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NACO, Sonora — Rodolfo Santos, publisher and editor of the Naco, Sonora, newspaper El Mirador, is not the kind of journalist to pull his punches.
Earlier this year, Santos ran a blistering expos/ of abuse at a local orphanage in which director Miguel çngel Ramos, the man allegedly responsible for the misdeeds, was regularly referred to as “Hitler.” The series featured graphic witness testimonies and photographs and eventually led to formal charges being filed against Ramos.
A year prior, El Mirador was relentless in its efforts to uncover corruption on the part of Naco’s then-mayor, Vicente Torres. For months, Santos published copies of receipts from Torres’ shady deals and photos of ill-gotten properties until state officials finally investigated and removed the mayor from office.
 Rodolfo Santos, left, publisher and editor of the Naco, Sonora, newspaper El Mirador; his wife, Veronica; and reporter and photographer Jorge Villegas. (By Ted Morris-Herald/Review) |
Still, there is one area of malfeasance that not even Rodolfo Santos is willing to expose: Organized crime.
“To publish stories about narcotics trafficking or migrant smuggling would put us and our families in danger,” he said. “We publish the press releases we get from the authorities on drug arrests, but otherwise, we have to be careful.”
Santos’ reluctance to tangle with drug cartels and smugglers is not unusual in Mexico, where many journalists self-censor their work on organized crime out of safety concerns.
According to a 2005 report by the international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, Mexico is now the most dangerous nation in the Americas for journalists. Last year, says the group, two Mexican journalists were killed and a third went missing as a result of their work. Three others were murdered in 2004, including Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a well-known anti-cartel editorialist with the Tijuana weekly, Zeta.
On Feb. 8, gunmen attacked the offices of El Manana, a newspaper in the violence- and drug-ravaged border city of Nuevo Laredo. After the attack, which seriously injured a reporter, the paper’s editor said El Manana would curtail its coverage of narcotics trafficking.
The following week, the administration of President Vicente Fox announced it was naming a special prosecutor to investigate crimes against journalists.
The new office, however, does not prosecute cases involving drug traffickers or organized crime — those offenses are still the domain of the overworked deputy attorney general for organized crime.
It is not just drug-related reporting that gets Mexican journalists in trouble, either. Unflattering portrayals of the nation’s political and economic elite can also earn reprisals.
In a case evocative of El Mirador’s campaign against the Naco orphanage director, columnist and author Lydia Cacho was arrested last December on libel charges after she accused a prominent businessman of pedophilia. Tape recordings of conversations between the businessman and the governor of Puebla state showed the two men plotting to jail and assault Cacho.
Still, Santos says, such cases are becoming less and less frequent. He notes Cacho is now free while her accusers face conspiracy charges.
Life for investigative journalists is much better now, he believes, than it was during the 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ended with Vicente Fox’s historic presidential victory in 2000.
“Today, with the government of Fox, we have much more freedom of the press,” Santos said. “We can criticize the government and we can do it at the federal, state and local levels.”
In addition, he says, the Mexican press can now play an important role as a community watchdog — and he points to El Mirador’s expos/s of Ramos and Torres as evidence.
“The authorities listen to us, and they act,” he said.
A local fixture
The modest single-level house that Santos, 43, shares with his wife and three children sits on a dusty side street in the Naco town center. A front room with street access does double duty as El Mirador’s headquarters and a shop selling uniforms for schoolchildren.
The paper’s small newsdesk is covered almost completely by one of El Mirador’s two computers. The other sits on a nearby counter and Santos moves swiftly back and forth between the machines on a rolling office chair.
There is one laser printer — bought on sale for $99, he notes — and a fax machine donated by a friend at a larger newspaper.
El Mirador, whose name roughly translates as The Viewpoint, is preparing to celebrate its third anniversary in July. It is, Santos explains, Naco’s first permanent newspaper.
“There have been a few others, but they just published a few times and stopped,” he says. “But that’s not what journalism is — serious journalism requires consistency and dedication.”
And while El Mirador has made its name with its investigative work, it remains a community newspaper. A woman stops by on this morning in hopes that El Mirador will publish photos of her son’s Little League baseball team. The newspaper also features school news, cultural events, quinceanos celebrations, and even a recent report by Santos’ 13-year-old son, Garael, on a possible local discovery of the chupacabras, a mythic horned creature that feasts on the blood of domesticated animals.
And there are plenty of crime stories. Some, like a recent extra on the gangland-style slaying of a local migrant trafficker, feature graphic and shocking photos of the victims.
Readers like that kind of flashy news, Santos explains, though the paper tries its best to avoid yellow journalism.
In addition to son Garael, Santos’ wife, Veronica, lends a hand with the newspaper’s layout and reporting. There are also two non-family staffers: Reporter and photographer Jorge Villegas, and Arizona correspondent Armando Acuna, whom some Herald/Review readers might recognize as the driver of the Bisbee Bus.
Santos founded the newspaper after working as a reporter in Agua Prieta. He does a bit of everything at the paper: Editing, design, advertising, circulation, photography and reporting. It is an all-consuming job, and with little financial reward. But he loves the work and the service that a free press provides the people of Naco.
“Journalism is fascinating, it’s interesting and it’s important,” he said. “The people of Naco like and respect El Mirador, and we respect the people as well.”
Still, Santos does not forget that his job can be a risky one.
He tells the story of a fellow editor in Agua Prieta who had been publishing stories on local migrant-smuggling gangs. About two weeks ago, when one of the newspaper’s carriers was out on his route, a black Chevy Suburban pulled up.
A window rolled down and a voice inside said: “Tell your editor we’re going to kill him.”
The message is not lost on Santos. “Here in Mexico, we journalists have to work with a lot of caution,” he says.
El Mirador, a black-and-white tabloid-format newspaper, is printed at Copper Queen Publishing in Bisbee, and free copies are generally available at Atalanta’s Books and the Copper Queen Library. It is published weekly and distributed to 1,000 readers, most of them in Naco, though there is also some circulation in Cananea, Agua Prieta and Rio Sonora.
herald/review reporter Jonathan Clark can be reached at 515-4693 or by e-mail at jonathan.clark@bisbeereview.net.
TheSilverRose wrote on Jun 27, 2009 10:22 PM:
Thank You! "