This rich collection of essays by leading scholars, advocates, and practitioners of journalism in Mexico is a major historiographical intervention. Organized chronologically, the 14 chapters cover an exceptionally wide range of analysis and research, beginning with the early post-Independence period and concluding with the modern web-based era. The editors have done a superb job in establishing the parameters and current state of a vibrant field in the making, with contributors exploring a wide range of aspects of the press, broadly constituted, including the regional press, the role of satire and political cartoons, and the on-the-ground workings of censorship. Taken as a whole, this collection amply reveals the myriad ways in which the intersection of journalists, publishers, the law, and raw expressions of political power have determined the outcome of reporting in Mexico across time and place.
With a short foreword by Judith Matloff, a journalist and adviser on safety protocols, the reader is immediately confronted by the stark reality of the violence faced by contemporary reporters. The point that the editors are clearly seeking to make is that there is a heroic element to being a journalist in Mexico, and that today's journalists are the inheritors of a long history of heroic acts. Following a strong historiographical introduction, Pablo Piccato maps out a periodization of Mexican journalism in which key concepts such as honor, public opinion, and state intervention frame the production, distribution, and reception of what he labels “a tradition of critical journalism” (56).
The collection then proceeds to a number of case studies that explore in greater depth the broad themes introduced by the editors and Piccato. Ana María Serna Rodríguez discusses court cases brought against journalists during the Porfiriato and the Revolution, focusing on honor as a “political good” (62). Next, Andrew Paxman provides a close and riveting discussion of the “gradual nature of co-optation” (99) at the newspaper La Opinión in Puebla during the gubernatorial reign of Maximino Ávila Camacho. Paul Gillingham breaks important new ground in his comparative reading of three newspapers in Veracruz, Guadalajara, and Guerrero over a 20-year period, from 1945 to 1965. He finds many of the well-known mechanisms in play, from funding efforts at co-optation to violence and other corporatist tactics. But he also finds that all three papers succeeded in providing “periodic and devastating condemnations of the political systems as a whole, and elections in particular” (171).
The subversive potential of satire is a central theme that runs through several of the chapters. This is brought out especially in Benjamin Smith's excellent contribution, “The Year Mexico Stopped Laughing,” which focuses on the transformation of the satirical magazine Presente. Smith shows how, in the context of a peso devaluation and the fear of a popular revolt against corruption, the regime used a combination of tactics to redirect the very nature of satire itself, away from a mass-based (popular) audience and toward a narrower, more intellectual (and bureaucratic) one. Yet, this also opened up the possibility for editorial cartoons to become more significant, a topic taken up by Roderic Camp in his brief essay on Abel Quezada and by the cartoonist Rafael Barajas, author of the contemporary strip El Fisgón.
A brief mention of the remaining chapters is merited. Renata Keller provides a useful overview of Política, an important biweekly news journal linked to the Cuban Revolution, interpreted through the records of Mexico's secret police. Journalist and independent researcher Jacinto Rodríguez Munguía unpacks a fascinating 41-page secret document from the mid 1960s that articulates an authoritarian vision of government control through mutual collaboration, a discovery he describes as “a journey through the dark and invisible side of power” (189). Michael Lettieri's chapter on a bus guild magazine, El Informador Camionero, provides a novel methodological angle on what he calls the ruling party's “’Swiss cheese’ authoritarianism” (135). Vanessa Freije's important chapter brings new scholarly attention to the brief effervescence and subsequent “coup” at Excélsior in the early 1970s, while nicely arguing how the rise of Proceso, Unomásuno, Vuelta, and other independent news sources into the present paradoxically derive from that episode. Her chapter is nicely complemented by that of Javier Garza Ramos, a journalist and former editorial director of El Siglo de Torreón, who discusses the significance of key northern-based newspapers run by “[y]oung publishers with international exposure who put emphasis on training, codes of ethics, and a commitment to democracy” (273).
The collection concludes with a series of chapters focusing on contemporary aspects of journalism and the new forms of violence facing journalists today. Everard Meade uses 2666, Roberto Bolaño's “utterly impenetrable 900-page novel” (301), and a reading of the nota roja press to render “a kind of social history of the present,” one that simultaneously constitutes a “new genre of testimonial literature” (321). The volume concludes with an essay by Paul Eiss focusing on El Blog del Narco, an anonymous blog “copiously illustrated with gruesome photographs of corpses . . . and what might be called the ‘primary sources’ of that war” (333). It is an apt way to end the compilation, one that requires us to grapple with “fractal publics and back channels” that have produced “a new configuration of the Mexican public against its enemies” (349).
Some gaps exist. There is no mention of photojournalism or discussion of the significance of photographs more broadly, an angle explored in the writings of John Mraz among others. Nor is there reference to the importance of cover illustrators, such as Rafael Freyre and Jorge Carreño, who handled the question of “critical journalism” in their own distinctive manner. The collection also lacks reference to the importance of mainstream national newsmagazines such as Mañana, Jueves de Excélsior, and, especially, Siempre!, or to the short-lived yet important left-wing forum El Espectador (1959-60). But these are relatively minor concerns and certainly no collection can cover everything. Of more importance, this volume has clarified the state of the field and opened up multiple avenues for future research.
