The following article was published on June 22 by Todd Miller and was accessed through The Border Chronicle’s newsletter on June 22nd.
Chihuahua— It was on a bumpy car ride from Rosales, Chihuahua, to Chihuahua City that I interviewed journalist Raúl Fernando Pérez Lira. We talked about his work in the Mexican border state where he was born and raised. We were driving back from the dam region of central Chihuahua, the same chain of dams that were militarized by the Mexican National Guard in 2020—a year of severe drought—to ensure the payment of water to the United States, much to the chagrin of the local farmers. As we drove back in the spitting rain, I wondered how Raúl had become a journalist, how it’s been working for an independent and quite courageous media outlet called Raíchali (which means “word” in Rarámuri) in Chihuahua, a place where Raúl said there was a “media state of siege,” and what were the most important issues they covered. What follows is our conversation accompanied by photos illustrating not only Raúl’s journalism, but a historic and important decade in both Mexico and the border state of Chihuahua.
What do you mean by media “state of siege”?
The media is tightly controlled in Chihuahua. The government spends about 200 million pesos in paying newspapers. The governments put advertisement in the media. In practical terms, this means that the editorial line is completely biased. So it’s like—a media state of siege. … There are very few media outlets that are outside of that logic, so efforts like Raíchali or La Verdad de Juárez [a journalism outlet located in Ciudad Juárez that is also a very good friend of The Border Chronicle] are vital to Chihuahua’s democratic life. They are titanic efforts with very visible results, and I would say very needed results in this context.
OK, let’s back up for a moment, before returning to Raíchali. What led you to become a journalist, Raúl?
I was born in Delicias, Chihuahua, but I live and do my journalism in the city of Chihuahua. I have been taking pictures in my town for about 15 years. I began with doing photography of social movements. When I was young, when I was growing up, there was a big student movement nationwide, which was called Yo Soy 132. It was originally against this candidate from the Institutional Revolutionary Party [Enrique Peña Nieto] for the presidency in 2012, who was responsible for a massacre in Atenco a few years before he was candidate [when Peña Nieto was governor of Mexico State]. A lot of students were not happy with that. And a lot of students were not happy with how the PRI was manipulating the media, especially the television channel Televisa, and how gossip magazines were promoting his presidency.
One of the main demands of the movement was the democratization of the media. At the time we didn’t hear much about independent media outlets. Of course, some indigenous communities had their own radio stations. But much of the media was controlled by the government.
In 2012 the movement breaks out. Protest everywhere. And I began to attend the protests. I took lots and lots of pictures at that time. I still have some of them. Sometimes I look back at them and I recognize my style. And I recognize that was a moment photography started to have a purpose for me.
Then came the Ayotzinapa events in 2014, 43 students were disappeared, and now we know were massacred by criminal organizations and by criminal organizations I include authorities, military, police, marines, and the prosecutor’s office. So there were nationwide protests. I got my camera and hit the streets. I realized this was something I liked. Now my journalism is focused on human rights in Chihuahua, a very troubled state.
What’s going on in Chihuahua?
It has general problems, and it has specific problems. Right now one of the biggest problems we have is with drought and water scarcity, for example.
Also, a few days ago the president said that no place in the country was controlled by criminal organizations. And that’s a complete lie. And we can see that in many places in Chihuahua. Small towns, big towns, big cities. We know, we can tell, we can see, that these are controlled by criminal organizations.
Can you tell us how you know? Or how you see this?
You can see their presence. People talk. You can see them physically in towns.
They make themselves visible?
Yes, they make themselves visible. It’s not like they’re hiding. And there’s a lot of reporters and journalists who have talked and published about it for 20 years. It’s not a secret. If a territory is controlled by criminal organizations, people can’t live their lives freely.
And we have other economic issues. Like illegal logging deforestation in the western Sierra Madre. One of the consequences is forced displacement. And forced displacement is really a big problem in Chihuahua. It’s a big problem in many parts of the country like Guerrero, Chiapas, and Oaxaca. But also Chihuahua.
Who are the people who are being forcibly displaced?
All kinds of people, but mainly people who live in rural areas. Both mestizo and Indigenous. People from the Rarámuri and the Odami. People in places in municipalities. Guadalupe y Calvo, for example, is expelling hundreds of people. And you cannot hide that. People go to the cities and talk about their problems. This cannot be silenced.
How are people being displaced?
So, there’s lots of economic interests in the Sierra Tarahumara. It’s a mountainous region with good water. There’s lots of pine trees, which constitute the biggest economic interest in that area. They’re worth a lot. Right? People who are interested in that kind of money, they end up occupying huge swaths of land. They become armed, they threaten people, they kill people, and maybe they align with one of the cartels.
The Indigenous and mestizo people in the area just cannot live with that. They do not agree with the forests being cut down, with water being exploited, or with poppy and other illegal crops being grown in the area, which brings violence. So they just end up leaving. When they see their lives are threatened, their family’s lives are threatened, they have to flee.
That’s a problem in the western Sierra Madre. But we have a problem in the whole country. About forced disappearance. There’s about 3,600 people missing in the state, more or less. It’s hidden, information is scarce. For families of the disappeared, they don’t have enough access to the investigation, to the cases. People are always trying to find out what the authorities are doing to find their relatives.
And also the groups and institutions in charge of investigating these disappearances/forced displacement are completely overwhelmed. They don’t have enough resources, enough people. Even when a person guilty of disappearing or killing someone gets charged, the actions that the government takes for the family and community are not enough and not respected.
In other words, we have a bunch of problems. Last night we were at the railroad with this organization that helps migrants and aids them in their travels. [Raúl and I went to the train yard at about 10 p.m.]. This is very humanitarian help. They give them food. If they need shelter, they give them shelter so they can rest and continue their way to the United States. We were speaking with a person who has done this work for 11 years, and she asked us what we were researching right now. And I told her we were doing some research about water. And she said, yeah, we are full of problems. You lift a rock and there’s a problem.
What is Raíchali, and are you looking into all these different issues?
Raichali is a small, independent outlet that started in 2018. I was not one of the founding members. But the founders—journalists Patricia Mayorga and Jaime Armendáriz—have told us the story of Raíchali.
During the Felipe Calderón presidency, which started in 2006, drug war violence broke out everywhere. Chihuahua used to be a very quiet place. Nothing really happened. Then we started—I was very young at the time—hearing about killings, mass shootings in public places. … At that time, Paty and Jaime were trying to figure out what to do as journalists. How to cover this violence. How to cover the changes in the dynamics of society. So they approached other journalists in other parts of the country. And they met Periodistas de Pie, which is a nationwide organization. They found support in them. They started to figure out what to do in Chihuahua and other parts of the country.
Some journalists in Chihuahua founded Red Libre Periodismo. They tried to support this effort to train themselves as journalists in many contexts. They started to bring journalists from other places, to talk with each other. And had trainings. And Periodistas de Pie played a key role in that. Something similar happened in Juárez, with La Verdad de Juárez.
So the Red Libre Periodismo, they wanted to find their own media outlet because they all worked in traditional outlets. They started being censored by the outlets. They couldn’t publish. So they started a block, and they were publishing pieces that could not appear in the mainstream media. And finally they were able to found, create Raíchali in 2018. Something happened in between. A lot violence against journalists. Journalists were killed. Maybe the most prominent name is Miroslava Breach Velducea, who was killed in 2017. [Check out the podcast Melissa del Bosque and I did last month about this.]
I started reading Raíchali during that time. So when I came back to the city in 2020, I searched them out. And I started coordinating with them. I became a part of the staff in February 2021.
Can you tell me about stories you have worked on that have left an impression?
A story about a community named Coloradas de la Virgen. There’s not an official number, but it might be around 100 people from that community who have been displaced. And there was a trial against the murderers of Julián Carrillo and Víctor Carrillo, who were activists from that community. So these activists were killed. And there was a trial, and it was historic for many reasons. It was the first time that context analysis was used in a trial. The whole community was recognized as a victim, even though it was committed against two people. I remember when the trial was taking place, we were not able to get in, but we met the people who were present. Just meeting them and listening to them, knowing the story, and being able to photograph the people. I took very discreet pictures that I really liked. I wasn’t able to publish them. … We published a couple of photos in which the people were unrecognizable. That reporting was very meaningful to me.
And another one was when I spent like two or three days with families of disappeared people, going through several towns in southern Chihuahua and interviewing them, finding out about their cases. I went to the places where they disappeared and marched along with them. Then going to the capital city and listening to people talk to the closed doors of the governmental palace. That was pretty emotional. It was very meaningful.
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