this accounts come from, does people respond to what is going in social media?
Alfredo: Social media and local press, we see examples of local press that inform about rumors and alert the citizens to not go out or if they know that something is going on.
Adriana: What are the main obstacles that american journalists encounter to get awareness of what’s happening in Mexico?
Alfredo: One of the big challenges is to get people in the ground, the newspapers aren’t getting experts, the teams are getting smaller. We are talking 120,000 people that has been dead or disappeared in Mexico, often times we don’t have the resources to report. As I said earlier we cannot define a country as the violence, we have to get a more broader description of what’s going on in Mexico.
Ethan: when we have fewer correspondents is easier to get in the same narratives, how do you try to figure out the americans understand the territories?
Alfredo: Is understanding that the impact of Mexico in USA is huge, I don’t know if people in america understand that yet. I see myself as kind of a bridge between the countries.