Jorge Luis Aguirre, a Mexican lawyer, journalist, and director of the online newspaper La Polaka, has been forced from his home in Mexico to seek safety in the US. His work as a reporter has made him a target of the drug cartels in Mexico, and government officials working in concert with the cartels have made several threats against his life. After fellow journalist Armando Rodriguez was murdered just outside Aguirre’s own home, Aguirre and his family fled to El Paso, Texas, and have been there since November 2008.
The picture Aguirre paints in the article is a grim one- he asserts that returning to Mexico would mean certain death for him, and he described the situation in Mexico as having “erased all authority and government from the map and replaced it with dictatorship of the crime underworld.” I think it’s hard, from an American perspective, to truly understand the dangers facing journalists and citizens in Mexico right now, but I this article goes a long way toward conveying the severity of the situation. The entire country has been ravaged by the violence, and it seems like the media system was one of the first casualties. What hope is there for free media when corrupted government has made reporting an offense punishable by death?--Liz Hobson
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