<nettime> On journalistic integrity and cynical depths in Chiapas

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Subject: On journalistic integrity and cynical depths in Chiapas


Originally published in Spanish by the FZLN 
*********************************** 
Translated by irlandesa 


From: FZLN fzln@fzln.org.mx 
Date: Thursday, August 29 2002 21:06:03 


Letter to the Editor, La Jornada 

Regarding the full-page display ad (Wednesday, August 28, 2002), paid for
by the Government of Chiapas, and in which the Prosecutor's Office for
Justice (Ja!) [PGJ] of the State of Chiapas offered its "objective and
professional"  version of the recent paramilitary attack against
zapatistas of Flores Mago'n, some comments:

   1.- In the display ad, a pair of "docile" and "peaceful"
paramilitaries, with their full names, appeared as witnesses, Nicola's
Herna'ndez Gutie'rrez and Camilio Herna'ndez Ballinas, who, paid for by
the PGJ, "objectively and professionally" stated that what took place in
Amaytic was a family conflict.  In the government's display ad, the dead
have no names, the PGJ refers to one as "a deceased", and they have
mislaid another dead zapatista compa.  For their relatives, for zapatistas
throughout the world and for La Jornada, they do have names:  Lorenzo
Marti'nez Espinosa and Jacinto Herna'ndez Gutie'rrez.  That is what La
Jornada and their correspondent Hermann Bellinghausen are being reproached
for?  That they name the dead?

The "witnesses" are convalescing in the hospital, paid for by the
Government of Chiapas.  The zapatista dead are being kept vigil over by
their relatives, in their huts, paid for by the consciences of the state
and federal governments.

  2. - As is obvious, the Chiapas PGJ prefers the attitude of complicit
silence which the majority of the written and electronic press adopted,
and they characterize the fact that La Jornada has dedicated a respectable
amount of space to the cowardly paramilitary attack of August 25 as being
an "obviously militant attitude."  It so happens that now the "models" of
an objective press are "Diario de Chiapas" and "Cuarto Poder," and that
journalistic objectivity is defined in terms of the power of money, and
not in terms of the facts and actors involved (dead, in the case of the
zapatista compas).

The Government of Chiapas has paid for an "objective and professional"
full- page display ad (approximate cost: 100,000 pesos), paid for by the
public treasury.  The zapatistas appeared on the front page (to the
exasperation of the federal and state governments), paid for with their
own blood.

  3. - The Chiapas PGJ, with its display ad, has invited the public to
close their eyes and ears.  The blood of the dead zapatistas has invited
civil society to not forget.  Forgetting costs money, memory costs blood.

   4. - The bodies of Lorenzo Marti'nez Espinosa and Jacinto Herna'ndez
Gutie'rrez are lying in huts in the Ricardo Flores Mago'n Autonomous
Municipality.  La Jornada's "militant" version gave proof of their death.  
The Chiapas PGJ's "objective and professional" version gave full-page
proof of the government's cynicism.  Yesterday, purported "zapatistas"
were being paid to "desert" the EZLN.  Today, "witnesses" are being paid
to profusely promote "family conflicts" in the mountains of the Mexican
southeast.  In a full-page display ad, the Chiapas PGJ has reiterated the
government's need to construct lies (badly edited, incidentally) in order
to arrange facts in favor of cynical and irresponsible forgetting.  In
this letter, I am merely saying that the Government of Chiapas is looking
more like the Croquetas Albores and less like Salazar Mendiguchi'a.

   5. - We readers are grateful to La Jornada and to their correspondents
in the conflict zone for having given voice to the blood of the dead
zapatistas.  And also for their having given us the opportunity to savor
that mixture of cynicism and bad editing which is the Chiapas PGJ display
ad.

   6. - Journalistic objectivity is not cynicism which waits in line for
its government paycheck.  If memory eventually reaches the front page, and
the "letters to the editor" more regularly, it is because power makes up
in money what it lacks in shame.

  7. - Hopefully more deaths and more front pages will not be necessary to
remind us that we should not forget.  And, I repeat, the names of the
zapatista dead are:  Lorenzo Marti'nez Espinosa and Jacinto Herna'ndez
Gutie'rrez, their deaths were indeed in favor of a political and
ideological cause:  the recognition of the rights of the Indian peoples.  
And they were also against a political and ideological cause:  that of
forgetting and cynicism made governments.

Thanks to La Jornada. 

Javier Elorriaga. 
Zapatista Front of National Liberation 





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