Lydia Cacho Ribeiro is being threatened by both state and anti-state powers trying to muzzle free expression in Mexico and silence voices which expose their corruption and illegal activities.
Cacho is a correspondent for Communication and Information of the Woman (CIMAC) news agency and feature writer for Dia Siete magazine in Mexico. She has been a journalist for more than two decades, and has endured numerous death threats because of her work reporting on domestic violence, organised crime, and political corruption.
She has founded and is the director of the Centro Integral de Atencion a las Mujeres in Cancun, a crisis centre and shelter for victims of sex crimes, gender-based violence, and trafficking. The centre is considered one of the safest and most comprehensive facilities in Mexico, helping victims of human trafficking and sexual violence.
According to Cacho, the Mexican government needs to do more to stop sexual violence, especially with studies showing that at least 12,000 girls every year in Mexico are sexually exploited and forced into prostitution. If the government does not do more to attack this problem, trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and women "will probably in 10 years become as big" in Mexico as drug trafficking, she has predicted.
In 2004, in a book authored by her The Devils of Eden:The Power That Protects Child Pornography, she reiterated the fact and connected child-sex tourism rings in Cancun to high-ranking Mexican government officials., based on her research on child pornography among Mexican politicians and businessmen. Cacho's tireless work as a journalist, author and public advocate for victims of sexual predators has stirred up so much official resistance that she has been jailed and threatened with rape and death.
Her crusade to fight trafficking of women and the international sex trade had caused her arrest in 2005, when she was arrested on libel charges and driven to a jail 20 hours from her home in Cancun, with officers hinting that there was a plan to rape her.
The charges against Cacho based on a complaint filed by businessman José Camel Nacif, were dismissed in January 2007.
The attacks, however, have continued. On May 8 this year, while she was testifying at the trial of a paedophile she had written about, her car was sabotaged. Cacho has written extensively about paedophiles. A tape recording of a conversation between a businessman and a Mexican governor discussing a plan to have her arrested and raped was obtained by the media in Feburary 2006.
Gruesome messages were found where the head of a corpse was left on a street in the eastern city of Veracruz along with a message were aimed at journalists and the fact that one of them is being blamed on drug traffickers in May 2007. Reporters sans Frontieres said, "These so-called 'narco-messages' to the press are extremely disturbing. We call on the authorities to immediately ensure that both Lydia Cacho and Milo Vela are properly protected." Vela is a columnist who writes for the Veracruz-based daily Notiver.
Recently, the magistrates of the Supreme Court (Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación) sent an important signal regarding their own autonomy and respect for freedom of expression in Mexico by debating a recommendation for some kind of judgment to be made regarding Puebla state Governor Mario Marín Torres, a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) party, for his participation in the violation of journalist Lydia Cacho's constitutionally-guaranteed rights, in relation to the publication of her book The Devils of Eden.
The governor organised a conspiracy on the part of public employees of the state to arrest and try Cacho, who dared to unmask the members of an international paedophile ring led by Jean Succar Kuri and denim textile products magnate Kamel Nacif, a Mexican of Lebanese origin.
Highest instance of the judicial system will ask the Procurator General's Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) to take legal action against Puebla state Attorney General Blanca Laura Villeda Martínez and Quintana Roo state Attorney General Bello Melchor Rodríguez y Carrillo, who coordinated their actions to illegally to detain Cacho.
Simply by discussing the Cacho case, observers say, magistrates are setting a precedent that will make exercising freedom of expression less fraught with uncertainties and danger. Freedom of expression has been a hostage of powerful criminal groups who threaten and even physically attack journalists.
Cacho has been honoured by International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2007 Courage in Journalism Awards. She has also been named as one of the State Department's eight "Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery" for 2007.
Cacho also won a 2007 award from the global human rights group Amnesty International for creating the Cancun shelter for abused children and women. In accepting that award, Cacho recalled the words of her mother, who said: "Never negotiate your freedom. If you lose your freedom, you lose everything."
