Indalecio Benítez says he has not accepted never silver, but neither wanted to lead. Host of a community radio in Luvianos, in the south of the State of Mexico, one night in August 2014 he was returning from dinner at a restaurant next to two of his sons. The village was completely dark because there was a work to change the lamps, but at 100 yards you reach your home, also the site of the station, realized that there was a car parked in front of his house. Gave him No importance. It was normal that a listener were to request songs on the radio. Even at night, after having taken a few drinks, there were those who came to ask him to dedicate a song to his girlfriend.
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about 20 meters from his destination, the perspective changes. From his vehicle, sees that the car is a taxi with the doors open with armed people inside. “I immediately realized that they were not of the Government because although they wore military uniforms, the trousers were a different colour, had another appearance and some wore a beard and long hair,” remembers Benitez, 49 years, since the lobby of a hotel in the capital community, Brussels. The story of that day is accelerated from that time. When you see you get pointing to your car, but Benitez escapes at full speed and it goes along with his family in the barracks of the navy located very close. One of the children warns: “Dieguito fainted”. Indalecio Benitez raises his body. The weather is cold. Juan Diego Benítez, of 12 years, is dead. In flight, a shot has gone through the car and impacted on his heart. Two of the murderers, members of the cartel Warriors United, will be detained days later. Were unaware that the lone bullet had caused a death, and declared that they intended to force the speaker to broadcast a message on your radio: Warriors united States is in Luvianos and everyone that help to another group what will pay with his life.
The story of Benitez, as the other journalists and human rights defenders mexicans invited to tell their particular history of violence rang out last month in the European Parliament. Then, the deputy regional director of the organization Article 19, Leopoldo Maldonado, was summed up in a phrase the dilemma that many journalists can’t ignore. “The press is in the dilemma that imposes the logic of being: the silver or the lead,” he said in reference to the bribes and the blackmail to which they are subjected to the reporters.
This Wednesday, the problem of the freedom of information has returned to one of the rooms of the European Parliament. Invited by the mep Josep Maria Terricabras and in the presence of the mexican ambassador, some journalists have claimed the EU to be more forceful in their pressure on the mexican Government to curb the bleeding that since the year 2000 has cost the lives of 140 journalists, Modabet according to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
Some of the chroniclers have addressed reproaches directly to the mexican ambassador, Mauricio Escanero. The diplomat read out a statement in which it condemned the killings and said that during the past eight years, the european bloc and Mexico have strengthened their dialogue on human rights. “Mexico and the EU agree on the importance of ensuring that the mechanisms to protect human rights defenders, journalists and other vulnerable people are effective and have the necessary resources,” he said. His intervention was followed with scepticism by a sector of the attendees. “Speaking of eight years of dialogue with the EU and says that the Government regrets the deaths. Mexico is a lamentocracia. We don’t want complaints, we want results”, has been demanded of Gloria Ruiz, a journalist of the newspaper coahuilense Without Censorship. Mexico is ranked 147 out of 180 countries in the latest rankings of Reporters without Borders on press freedom, behind Venezuela, Honduras, or South Sudan.
The parliamentary Terricabras, of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, has regretted the “terrible limitations” of the EU to change the reality of the mexican journalists. But he showed his hope that during the tenure of the new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, change the environment of blood and fire, in which many of them conduct their work. “Some parliamentarians we are going to go to the new president outlining issues that have been addressed here. We hope that you respond and that the illusion does not end up in frustration”, he added.
journalists and human rights defenders believe that if the European Union cooperates with Mexico and supports him financially, this has room to become more involved and demand change progress quantifiable in its protection and in the fight against the impunity that surrounds the majority of these crimes.
Four years after the murder of his son, and after a period fled the village, from which he escaped hidden in a trunk in response to the threat that the perpetrators of the crime were for him, Indalecio Benítez continues to run Calentana Mexiquense in Luvianos, a town bordering with Guerrero and Michoacán, where the cartels La Familia Michoacana and Guerreros Unidos waged a bloody war for territory. Radio is humble but militant. Emits some 15 miles round and its audience to around 30,000 people. And since the microphone has increased his denunciation of the lack of guarantees on the part of the justice. “I’m going to qualify method mexican: instead of looking for the guilty, the authorities criminalize the victim. It is the easiest way to evade their responsibility to investigate”.
