Marcela Turati speaks calmly about death, with a Barcelona in the background in which the sunset is already beginning. At the viewpoint of the Center for Contemporary Culture (CCCB), the Mexican journalist who has been investigating the disappeared in the country for years, tries to explain the inexplicable: how violence and impunity have meant that, since records began in 1964, Mexico has reached, a few days ago, the figure of 100,000 missing persons. There is talk of figures, although they are stories.
“Families have to go from morgue to morgue all over the country to see if they will let them see the bodies that exist. There are families who are shown 5,000 photos in one day of being decapitated, of being burned… it's tremendous”, explains Turati. A corrupt state, which is not responsible for the facts or the bodies, is the one that leads them to devise their own methods to see if they find, in a stroke of luck or misfortune, their loved ones.
“The government is not looking for them, they only send letters between prosecutors, they put up posters in the streets, in the subway… and the families began to despair, they went out to dig. With their own tools, they began to dig”, relates the journalist.
When in December 2006 the state declared the so-called "war on drugs", promoted by then President Felipe Calderón to curb the various cartels that controlled -and control- various illegal activities in the country (trafficking of drugs, women ), violence, which had already existed since the previous century, became systemic. Numbers of dead and disappeared circulating again and again through the mouths of the accomplices of the disaster: as Turati explains, there is a war to control the territory in which not only the drug traffickers participate, but also the police, the army , public officials. "What we see over time is that everyone is involved."
The journalist recounts what a woman who was burdened with the anguish of not finding her disappeared once told her: “it seems that we are speaking from under the sea.” And that image of the victims who are not heard, screaming from the depths, is what has motivated Marcela Turati to continue, despite the danger, with "that fight against silence."
When talking about journalism in Mexico, just as when talking about the disappeared, the word impunity also prevails. So far this year, 11 journalists have been murdered, making the country one of the riskiest and toughest to practice the profession. “When the murderers are arrested, they present us with hitmen who did it, but who was behind it is never investigated, the intellectual author is never reached, which politicians were… And suddenly you have testimonies from journalists who tell you: they threatened me, for publishing a note about the price of the tortilla, even for that they threatened me, "explains Turati.
The government of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, not only does not take responsibility and does not investigate the deaths of journalists, but also stigmatizes them with spaces such as the so-called "Who is who in the media?", in which, every week, the government singles out some journalists to expose "their lies and fake news." A dangerous game in which roles are exchanged and the state, investing public resources, acts as a kind of checker for the press. "Instead of sending a message of support at a time of so many crimes against journalists, he has journalists presented, most of the time, as enemies of the people," explains Turati.
"They kill journalists and we are still the same ones who go to the marches, those who ask for justice, those who are outraged," he points out.
Yesenia Mollinedo, Johana García and Luis Enrique Ramírez are the names of the three journalists who have been murdered in Mexico during the month of May. With this climate of danger, impunity and uncertainty, the question hangs in the air: why continue? Turati is clear: he wants people to pay attention, "for people to listen to that father from Guatemala, from a small town, to whom they handed over the body of his son with a broken skull, to listen to him, to listen to him in his struggle , in their doubts, in their sadness and in their dignity”.
4
