Killing the Story by Témoris Grecko

Killing the Story by Témoris Grecko

Author:Témoris Grecko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2020-08-23T16:00:00+00:00


Information is a social necessity. The shutting down or censorship of newspapers leaves a vacuum that citizens rush to fill, reporting on what professional media outlets will not. They denounce the violence and plan events on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, but at great personal risk. They form advisory groups to provide information on the troubles they are facing, through websites with names like Courage for Victoria City or Warning Mante City. The best known was Valor por Tamaulipas (“courage for Tamaulipas,” known by its acronym in Spanish, VxT), which became a news source for journalists. The gangs decided it needed to be silenced, and in February 2013, they announced a reward of 64,000 pesos that was eventually raised to 3 million pesos to whoever “provides exact information on the owner of the website or their immediate family members, whether they are parents, siblings, children, or a spouse. This is just freedom of expression but in exchange for a nice payment to shut up those big panochones [a reporter identified by criminals] like these assholes who think they’re heroes.” They had no qualms about listing a cell number to contact.

The VxT administrators protected their identities carefully because they knew the threat was all too real. But thirty-nine-year-old journalist María Elizabeth Macías was caught in 2011. She left VxT to write under a pseudonym, “La Nena de Laredo.” She was identified by Los Zetas as one of the administrators of the website Nuevo Laredo en Vivo (Nuevo Laredo live). The website denied this, but on September 24, her decapitated body was found next to a computer keyboard, a CD player, several cables, and a note that read:



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