Carmen Aristegui, a tireless voice against the death of journalism

Every thirteen hours, timed with the accuracy that characterises journalist Carmen Aristegui, there is an aggression against the practice of journalism in Mexico. Most of them come from the political powers that be. This is not the only macabre statistic. The map of death has already marked 12 stations this year. From Veracruz to Michoacán, via Sonora, Zapotecas, Sinaloa and Chihuahua. Mexico holds the unfortunate record of being the most lethal country on the American continent among journalists. 

This is told to us, with a cool mind and a burning heart, by a journalist who has achieved the highest popular recognition and who is now despised by the mainstream media because, of course, by speaking the truth, she annoys everyone: the powerful in money and politics, the traffickers and the corrupt. 

The prize instituted in memory of the Diario Madrid, closed down by the dictatorship and even blown up so as not to leave its foundations alive, could not have a better recipient in its 19th edition. Carmen Aristegui was the central figure in an effort to bring to the Mexican mass media (radio and television) the freedom that some newspapers were already experiencing. And she committed the sin of being an audience leader, only to end up being fired because of pressure from the president. This is confirmed by Ricardo Cayuela, another of Mexico's great journalists, who denounces the great disappointment with the exercise of power by López Obrador, the hope of the left, who has turned "to the old authoritarian model" of the PRI era. 

Carmen Aristegui is not just a journalist, but a symbol of freedom of expression in Mexico, and therefore throughout the Spanish-speaking world.  The prize has been awarded to this journalist with a conscience to alleviate the persecution suffered by Nicaraguan journalists, represented by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, at the hands of the unscrupulous dictator Daniel Ortega. 

Full-scale persecution, a ban on writing, confiscation of media outlets, and even deprivation of nationality. This is how counter-journalism is written in America.  The daughter and granddaughter of Spanish exiles in Mexico ("Both sides lost the civil war, only Mexico won it, enriched by the intellectuals who came from Spain"), she and her Mexican colleagues are being singled out. Up to 176 professionals with names and surnames have been stigmatised by López Obrador's government in a repressive and persecutory attitude aimed at intimidating the media. Bullets kill and words are the target.  

Carmen Aristegui continues to raise her voice, even if she is deprived of the microphone that linked her to her audiences. The general chorus of journalists and democrats must join her so that this physical and conceptual slaughter of journalism, of freedom of expression, is stopped once and for all.