The Associated Press has reported that Jorge Luis Aguirre, the Mexican journalist whose coverage of Mexico’s drug wars prompted a threat on his life, has had his petition for asylum in the United States granted.
Aguirre, editor of the on-line newspaper La Polaka, was on his way to a murdered colleague’s funeral in 2008 when he received a call on his mobile phone warning “You’re next.” He immediately fled for his life to El Paso, Texas. Aguirre testified to a U.S. Senate committee last year that officials in the state of Chihuahua did not like his criticism of a local prosecutor.
The Overseas Press Club of America was among the organizations supporting Aguirre’s petition. Until yesterday the outcome of his case was uncertain. As the AP points out, the U.S. receives nearly 3,000 asylum requests from Mexico each year. Between 2005 and 2009, 252 were allowed. Cases are decided on a judgment of whether a petitioner is being persecuted because of race, religion, political views, nationality or membership in a particular social group. Physical threat is not by itself sufficient for asylum.
Carlos Spector is an El Paso attorney handling several asylum cases involving Mexican journalists, including Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, whose petition is also supported by the OPC. Spector suggests that the decision in Aguirre’s case may signal good news for threatened Mexican reporters.
“What has changed is the situation in Mexico,” Spector told the AP, “where it’s now impossible to deny reality.” The decision in favor of Aguirre, he suggested, “is an indication that the asylum office is now listening.”
In the Gutiérrez case, the reporter fled to El Paso after writing a series of stories in El Diario del Noroeste about alleged Mexican military abuses of civilians. Subsequent death threats prompted him to flee with his 15-year-old son. They were held in a federal detention facility before being released. Gutierrez’s asylum request is pending.
Especially since the Mexican government’s declaration of “war” against the narco traffickers in 2006 Mexican reporters have found themselves covering one of the most dangerous beats in the world. According to Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights, since 2000 a total of 65 journalists in Mexico have been killed in violence. If those numbers are correct the country is now the deadliest in which to practice journalism.