SECRETO A VOCES

My column in The News of Mexico City

The hit, when it went down, was perfect. The photographer was shot five times, with a tiro de gracia to the head. He collapsed by the torta stand, his five-year-old son in shock, clutching the dead body.

No motive was ever given, but everyone understood the game. The photojournalist had captured a shot of a local narco-trafficker during a party he was hired to shoot. The narco assumed he was there in his role as a journalist, working for the Sinaloan newspaper, El Debate.
Doubtless, the Sinaloan thug had ordered the hit. We all thought it at the time. But this is the story of a murder and homicides can surprise us all at times.

The killing took place at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night in the little town of Escuinapa, Sinaloa, down near the Nayarit border, along the Pacific Coast.

It’s the kind of town where everybody rides bicycles to get around and the streets are more often dirt than paved. That late November 2004 night, dozens of people were in the street around the torta stand. Dozens of potential witnesses watched the hit go down, and in the small town, 14,000 people, somebody must have recognized the killers. Yet nobody saw anything. No surprise there, that’s Mexico.

More than three years later, another Mexico has shown itself. One that isn’t acknowledged openly though everyone seems to understand.

The rumors started early. An associate of the narco-emeritus, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, had ordered the hit. It made sense, or rather, it was the more comfortable truth and an easier one to understand. Drug traffickers are the basest of people, capable of atrocities that make normal people cringe. Decapitations in Acapulco, full-scale wars complete with rocket launchers and .50-caliber machine guns in Ciudad Juárez, desperados on the run from law enforcement, fighting amongst each other like starved rats.

News organizations, from Reporters Without Borders to the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the killing, pleading with the government to solve the case.

It was simple to understand: The father of two, who learned photography from his wife, Maria Teresa Gonzalez, was a victim of criminals trying to silence the press.

He was and he wasn’t. Much like most things that happen in this ephemeral state.

In the end, it wasn’t the drug lords who ordered the hit. Two weeks ago, a Sinaloan judge ordered Abel Enriquez, the former Escuinapa chief of police, to 11 years in prison as the intellectual author of the murder. Three others, those who carried out the hit, were also sentenced. Hitmen working for police chiefs.

The acceptable theories cannot hold any longer.

The narcos remain a threat to the public security of this country and that’s obvious. But to ignore the involvement of the State in the murder of its citizens, in this case, of its working press, is to not understand just how far Mexico has receded in recent years.

Most involvement of public officials in organized crime is attributed to the plata o plomo theory. These poor bastards, the thinking goes, they either have to take the money or take a bullet themselves.

That too, is easier to accept. But Rodriguez’s murder shows the darker truth. These small Mexican towns, infested with narco-thugs, are not in danger of collapsing. They’ve already collapsed. The center isn’t falling in places like little Escuinapa. The center fell.

Rodriguez is dead but I hope his case stays alive. First, because 11 years for a pre-meditated murder is inexcusable. Secondly, his killing shows that there is no battle being waged between good and evil, security forces versus criminals. The line between the two blurred long ago.

It’s now indistinguishable.

– Michel Marizco