Tequila and Turmoil

When Alfredo Corchado talks about freedom of the press, he's thinking about something with heaver implications than whether the local county commission has an ill-advised backroom meeting. For journalists covering the political and social scene in Mexico, press freedom is literally a life and death issue.

That's why he threw back a shot of tequila as he kicked off the Lannan Foundation's speaker series this week at The Lensic. The series continues with speakers including Noam Chomsky and Max Blulmenthal.

Once part of a 13-member press corp for The Dallas Morning News in Mexico, Corchado is now the paper's only staffer in its Mexico bureau. He's recently published a book, part personal memoir and part journalism, called Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness.

"It took a lot of music and a lot of tequila to write this book," he tells the audience, delivering his laugh line.

It wasn't until he got to the part about the death threat from the cartel that he actually drank the liquid courage on the stage.

A child of the border region who was born in Durango, Mexico, he then moved with his family to California and later El Paso as a young man. Now living in Mexico again and writing for the American newspaper, Corchado says he's comfortable straddling the two nations.

"We are the same geography: one blood, two countries, dancing out of step. Two souls still clashing," he says, reading a passage from the book. He adds later, "I'm not complete unless I'm telling stories in two countries."

While he's covered the narco wars, pervasive violence and the rise of power for the Zetas cartel, the Juarez murders, poverty, several presidents with varying degrees of corruption, and a class system with laws that "only work for the rich," to name just a few topics, Corchado says he's most interested in the stories of hope from the land he loves.

Still, Corchado—who was able to get on a plane when his life appeared in danger—knows that life for reporters in the US is very different from those in parts of Mexico. Storytellers here, he says, must take seriously their obligation to deliver the news about what's happening south of the border. Too many journalists there have died trying. Reporters with "more protection," he says, have a responsibility "to make sure their plight remains fresh in our minds."

"We need to do a lot more to explain to American readers the reach of the cartel, I think it's a disservice to Mexico and it's a disservice to our colleagues to just say 'that corrupt little country south of the border.' It is not that easy. It is not that way," he says. "I'm also often encouraged by colleagues and by Mexicans themselves who will say 'yes, the United States is to blame. The United States has a huge huge blame. If the United States were to legalize drugs tomorrow, this would really change.'"

Santa Fe Reporter