The Americas Campaign: Perils and Potential

In 2008, at a PEN conference in Bogota, Colombia, a campaign was planned and launched, focusing on the difficult situation many writers face in the Latin American countries. For those of us in Mexico, the situation bore great urgency, as drug wars, alongside endemic corruption and lawlessness in some quarters, has turned Mexico into one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist. International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee records that in the five years from 2004 to 2008 a total of twenty writers - nineteen print journalists and one author - were murdered in Mexico, while four more journalists have disappeared.

As the Americas campaign began to take shape, the concept of both a book and a website highlighting the situation in the Americas emerged. The idea for a Black Book (Libro Negro) detailing crimes and threats against writers in the Americas was eventually abandoned for reasons of cost and the quickly evolving situation there, which would soon outdate the information in a book. The efforts of Mexico's San Miguel PEN, Danish PEN, PEN American Center, and others resulted instead in the construction of an Americas website, executed under the direction of Tamsin Mitchell of International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee. The result (see http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/go/freedom-of-expression/campaigns/fr...) has opened up a variety of new possibilities for campaigning, suggesting a prototype for other regional sites. Recently the site has embedded an interactive feature that offered imperiled writers links and contacts to relevant organizations that could help save their lives.

Sadly, violence in Mexico in particular has worsened. On 7 January 2010, Zócalo de Saltillo journalist Valentín Valdés Espinosa was abducted and found dead the next day after reportedly having been tortured. He was the second print journalist to be murdered in Mexico in as many weeks, bringing the total of murdered journalists since 2004 to twenty-eight. Prominent Mexican journalist and PEN member Lydia Cacho, herself subject to numerous threats, has called for the implementation of effective journalist protection programs

Now as the year-long campaign draws to an end, we face the problem of sustaining the site, as updates and revisions entail further funding and human resources that presently don't exist.

Tony Cohan
Chair, Freedom to Write Committee
San Miguel PEN

Valentín Valdés Espinosa

 

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