Silencing the Press in the Gray Zone of Criminality: Why the War on Drugs Turned Mexico into the World’s Most Dangerous Country for Journalists

• In Event: Studies of Organized Crime and Conflict Mini-Conference: The Political Economy of Organized Crime and Ethnic Violence

Abstract

It is widely believed that journalists face the greatest risks in autocracies or in civil wars. This paper focuses on Mexico, a country that in 2019 became the world’s most dangerous country for journalists, despite being a democracy and not experiencing a conventional war. We argue that violence against journalists is intimately tied to Mexico’s ongoing drug wars – the multiple armed conflicts unleashed by the federal government’s military intervention to fight drug cartels. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that attacks on local journalists substantially increased in militarized regions, where the military decapitated the cartels and fragmented the criminal underworld, triggering multiple turf wars and local power struggles. Evidence from focus groups shows the murderous actions of drug lords and subnational government officials – who have for long protected the cartels – when journalists’ investigations threaten their criminal and political survival. We show how the militarization of anti-crime policy undermines press freedom.

Authors

• Natan Skigin, Harvard University

• Guillermo Trejo, University of Notre Dame