A Journalist's Fight To Achieve Justice

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Crimes against journalists in Mexico often go unpunished.

So it seems extraordinary what journalist Karla Silva Guerrero accomplished this week, who saw how a court condemned the six individuals who savagely beat her in retaliation for her articles.

In any case, the alleged mastermind of this crime, the mayor of the municipality of Silao, Enrique Solís Arzola, remains free.

According to the newspaper El País, the young reporter from the Heraldo de León, in Guanajuato, was working one day in September 2014 in the newspaper's newsroom when six men stormed the site to beat him up.

Between punches and kicks that hit her in the face, belly and head, the 27-year-old girl ended up with two clots in her brain and an unrecognizable face.

Before leaving, his attackers warned him that this savage beating was intended to slow down his notes and to stop publishing them. Those notes included accusations of abuse of power within a town, for example, that the mayor reserved two parking lots to park his vehicle, and others of a critical nature to the municipal public administration.

As the PRI mayor himself admitted, it was he who ordered his security chief to carry out this violent action against the communicator.

This in turn hired three other police officers, to whom he paid about $ 260 for this violent attack, according to what was learned in the trial.

To achieve justice in Mexico, according to Reporters Without Borders, one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, the poor reporter was subjected to a veritable ordeal that included 80 hearings and confrontations with her attackers, even confronting her bosses in the newspaper because they did not want give him the permits for the hearings, El País said.

Thus the things, it had to take days of his vacations to be able to do it. That, not counting the tension of accusing such violent characters.

"Of course he was afraid," he said, remembering everything he has had to do to achieve justice, "but if you seek justice, you must face your executioner."