A Report from the Narco News J-School

Day 1: Now the work begins…

Although the “J-School,” as it is affectionately called by the 26 journalists and their 26 faculty, officially started on the 10^th, we have only just today come together fully, as we awaited the arrival of Laura del Castillo Matamoros, a journalist and student from Bogeta, Colombia. She was supposed to arrive the day before yesterday, into Cancun, but the customs and immigration officials would not let her into the country. It would seem that Colombia is not such a popular place right now… but, she is here and she is safe and we are ready to get down to business.

We started this morning with a tour of the Por Esto! headquarters in Quintana Roo, where Renan Castro, the third-largest Mexican daily’s managing editor, gave a stirring speech on the essence of authentic journalism. He spoke of Por Esto’s July 2001 struggle with Banco Nacional de Mexico (Banamex), when he fought side by side with the president of J-School, Al Giordino, in a small, cramped courtroom in New York, to defeat defamation charges the two journalists faced after reporting on Banamex’s involvement with extensive narco-trafficking. He was offered $300, 000 to shut up and pack it in. Instead, he told Banamex to take their own advice, and they and their corrupt chairman, Roberto Hernandez, countered with a lawsuit, filing it in New York because their attempts to prove their innocence had failed in Mexico. It’s pretty hard to discredit photographs of the more than ten tons of cocaine that entered Qunitana Roo a week from Colombia in five shipments a day via Hernandez’s 52 seashore kilometers of private beach. It’s hard to mistake the huge white bales of corruption that washed up on Banamex’s shores everyday. Luckily, the staff at Por Esto! was there to cover it, after spending three months encamped on the shore with local fishermen, all of which had been left decimated in need of aid after Hurricane Roxanne blew through the coast. But the “civic leaders” at Banamex did not have time to help them – they were too busy smuggling cocaine into the town, most of which would make its way to north to the U.S.

The staff, including Rodriguez and Castro, witnessed a system of lights that were used to signal from the boats bringing the cocaine from San Andreas, Colombia to the Banamex private beach. They took extensive photographs and interviewed the community so affected by Banamex’s narco-trafficking – and they were asked to go to court more than 20 times to defend their reporting, as a result.

“The government wanted to know who told us our information,” shrugged Castro. “Then the federal authorities, especially the Attorney General, paid $3 million for cover-ups.” Castro speaks with the air of a man who has seen it all and lived to tell the tale, so that nothing surprises him. Not even the corruption and greed of Mexican and American corporations. And well he should.

He spoke of witnessing a drug-related hit and realizing that it was a real person that was directly affected by cover-ups. “When you see them lying on the floor with five or ten shots, it’s not the fact of seeing them that hurts you, but the feeling of violence that surrounds that.” Twenty people have been assassinated because they were suspected of giving information to Por Esto! In addition, Rodriguez himself survived a kidnapping attempt, only to learn that the feds were behind it. Many people in the crowd asked Castro how the staff at Por Esto! could survive on their ethics alone – weren’t they scared? Didn’t they fear for their lives, didn’t they want security?

Castro laughed, “I am less afraid of the people that would want me dead then the police security I would hire to protect me! It’s very simple: among narco-traffickers there is an unspoken rule – whether it’s institutional or not, they only kill those involved with the hit.” That’s why he laughs when he sees top Mexico City TV hosts walk around with security and bodyguards – because they have never seen a kilo of cocaine in their lives. But Castro and his team have seen it all – and still they will not bend.

“Maybe we don’t have the wealth other journalists have, but we have the spiritual wealth to keep us here every single day. It’s worth more than 300, 000 bucks,” says Castro passionately. “Maybe you say we are mad and we shouldn’t be living in this new century, but we at Por Esto! have been here renouncing and denouncing – to the point where no one here drives any car better than a 1986 Nissan, unlike in Mexico City where all the journalists drive BMW’s. Our sons, our children will live in a better world.”

And so began our first lesson in what it means to dedicate yourself to truth and ethical journalism. Here we have an example of the real deal: the only newspaper in the region to cover the three indigenous occupations in Quintana Roo. The only newspaper to speak to the people in their native Mayan tongue. The only newspaper that reports on ecological robbery and corporate fraud. The only newspaper to hold monthly community meetings with the fishermen and community members to solicit their feedback. The only newspaper to speak for the people.

Castro is sure that the reason they are not hit is because they are not directly involved with the trafficking. I think he is wrong. I think that they have not been touched because they have built a community of fierce loyalty, one that would cry out with a vengenance should the staff at Por Esto! be touched; because it is their stories that are being told, their stories that are finally being listened to.

Mario has even spread his message in the U.S. In the words of Al Giordino: “Authorities in the U.S. and Mexico now know that any harm to Mario Menendez for his courageous journalistic work will bring the wrath of his hundreds of new friends in allies in the United States upon them.”

Welcome to Authentic Journalism – and stay tuned as we give you daily reports on the Merida Conference to commence tomorrow.
From somewhere in America…
Sunny

• According to Por Esto! more than 30, 000 drug smugglers are currently protected by the U.S. and their ally, Mexico
  
• Drug trafficking has been endorsed by the U.S. for more than 15 years (since the administrations of Mexican presidents Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon bulldozed a path for NAFTA)