MEXICO'S SOUNDS OF SILENCE

No News Is Bad News When Media Self-Censors

Northern Mexico continues its descent into chaos. If any doubt
remains about which side is winning the country's drug war, go ask a
Mexican journalist in Nuevo Laredo to explain it.
Month of terror

Can't find one? That's probably because they're hiding and refuse to
receive visitors at their newspaper and television offices. Cartel
informants are interspersed among their staffs, so nobody dares speak
openly about what they know. Another possibility is to pick up a
newspaper and read all the articles about rampant drug violence in
Nuevo Laredo.

Can't find those articles? That's because publishers have been
terrorized into self-censorship by drug gangs and no longer are
willing to risk reprisal by publishing stories that shine a negative
light on the thugs. "We are under their complete control," a veteran
reporter told The Washington Post.

Last month, four Nuevo Laredo journalists were abducted while
covering protests outside a prison whose guards had armed prisoners
and let them out at night to conduct attacks against rival drug
groups. The journalists' captors demanded that television networks
broadcast video statements by men who, under apparent duress, said
they worked for the Zetas drug gang, one of several vying for control
of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.

The networks complied, marking a new milestone in which the drug
terrorists had not merely silenced the media but actually dictated
the news they report.

"Mexican authorities cannot allow criminal groups to control the flow
of information. Citizens' right to free expression and the stability
of Mexican democracy are both at stake," says Carlos Lauria, of the
U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

That's the warning this newspaper sounded long ago as Mexico's
violence took a sharp departure from old Mafia-style drug hits and
instead began resembling the kinds of beheadings, torture,
kidnappings and other terrorist tactics used by al-Qaeda.

It's no coincidence that this is happening just on the opposite side
of the border from where Interstate 35 begins its path from Laredo
through San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and other major cities. American
drug consumers are funding this rampage of death, which has cost
25,000 Mexicans their lives since 2006.

Make no mistake: This is terrorism, and the groups behind these
actions have directly threatened American lives and U.S. national
security. Under U.S. law, they should be placed on the State
Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, which would seriously
raise the ante for anyone conspiring with them to smuggle money and
weapons southward or drugs northward across the border.

This country can no longer ignore our role in the terror spreading
across Mexico. American illicit drug users supply the funding, while
the rest of us act like it's not our problem. Meanwhile, northern
Mexico's fragile free press slowly fades into extinction.