Surviving Mexico

Celeste GonzÁlez de Bustamante is an associate professor at the University of Arizona School of Journalism, where she directs the Center for Border and Global Journalism. She is the author of “Muy buenas noches”: Mexico, Television, and the Cold War and coeditor of Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media, and Provincial Politics.Jeannine E. Relly is a professor with the School of Journalism and School of Government & Public Policy (with courtesy) at the University of Arizona. She is affiliated with the Center for Latin American Studies. Before joining academia, she worked as a journalist for news outlets in the Caribbean, the Mexico-US borderlands, and several US states. She is the director of Global Initiatives at the UA School of Journalism.

A book filled with stories of horror-and of hope. (Texas Observer) A meticulously researched study…[Surviving Mexico] is made lively and moving by the many interviews with Mexican journalists and media owners who themselves tell the stories of the dangers and at times, the horrors, that working reporters routinely face in many parts of Mexico. (ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America) Urgently indispensable...Based on more than 160 interviews with journalists, activists, and academics across several regions of the country, GonzÁlez de Bustamante and Relly present a highly readable account of the myriad dangers faced by journalists in Mexico, the impact of trauma and violence on their lives, and how individuals and collectives have organized to meet the challenges of working in such a dangerous place. (Nieman Lab) Surviving Mexico is a much-needed book that offers a wide scope for understanding the endemic violence against Mexican journalists. It will be useful for scholars and journalists interested in understanding the harsh conditions that news workers have to constantly face when doing their jobs. The book’s central arguments and discussions are consistent with broader debates on media in the Global South, where emergent democracies struggle with post-authoritarianisms and populisms. (Journal of Latin American Studies) Surviving Mexico is about an essential component of Mexico’s security and humanitarian crisis: violence against news professionals whose daily work can breach the zones of silence brought into being by that same crisis. More than its scholarly framework, this book’s moral impetus and wealth of information about the meanings and consequences of working and living in these circumstances will appeal to many readers. (Bulletin of Spanish Studies)

• List of Illustrations and TablesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Mexico’s Peripheries as a Case Study for Violence against Journalists around the WorldPart I. The Past, Place, and Politics of Violence against Journalists 1. How Journalists Became Their Own Activists: A Historical Perspective2. Place Matters: The Promise and Limits of the Periphery3. Moving Targets and Perpetrators: Mercurial Violence, Ownership, and Changing Journalism PracticesPart II. Murdering the Messengers and Controlling the Message 4. Red Light, Green Light: Strategies of Resistance among Journalists in the Peripheries5. The Personal and Familial Toll: Violence, Trauma, and Resilience6. Social Media, Digital Insecurity, and Journalists’ SafetyPart III. Structured and Unstructured Attempts to Save Journalism and Journalists 7. Attempts to Intervene8. State Actors, Violence, and Resilience among Organized Crime Groups9. Women on the Frontline: Resistance and Resilience in Ciudad JuÁrezConclusion: Toward a More Secure Journalism FutureAppendix: Journalists Killed in Mexico 2000–2020, by Presidential AdministrationNotesReferencesIndex