A Mexican journalist in the crosshairs
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/02/mexican-journ...
Zeta's Adela Navarro Bello persists in risky mission
Written by Peter Rowe
Dec. 2, 2011
TIJUANA — If the drug cartels were ever going to stop the crusading newspaper Zeta, this was the time.
And Adela Navarro Bello knew it.
She reached this conclusion in November 2006, on the death of her mentor, the paper’s founder. Cancer killed J. Jesús Blancornelas, but the cartels
had been gunning for Zeta since its founding in 1980. A columnist was assassinated in 1988, Blancornelas was wounded in a 1997 attack that killed his
driver and another editor was murdered in 2004.
In 2005, Blancornelas passed the title of general director to his son, César René Blanco Villalón, and Navarro. He appointed them as Zeta’s
co-publishers and senior editors.
When the founder died, Navarro and Blanco wrestled with another question: “Are we going to continue the investigation of the drug trade and the drug
lords?”
The answer hangs on the walls of the newspaper’s offices. By refusing to surrender, Zeta’s staff — particularly Navarro, who has replaced Blancornelas
as the paper’s public face — has piled up a long string of professional honors. The most recent came in October, when the 43-year-old crusader
accepted the “Courage in Journalism” award from the International Women’s Media Foundation. She has been saluted by freedom-of-speech advocates from
New York to Madrid, Argentina to Italy — and faced death threats from drug traffickers.
“Adela really has nerves of steel,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “She is
driven by the mission of the newspaper that she inherited, to publish the truth at all costs.”
Admirers also said Navarro cherishes the written word; embraces principles, not parties; and demonstrates a fierce devotion to her late colleagues.
Yes, her tale is a study in courage. But it’s also a love story.
Growing up in Tijuana, Adela was surrounded by books and periodicals. Her father read four or five newspapers a day; if his daughter wanted to get his
attention, she wrote him a letter. “Even though we were in the same house,” she said with a laugh. “I loved to write.”
That passion never faded. She was a communications major in college. And when Tijuana’s most prominent muckraker lectured on campus, she asked him for
a job.
Blancornelas asked what this undergraduate wanted to cover.
“The arts?” he suggested. “Entertainment?”
“No, no, no,” she replied. “I want politics.”
That was a savvy choice. While Zeta covers sports and pop culture, its bread and butter — pan y mantequilla — is political and crime news. These
topics also test Zeta’s ability to uphold its motto, “Free as the wind.”
Observers said the newspaper has largely aced those exams. “Zeta is a singular example of an independent newspaper in the overall context of Mexican
journalism,” said Manuel Ortiz Marín, a communications professor at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. Mexican newspapers, he noted, “tend to be
pressured by politicians or business groups. Or more recently, organized crime.”
Zeta’s early investigations tended to focus on corruption within Mexico’s dominant political party, the PRI. But when another party, the PAN, began to
win elections, the paper reported on bribes and kickbacks going to the new officials.
“A lot of PAN-istas were very offended,” said the Mexico Institute’s Selee, who lived in Tijuana in the 1990s. “It was like, ‘We thought you were on
our side.’ But this is a newspaper that is not really on anyone’s side.”
Navarro’s loyalties, it turned out, were to her colleagues. On the day Blancornelas was shot and his driver, Luis Lauro Valero Elizaldi, was killed,
she raced to the hospital and waited outside the emergency room.
“Why is this happening?” she asked herself. “Why kill the messenger?”
That question lingers. In the past five years, Mexico’s federal government and the drug cartels have waged a war resulting in tens of thousands of
deaths. The casualties include 68 slain Mexican journalists, by Navarro’s calculation, and 12 who are missing. Few suspects have been arrested, and
fewer still convicted.
“You can kill journalists in Mexico and you are never going to be in jail,” she said. “That’s impunity.”
If authorities ignore attacks on the media, Zeta does not. The tabloid’s masthead still includes the names of its dead staffers. And every week, a
full page is devoted to the slain columnist, Hector “Gato” Félix Miranda. Authorities arrested and convicted one gunman in his death, but Navarro
insists the crime’s “intellectual authors” have not been brought to justice.
Weekly, Zeta has a question for Jorge Hank Rhon, the wealthy ex-mayor of Tijuana whose employee is serving time for Gato’s murder: “Why was I
assassinated by your bodyguard?”
In January 2010, Navarro received a tip from U.S. law-enforcement sources: Drug traffickers were planning to kill her and her co-editor.
Navarro’s husband, an executive with a resort hotel chain, left his Mexico City office and flew to Tijuana to be by her side. He found her surrounded
by seven Mexican soldiers who, for the next three months, guarded Navarro 24 hours a day.
“It was very difficult,” she said. “I could not have a professional life or a personal life in those circumstances.”
The army has withdrawn, but a private guard still stands outside Zeta’s two-story headquarters. Visitors must be on his list or they are not admitted.
Once inside, they have to be cleared by a receptionist sitting behind a bulletproof window. Navarro takes precautions — “I am not a martyr,” she
insisted — and won’t even confirm whether she has children.
“We don’t talk that much about business, her job or my job,” said Carlos Moya, her husband and the vice president of Mayan Resorts.
They talk politics, though — and always have. They met in 1998 when Mora was running for a spot on the Tijuana City Council. Even after she criticized
him in print, the candidate was drawn to the intense journalist.
“I am Carlos Mora,” he introduced himself. “I am going to be a city council member and I am your fan Number One.”
“My fan Number One is my father,” Navarro replied. Then she walked out.
Mora’s reaction: “She has to marry me.”
Seven years later, she did. Mora, 49, still sounds dazzled — “It is a great, great honor to be her husband. I am her fan forever.”
Spoken like a man in love. But not everyone is smitten with Navarro or her newspaper. Some human-rights advocates said Zeta ignores or downplays the
army’s torture of prisoners, including those nabbed in anti-cartel sweeps.
Navarro denies this: “No one has impunity in the journalism of Zeta.”
Observers said the truth is difficult to determine. “You definitely hear those charges,” said Bernardo Ruiz, a New York filmmaker whose documentary on
Zeta, “Reportero,” will air on PBS next year. “But in the year that I spent there, I saw them be critical in the pages of Zeta, critical of the
military.”
And almost everyone else. A recent edition took jabs at the Catholic church, Baja California’s courts and the Sinaloa cartel. The latter was blasted
in a four-page article that appeared under the byline “Investigaciones Zeta.” The actual author was not named, to avoid reprisals.
“I don’t want to sound irresponsible, to say we are not afraid,” Navarro said. “But we know what we have to do. We know there is a risk in doing what
we do. But the only way we can make a difference is through investigative journalism. That’s our role.”
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