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His obsession with characterizing journalists as political enemies not only adds to the deadly climate of intimidation in Mexico, but also reveals the populist leader’s brazen efforts to obscure the fact that the country is becoming more and more dangerous, with various regions now resembling war zones.
Last weekend, in the southern state of Michoacán, a large convoy of heavily armed men reportedly rode into the town of San Jose de Gracia and barged into a funeral. They then lined up a group of people against a wall and shot them. The exact number of dead is still unclear, but the purported execution, in a hail of bullets, was apparently caught on video.
Just a few days prior, dozens of heavily armed men drove into Caborca, Sonora, near the border with the United States, and opened fire, terrorizing the community. At least two people were killed.
This carnage is reminiscent of other massacres that have shaken Mexico throughout the country’s drawn-out war against drug cartel violence. In 2010, sicarios, or hit men, killed 13 people at a drug rehabilitation center in Tijuana. Then, in 2014, 43 student teachers from the town of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero, another southern state in Mexico that has suffered years of bloodshed, were kidnapped by a criminal organization, in cahoots with the local authorities. At least 38 of them were killed.
The Tijuana and Ayotzinapa massacres changed the course of the administrations of Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. Public debate in Mexico changed, as well. Back then, as Mexico’s most prominent opposition figure, López Obrador did not mince words. “Ayotzinapa is an impossible case to close without achieving justice,” he tweeted in 2014. “They will fail if they try to manipulate or have impunity prevail.”
But now, about seven and a half years later and in power, López Obrador has reacted to the San José de Gracia massacre in a starkly different way. At first, he questioned the veracity of the reports and suggested journalists had jumped to conclusions, despite the fact that local authorities and television crews had visited the site and found evidence of the massacre, including blood stains and bullet casings.
On Tuesday, a few minutes before his own national security officials confirmed details of the carnage, López Obrador still made sure to cast doubt over the motives of the press. “Anything that happens, like these regrettable events, they amplify it!” he said. “There’s a lot of misinformation because the conservatives are desperate and set on attacking us. Most media outlets act like a choir, against the transformation we are carrying out.”
As the journalist Jorge Ramos, one of López Obrador’s recent targets, explained: “To inform on the violence in Mexico is not an attack on the president. It’s meant to highlight the country’s problems,” Ramos wrote. “That is what journalists do.”
López Obrador sees it differently. He sees independent journalists as political opponents. That’s why he even likes to offer his own version of “alternative facts.”
Mexico is facing a struggle unlike anything the country has seen in its battle against organized crime. López Obrador’s term is already projected to be the bloodiest in the country’s modern history. Just in the first three years of his administration, more than 100,000 Mexicans have been killed.
The president’s choice to continue using his time, effort and powerful platform to intimidate journalists, rather than focus on denouncing and persecuting criminals and solving the country’s violent upheaval, is morally inexcusable and a dereliction of his duty to protect all Mexicans — not just the ones who like him and his political party.
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