Over the years we’ve worked in what most people would consider some pretty tough places: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the slums of Cite Soleil in Haiti, and most recently the border city of Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world. We are often asked why we would risk our lives to get a story. There never seems to be a satisfying answer to that question. It’s just what we do, and we are pretty good at it; meaning we understand these places, and that coupled with a little luck, we feel confident; safe. It also helps, that at the end of every assignment we know we are going home to the comfort and safety of the United States.
For local reporters in places like Juarez, things are very different, the risks they take make ours pale in comparison. Crime reporter Lucy Carmen Sosa at El Diario newspaper in Juarez, is a perfect example. Imagine if your mentor was ruthlessly gunned down by drug cartels in front of his eight year old daughter, and it became your job to continue conducting the very reporting that got him killed. That is what happened to Lucy when her co-worker Armando Rodriguez was shot, and rather than be intimated and quit, Lucy vowed not only to continue Armando’s job, but to also investigate his unsolved murder.
Unlike us, Lucy does not leave the warzone once her stories are filed. She was born and raised in Juarez, she takes her two children to school here, this is her home, which makes her job all that much more dangerous. Recently, two more of her co-workers at El Diario were shot. She has been threatened, followed, and sent direct messages saying that she will die if she does not stop writing about, and investigating the workings of the drug cartels.
We followed Lucy on the job, and I found myself asking her the same questions that we get asked all the time, “Why risk it? Can the story possibly be worth the danger involved?” Lucy told us that in a city and a country where the majority of politicians and police are corrupt, reporters are the last line of defense for the people. Without reporters who are honest and unbiased, the cartels and the crooked politicians will rule the country with impunity. We’ve seen up close what the cartels are capable of, beheadings and chopping off of hands, are a common form of intimidation. Pedro Torres, Lucy’s editor at El Diario says more than 50 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2008, simply for doing their jobs. And yet the reporters like Lucy, continue everyday undeterred. “Without journalists, there is no democracy,” he says. From now on, when we get asked why we do this job, we will think about Lucy and the reporters in Mexico, and say the same thing.
