Read Online To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War by John Gibler - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Gibler
Tags: General, Social Science, Mexico, History, Latin America, Political Science, Criminology, Law Enforcement, Violence in Society, International Relations, Globalization, Customs & Traditions
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do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.
—Susan Sontag
ERNESTO MARTÍNEZ, KNOWN AS PEPIS (pronounced PAY -peace) is a tall, lanky, wisecracking 40-year-old who has been working the nota roja for thirteen years. He has seen more death than most morticians.
Primera Hora is a daily blood news tabloid based in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and published by the newspaper Noroeste , Culiacán’s main broadsheet daily. The Primera Hora newsroom is a small windowless box with five computers, a few filing cabinets, and a powerful air conditioner. To get here you must go around to the back of the Noroeste building, pass through a security checkpoint, and walk down a long hall in what appears to be a desolate storage basement. When I arrive at five in the afternoon, Pepis, a staff photographer and writer says, “Welcome to the bunker.”
Pepis introduces me to the afternoon shift at Primera Hora : Marco Santos, the editor, and Juan Carlos Cruz, a staff writer and sometimes photographer. They all wear white button-down shirts with the Primera Hora logo stitched across the chest. Pepis then tells me that about an hour earlier there was a levantón , or “a pick-up,” that special type of kidnapping in Mexico that leads inevitably to execution. Several reporters and local police arrived on the scene soon after. As they did, however, the gunmen came back to grab someone else. They walked up to the reporters, aimed their assault rifles in their faces, and said, “Don’t take any pictures, and be very careful not to publish anything.” The police of course did nothing, and the gunmen apparently did not even feel the need to warn them against pursuing them. Pepis sympathizes with the local cop’s plight in such situations: “The police only had pistols, and the gunmen all carried AK-47s.”
As we talk, representatives of the United Nations and the Organization of American States are getting ready to meet with a group of invited journalists to inquire about press freedom in Culiacán. I ask if any Primera Hora reporters will attend the meeting and Marco tells me that no one from the crime beat press corps was invited and he wouldn’t want to go anyway. “Those meetings don’t do anything, never lead to anything concrete,” he says.
The censorship power of the cartels is inviolable, they tell me. At Primera Hora , they try to avoid attracting cartel wrath altogether. Their job is now to count bodies and photograph and describe death scenes. On particularly bloody days the front page will include an “executometer,” or ejecutómetro , showing the grim total.
“Investigative journalism is extinct here,” Pepis says.
For example, if a group of drug assassins leaves a written message at a murder scene, Primera Hora will reference that a message was left but not publish in the article or the photograph the text of the message itself. This editorial decision was made by someone within the Sinaloa Cartel.
They tell me that a gunman killed a chef who prepared regional shellfish dishes for the Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, also known as MZ. The killers left a message that read: THIS WILL HAPPEN TO ALL WHO WORK FOR MZ . Primera Hora published the text of the message in the news article that they posted online and got a call within minutes. The voice on the phone said, “Take that shit down!” Marco called the news director at Noroeste to confer. The director concurred: “Take it down and just mention that a message was left.” And hence an editorial policy was born.
Pepis started at Noroeste as a member of the predawn crew that assembled the morning paper. After six months he began to work preparing the negatives and slides used in the printing process. At that time Primera Hora had a day-shift staff photographer who was famously lazy. Come lunchtime at 2:00 p.m. he would head out, turn off his mobile phone, and disappear until 6:00 p.m., leaving a four-hour chunk of the day uncovered. Several of
—Susan Sontag
ERNESTO MARTÍNEZ, KNOWN AS PEPIS (pronounced PAY -peace) is a tall, lanky, wisecracking 40-year-old who has been working the nota roja for thirteen years. He has seen more death than most morticians.
Primera Hora is a daily blood news tabloid based in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and published by the newspaper Noroeste , Culiacán’s main broadsheet daily. The Primera Hora newsroom is a small windowless box with five computers, a few filing cabinets, and a powerful air conditioner. To get here you must go around to the back of the Noroeste building, pass through a security checkpoint, and walk down a long hall in what appears to be a desolate storage basement. When I arrive at five in the afternoon, Pepis, a staff photographer and writer says, “Welcome to the bunker.”
Pepis introduces me to the afternoon shift at Primera Hora : Marco Santos, the editor, and Juan Carlos Cruz, a staff writer and sometimes photographer. They all wear white button-down shirts with the Primera Hora logo stitched across the chest. Pepis then tells me that about an hour earlier there was a levantón , or “a pick-up,” that special type of kidnapping in Mexico that leads inevitably to execution. Several reporters and local police arrived on the scene soon after. As they did, however, the gunmen came back to grab someone else. They walked up to the reporters, aimed their assault rifles in their faces, and said, “Don’t take any pictures, and be very careful not to publish anything.” The police of course did nothing, and the gunmen apparently did not even feel the need to warn them against pursuing them. Pepis sympathizes with the local cop’s plight in such situations: “The police only had pistols, and the gunmen all carried AK-47s.”
As we talk, representatives of the United Nations and the Organization of American States are getting ready to meet with a group of invited journalists to inquire about press freedom in Culiacán. I ask if any Primera Hora reporters will attend the meeting and Marco tells me that no one from the crime beat press corps was invited and he wouldn’t want to go anyway. “Those meetings don’t do anything, never lead to anything concrete,” he says.
The censorship power of the cartels is inviolable, they tell me. At Primera Hora , they try to avoid attracting cartel wrath altogether. Their job is now to count bodies and photograph and describe death scenes. On particularly bloody days the front page will include an “executometer,” or ejecutómetro , showing the grim total.
“Investigative journalism is extinct here,” Pepis says.
For example, if a group of drug assassins leaves a written message at a murder scene, Primera Hora will reference that a message was left but not publish in the article or the photograph the text of the message itself. This editorial decision was made by someone within the Sinaloa Cartel.
They tell me that a gunman killed a chef who prepared regional shellfish dishes for the Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, also known as MZ. The killers left a message that read: THIS WILL HAPPEN TO ALL WHO WORK FOR MZ . Primera Hora published the text of the message in the news article that they posted online and got a call within minutes. The voice on the phone said, “Take that shit down!” Marco called the news director at Noroeste to confer. The director concurred: “Take it down and just mention that a message was left.” And hence an editorial policy was born.
Pepis started at Noroeste as a member of the predawn crew that assembled the morning paper. After six months he began to work preparing the negatives and slides used in the printing process. At that time Primera Hora had a day-shift staff photographer who was famously lazy. Come lunchtime at 2:00 p.m. he would head out, turn off his mobile phone, and disappear until 6:00 p.m., leaving a four-hour chunk of the day uncovered. Several of
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