For
years, Mexico’s best journalism has been done in Tijuana. Frankly, with the rise of the drug cartels’
power, Tijuana might be the only place in the country where real journalism is practiced
with conviction. However, the staff of
the resolutely independent news weekly Zeta
has paid a heavy price for their journalistic integrity. Bernardo Ruiz documents their dangerous
mission covering the drug lords and the crooked politicians abetting them in Reportero (trailer here), which screens as
part of the 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.
Based
on the experience of Zeta staffers,
one could justifiably ask if Mexico ever had a free press, as such. Founded to investigate the widespread
corruption of the long ruling socialist PRI party, Jesús Blancornelas made a
crucial decision to print the newspaper on the American side of the
border. This would be more expensive,
but far more secure. While the PRI is
now temporarily on the outs, the drug traffickers have become even more proactive
buying-off or outright intimidating journalists. Indeed, Zeta
has suffered its share of assassinations, including very nearly their
founder, Blancornelas.
Ruiz
adopts old school investigative journalist Sergio Haro as his primary POV
figure. No stranger to death threats,
Haro has fearlessly raked the muck of Baja California. Though a family man, he comes across as an
existential champion of the underclass, who nonetheless needles the leftist PRI
every chance he gets. While not the most
animated screen presence, Haro clearly walks the walk. His stories should be considered
blockbusters, but the guilty continue on, with evident impunity.
Ruiz’s
dry observational style tries its best to drain all the sensationalism out of
the film, but Zeta’s four-alarm
headlines speak for themselves. Indeed, the
crusading publication’s war stories are exactly that. Their scoop concluding the film is quite a
jaw-dropper, but it is the memorial to one of two fallen comrades that really
says it all.
It
is nearly impossible to consider Mexico a functional state after viewing Ruiz’s
profile of Zeta. Fascinating but deeply scary stuff, Reportero is a bracing tribute to the
new weekly’s principled journalists (and the staff of a short lived daily paper
Haro founded in between his Zeta stints). While it is an ITVS production destined for
PBS broadcasts, it is well worth seeing the longer festival cut, because these
details are devilishly important.
Recommended for anyone concerned about press freedoms or the
social-political health of our southern neighbor, Reportero screens next Thursday (6/21), Friday (6/22), and Saturday
(6/23) at the Walter Reade Theater.
