In a report recently issued, the Paris-based Reporters without Borders named Haiti and Mexico as the two most dangerous Latin American countries for journalists (source). The ability for journalists to report their findings free of persecution and/or intimidation is an absolute necessity for any nation that wishes to be considered free and/or democratic. The deaths of seven journalists within Latin America and the Caribbean are a mere symptom to a much larger and far more serious disease: namely, the continued deterioration of peaceful governance and growing instability within Latin America. Domestic and foreign journalists working in Haiti and Mexico have increasingly found themselves targeted by various criminal elements that fear the negative exposure and publicity journalists alone have the ability to reveal. The governments of Haiti and Mexico are either oblivious to internal disorder or are lacking the necessary means to quell the violence and growing criminal enterprises although the latter is more likely.
Since 2004, Haiti has become the failed state of the Western Hemisphere, more conducive to criminal enterprises than democratic governance. The international community has chosen to remain semi-distant from the escalating instability, leaving the task of reporting such havoc to local and foreign journalists. Unarmed and often unprotected, these men and women are often kidnapped for ransom or killed by Haitian gangs and occasionally caught in the crossfire between United Nations peacekeepers and Haitian gangs (WAR Report). Newspaper headlines continue to be filled with stories dedicated to reporting the increasing delays to Haiti’s scheduled democratic elections (WAR Report and this edition), often to the exclusion of journalists and other civilians being targeted for death. For a fourth time this week, presidential and parliamentary elections were again rescheduled?now for February 7. The more serious dilemmas of criminal instability, political corruption and ineptitude, and economic deprivation are lost to those who do not witness it daily. The only means of ensuring that these stories are told is to ensure that journalists have the ability to investigate and report their findings safely to the wider international community.
More frightening than the targeting of journalists within Haiti is the targeting of journalists within Mexico. Since 2000 alone, 16 journalists have been targeted and killed by Mexican drug cartels, many of whom were killed just miles from the US border. In 2005, two journalists were killed for their reporting on Mexican drug cartels and petrol racketeering. Corruption and ineptitude on the part of some Mexican law enforcement officials has allowed the US-Mexico border to become a haven for drug traffickers and criminal enterprises, both of which have installed a de facto state of control over Mexican border towns. As reported in previous WAR Reports, the Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels employ current and former members of the Mexican military and agents from the Federal Investigative Agency (AFI) (WAR Report and WAR Report). Those agencies that are designed to provide security to the Mexican people and foreign visitors have themselves become the hired guns of the drug cartels. Journalists appear to be the only people within Mexico who are willing to reveal these truths. However, their reporting often comes at a high price.
Press freedom in the United States is often taken for granted, and we lose sight of the fact that reporters often venture into countries that are not conducive to such reporting. We continue to expect that reporters in war-torn countries?such as Iraq and Afghanistan?be in constant danger, with their lives often on the line, as was seen with Daniel Pearl, whose four-year beheading anniversary will be marked this month and more recently with Jill Carroll’s abduction . Journalists are also often guffawed when they encounter danger, frequently in the form of kidnappings or worse, for being in danger zones, although conversely, the American public demands timely news coverage of global events. However, we are frequently blissfully ignorant to the degrading security situation within Haiti and Mexico. The US has grown increasingly distant from the internal happenings of its southern neighbors. Journalists remain our most reliable link to the inner happenings of these, and other, countries.