Censorship in Mexico includes all types of
suppression
Suppression may refer to:
Laws
* Suppression of Communism Act
*Suppression order a type of censorship where a court rules that certain information cannot be published
* Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, an Act of the Parliament of New Zealand aimed ...
of
free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been ...
in
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. This includes all efforts to destroy or obscure information and access to it spanning from the nation's colonial Spanish roots to the present. In 2016,
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
ranked
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
149 out of 180 in the
World Press Freedom Index, declaring Mexico to be “the world's most dangerous country for
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
s.” Additionally, in 2010 the
Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an American independent non-profit, non-governmental organization, based in New York City, New York, with correspondents around the world. CPJ promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journa ...
(CPJ) reported that Mexico was "one of the worst nations in solving crimes against journalists."
Under the current
Mexican Constitution
The Constitution of Mexico, formally the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States ( es, Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos), is the current constitution of Mexico. It was drafted in Santiago de Querétaro, in th ...
, both
freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
of information and expression are to be protected under the legislation from Article 6, which states that "the expression of ideas shall not be subject to any judicial or administrative investigation, unless it offends good morals, infringes the rights of others, incites to crime, or disturbs the public order,"
and Article 7 which guarantees that "freedom of writing and publishing writings on any subject is inviolable. No law or authority may establish censorship, require bonds from authors or printers, or restrict the freedom of printing, which shall be limited only by the respect due to private life, morals, and public peace."
Mexico is currently a signatory to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral treaty that commits nations to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedo ...
which gives them the responsibility to uphold these established laws regarding freedom of expression.
Attacks and threats against journalists
The dangers posed to journalists in Mexico has been an ongoing issue since the
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
, but in more recent times the crimes against journalists include attacks, kidnappings, being forced into exile and
murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...
. In August 2016, Reporters Without Borders wrote that
Veracruz
Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
was "one of the most dangerous states in Mexico for journalists," while also reporting that "176 cases of violence, intimidation, threats, aggression, cyber-attacks, blackmail, murder and enforced disappearance in which journalists were the victims from 2013 to June 2016."
The
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
(OAS) claims to uphold the principles that believe “the murder, kidnapping, intimidation of and/or threats to social communicators, as well as the material destruction of communications media violates the fundamental rights of individuals and strongly restrict
freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
of expression. It is the duty of the state to prevent and investigate such occurrences, to punish their perpetrators and to ensure that victims receive due compensation.”
In a 2010 issue for the Committee to Protect Journalists, they describe the criminal
justice
Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...
system in Mexico as failing
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
s from being unable to "successfully prosecute more than 90 percent of press-related crimes over the past decade."
In a 2015 article in
Foreign Affairs
''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...
, Senior Partners in Control Risks Geert Abusers' (specializing in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
) and Nick Panes (specializing in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
) claim that "local Mexican press is not free," bringing attention to more recent corruption scandals that are often made public through the international press.
History
The history of
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
in Mexico can be traced to the extension of inquisitorial practices from the
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...
into Spain's New World territories in North, Central and South America. Censorship practices that had long been under the control of the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
were now under the discretion of a newly independent governments. They took actions through secular and legal channels rather than religious orthodoxy. Censorship in the 19th century occurred in many forms dissimilar to those that came before it and was dominated by the constant struggle between journalists and government officials as to what constituted free speech.
Issues of a free press remained salient throughout the
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
and the following post-revolutionary rise of communist expression in the arts and journalism. Although there are constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, the reality is government control of media and continued silencing of journalists through violence and self-censorship due to intimidation.
Censorship by the Inquisition
The Holy Office of the
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
established by decree of
King Philip II in 1569 created a centralized institution in Mexico to ensure religious orthodoxy. Its powers included censorship of expressions counter to Catholic doctrine and practice.
The function of the Holy Office in censorship continued from its establishment until the beginning of the 19th century.
After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 and dissolved the Inquisition (formally in 1812 but effectively by 1820) censorship changed in Mexico.
Although there was no separate Office of the Inquisition in
New Spain
New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...
until 1569, many practices of the
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...
reached Mexico with the arrival of friars seeking to convert indigenous populations to Christianity and extirpate native religions. Censorship prior to the establishment of the Holy Office of the
Mexican Inquisition
The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition into New Spain. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was not only a political event for the Spanish, but a religious event as well. In the early 16th century, the Reformati ...
was in many ways similar to that which came after. Leaders of both periods maintained the aim of silencing individuals who spoke out against the Catholic Church or its practices and made their mission the institution of uniform spiritual and social order. Unique to this early period were censorship efforts that focused more directly on countering the heretical speech of groups that would later fall outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Office upon its codification in the 1570s. Such groups included non-Catholic or recently converted indigenous Mexicans who were disproportionately accused of idolatry and blasphemy.
Prior to the creation of a formal tribunal, Inquisitional efforts were carried out by
mendicants
A mendicant (from la, mendicans, "begging") is one who practices mendicancy, relying chiefly or exclusively on alms to survive. In principle, mendicant religious orders own little property, either individually or collectively, and in many ins ...
in monastic trials (1522-1534) and then by bishops who served as ecclesiastic judges (1535-1571).
These early monastic inquisitors focused their attention disproportionately on indigenous cases of idolatry and blasphemy and modeled their investigations and trials on informal structures they had assumed from medieval tradition.
They concerned themselves with investigating claims made against individuals and punished those who they found to uphold religious and spiritual values contrary to Catholic tradition. Although this monastic form of inquisition was replaced with the ecclesiastic form in central Mexico following the arrival of Bishops in New Spain in 1536, monastics in peripheral settlements continued to exercise intense persecution of natives who did not live up to their expectations as converted Catholics for at least the following three decades.
Fray
Diego de Landa
Diego de Landa Calderón, O.F.M. (12 November 1524 – 29 April 1579) was a Spanish Franciscan bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. Many historians criticize his campaign against idolatry. In particular, he burned almost al ...
used torture as late as 1562 in his Inquisitorial procedures against indigenous Mexicans in the province of Yucatán and infamously burned
Maya codices
Maya codices (singular ''codex'') are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper. The folding books are the products of professional scribes working under the patronage of ...
(bark paper books) containing pre-Columbian hieroglyphic writings in an attempt to eliminate indigenous access to non-Catholic spiritual guidance and rituals''.'' However, highly visible forms of censorship such as Landa's public destruction of indigenous codices occurred inconsistently and represent just part of the many smaller incidents of censorship that worked to systematically obscure ideas the Spanish believed were dangerous and subversive to upholding the Catholic faith and social order of colonial Mexico. Smaller instances of idolatry that did not find themselves at the center of public burnings constituted the bulk of early censorship efforts against indigenous people and the zeal with which the Spanish perused non-Christian idols were rooted in their concern of exerting social order over an unfamiliar religion they did understand.
The bishop led ecclesiastic Inquisition that followed this early monastic period was similarly active in its prosecution of the recently converted indigenous people of Mexico. Although these bishops led Inquisitions did not prosecute a large number of indigenous Mexicans before formal tribunals, they did often extend their trials further than colonial oversight in Spain would have preferred.
[ Klor de Alva, J. Jorge. "Colonizing Souls: The Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline," in ''Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World''. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz, eds. Berkeley, 1991, pp. 3–22. https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft396nb1w0&chunk.id=d0e170&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e170&brand=eschol] The first Bishop of Mexico Fray
Juan de Zumárraga
Juan de Zumárraga, OFM (1468 – June 3, 1548) was a Spanish Basque Franciscan prelate and the first Bishop of Mexico. He was also the region's first inquisitor. He wrote ''Doctrina breve'', the first book published in the Western Hemispher ...
(1536-1546) tried 156 cases before the ecclesiastic Inquisition and, although defendants included Spaniards, mixed caste persons and a high number of those suspected to be illegally practicing the Jewish faith, it was Zumárraga's trials against indigenous Mexicans that proved to be his most controversial.
In his most recognized trial Zumárraga brought
cacique
A ''cacique'' (Latin American ; ; feminine form: ''cacica'') was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, the indigenous inhabitants at European contact of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The term is a Spa ...
of Texcoco, Don Carlos Chichimecatecolt before his ecclesiastical Inquisition and tried him as a "dogmatizer against the faith".
Despite the Bishop being unable to solicit a testimony that Don Carlos had explicitly practiced the more grave offence of idolatry and idol possession, he was executed for speaking out against the Church.
Although he was reprimanded by inquisitors in Spain for his actions, Zumárraga and the bishop inquisitors of this period dealt out harsh punishments to indigenous peoples for simply speaking out against the Church. Both Spanish officials and colonists would come to view this intensive force as a shortcoming of the central direction of the New World Inquisition in the following years.
In fact, it was this extreme treatment of indigenous people and dissenters of the Church that would lead to the formal establishment of the Holy Office in Central America in 1571, after the decree of Phillip II in 1569.
By the end of this period a strong precedent was set as to what could and could not be said in colonial Mexico and what objects one could and could not possess.
Censorship of Books 1569-1820
The Holy Office of the Inquisition was formally extended to the Americas by decree in 1569. However, although the Office now practiced censorship under specific guidelines, such censorship was not always consistent in its enforcement or standards throughout the Mexican Inquisition.
Similar to the preceding period, the censorship efforts undertaken by the Holy Office varied by location, time, and provincial discretion. In general the tribunal of the Mexican Inquisition operated under the same procedural guidelines as the civil criminal trials of the day.
The main differences being the religious nature of the investigations and the fact that the inquisitor, who served as the judge in the final trial, was also the one who would initially gather evidence against the subject.
It remained controversial for people to speak out against the Church and as a result suspected heretics could be brought before the tribunal if they aroused the suspicion of their neighbors, friends or Holy Office Officials.
The aim of these trials was to silence dissenters and eliminate visible opposition to the Church and Crown with the ultimate hope of bringing them back into alignment with Church doctrine.
The means by which this was achieved was the imprisonment, torture and finally public ridicule faced in the ''
auto-de-fé'' (a public display of humiliation or punishment for those proven guilty before the tribunal) of those convicted before the Holy Office.
One of the most explicit forms of censorship that the Holy Office introduced was the
Index
Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities
* Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index''
* The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...
. The Index of Prohibited Books, which was a list of prohibited reading materials given to the people of New Spain in 1573 and enforced through the Holy Office, became one of the chief means through which censorship in colonial Mexico was attained and one of the most intensive measures taken by New World inquisitors to suppress information.
Book censorship was one of the most consistent methods of censorship and remained a prominent measure taken by the Office even as other priorities shifted.
[Chuchiak, John (2012). ''The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.318-326] Although enforcement of the Index by the Holy Office varied from location to location, even distant tribunals of the Inquisition such as the one in New Spain had the authority to expurgate, prohibit, or remove from circulation any work it found offensive on its own volition.
Anyone found in possession of prohibited materials could be investigated by the Mexican Inquisition and subject to imprisonment and subsequent trial.
For example, in a 1655 investigation of the private library of colonial Mexican architect Melchor Perez de Soto, the Holy Office confiscated 1,592 books and permanently impounded many that did not even appear on the Index because they were written in Flemish and could not be formally reviewed by the local Inquisition. In instances such as this, the Mexican Inquisition had full discretion over what it would and would not allow under its jurisdiction and the boundaries of its own localized censorship gave it rather complete control over the intellectual life of its subjects.
The Index also gave the Inquisition oversight of all shipments into and out of colonial Mexico. Inquisitors had the right to search all cargo of a ship arriving from Europe in a process called visitation and the authority to confiscate anything they found offensive. While this process was mainly intended to find prohibited print material it was not limited to such items. It is likely that many of these searches were not thorough enough to catch all prohibited materials and depending on the port of entry visitations were sometimes incredibly lax.
Aside from book censorship the Holy Office was also responsible for censoring countless other forms of written and crafted materials that were found to be offensive to the church. After the great ''auto-de-
fé'' of 1649, an event that found 109 people guilty under the tribunal's codes (13 of which were put to death), the focus of the Inquisition in Mexico shifted from spectacle punishments to more mundane enforcement of smaller offences.
This included an increased vigilance of inquisitors over newly printed materials like pamphlets and plays.
Anything from dramatic scripts to Protestant icons that made their way across the ocean and arrived in Mexican ports became subject to searches similar to those of illicit books banned on the Index. The state of censorship in Mexico trended this way through much of the 17th and 18th century, going through phases of more intense and lax enforcement depending on when and where the censorship was occurring but largely focusing its attention on lesser offences than it had in the 16th and early 17th century. By the end of the colonial period the Holy Office increasingly became a tool of political ends and officials or prominent community members often used the tribunal as a means of silencing opponents through the wide scope of religious crimes they could accuse their foes of.
Censorship in post-independence 19th-century Mexico
At the start of the 19th century censorship efforts were still legally bound to the Holy Office and the Mexican Inquisition carried out its duties much like it had at the close of the preceding century. However, in the years following 1812 the channels through which censorship operated changed rather quickly and by the time Mexico gained its independence in 1821 censorship had begun to be redefined through various secular mechanisms, mainly the press.
This process of managing censorship through the press began to take shape around the turn of the first decade. It was catalyzed by the
Spanish Cortes
The Cortes Generales (; en, Spanish Parliament, lit=General Courts) are the bicameral legislative chambers of Spain, consisting of the Congress of Deputies (the lower house), and the Senate (the upper house).
The Congress of Deputies meets i ...
' abolition of its old codes of censorship in favor of speech through article 371 of the
1812 Spanish Constitution of Cadiz.
The Constitution's liberal changes quickly made their way to Mexico but were not initially influential due to colonial officials' present concern over the insurgencies of
Miguel Hidalgo
Don Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla y Gallaga Mandarte Villaseñor (8 May 1753 – 30 July 1811), more commonly known as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or Miguel Hidalgo (), was a Catholic priest, leader of the Mexican Wa ...
and other revolutionaries.
As a result, much of press and speech continued to be censored on the same religious and moral grounds they had been in preceding decades.
Despite the apathy of colonial officials to consider a truly free press and the repeal of the 1812 Spanish Constitution in Spain in 1814, much of the 1812 Constitution's language and content, including its liberal conception of a free press, would find itself worked into the
1824 Constitution of Mexico
The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 ( es, Constitución Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos de 1824) was enacted on October 4 of 1824, after the overthrow of the Mexican Empire of Agustin de Iturbide. In the new Fr ...
and continue to influence the nature of Mexican censorship well after the nation's independence in 1821.
However, the rather liberal and unrestricted sentiments pertaining to the press found in the 1824 Constitution would be modified soon after their implementation and it was not until the 1828 reform of the Constitution that press censorship began to resemble the form it would take for the rest of the 19th century.
The most fundamental of these changes was the redesign of the press jury. The press jury in 19th century Mexico was a jury of citizens that would assemble to hear complaints issued against publications and then deliberate over whether they were subversive, immoral, or slanderous. Although jury size fluctuated throughout the time the press jury was in use, its redesign in 1828 required 9 press jury members to deem a work subversive, immoral, or slanderous in order to bring the case before a lower criminal court, creating a buffer between defendant and prosecution that had not existed during the Mexican Inquisition.
The press jury would find itself in a tenuous position soon after its new codes went into effect when in 1829 President
Vicente Guerrero
Vicente Ramón Guerrero (; baptized August 10, 1782 – February 14, 1831) was one of the leading revolutionary generals of the Mexican War of Independence. He fought against Spain for independence in the early 19th century, and later served as ...
gave the state the power to punish journalists without the use of a jury and then again in 1831 when the subsequent conservative government of
Anastasio Bustamante
Anastasio Bustamante y Oseguera (; 27 July 1780 – 6 February 1853) was a Mexican physician, general, and politician who served as president of Mexico three times. He participated in the Mexican War of Independence initially as a royalist befo ...
placed all crimes of the press under the direct discretion of judges.
Further, in 1839 then interim president
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular male ...
issued a proclamation that allowed his government to pursue and apprehend authors whose works it deemed salacious, investing itself with the power to imprison journalists without the use of a jury.
Although this proclamation was repealed only three weeks after it was issued, the punishments brought against journalists who deviated from safe topics during this time often included significant prison time. The culture of repression surrounding decrees like Santa Anna's were pervasive enough to keep writers from signing their work out of fear of being investigated: a problem that became so widespread that in 1855 President
Ignacio Comonfort
Ignacio Gregorio Comonfort de los Ríos (; 12 March 1812 – 13 November 1863), known as Ignacio Comonfort, was a Mexican politician and soldier who was also president during one of the most eventful periods in 19th century Mexican history: La R ...
made it illegal to publish anonymously.
Ultimately, these initial backlashes were not the end of the press jury which found itself fall in and out of favor with the various governments of the time; they do, however, mark a trend of government mandated censorship in the early to mid 19th century that was characterized by rapid changes and inconsistent standards as to what constituted a free press.
The
1857 Constitution
The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857 ( es, Constitución Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos de 1857), often called simply the Constitution of 1857, was the liberal constitution promulgated in 1857 by Constituent Cong ...
signified a turning point for government censorship of expression and ushered in a more liberal conception of free speech than had existed in the first half of the 19th century.
Building off the Constitution of 1824, Articles 6 and 7 of the new Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and the unrestricted expression of ideas.
However, it was not until after the
War of the Reform
The Reform War, or War of Reform ( es, Guerra de Reforma), also known as the Three Years' War ( es, Guerra de los Tres Años), was a civil war in Mexico lasting from January 11, 1858 to January 11, 1861, fought between liberals and conservativ ...
ended in 1861, and the Law of 2 February 1861 was enacted to regulate article 7 of the Constitution, that the press juries operation was laid out in clearer terms and re-instituted as a means of press regulation.
The press juries consistent use would be delayed until the French Occupation of Mexico ceased, and the Law of 2 February was successfully implemented through an identical text in the 1868 modification to the Constitution. This allowed freedom of the press and press juries to continue to operate with relatively few interruptions until 1882.
The rise of
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ( or ; ; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of 31 years, from 28 November 1876 to 6 Decem ...
in the late 1870s and his subsequent seven terms as president would see freedom of the press and speech censored mainly through threats of violence directed at newspapers and reporters.
[Marby, Donald "Porfirio Diaz," ''Historic World Leaders'', 4: North & South America, A-L. Detroit and London, Gale Research, Inc, 1994, 212-216.] In the closing years of the 19th century censorship was once again implemented through the press and the changes Porfirio and his government's made would continue to define freedom of speech and expression in Mexico into the revolution of the 20th century.
See also
*
List of journalists and media workers killed in Mexico
Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists and among the ones with the highest levels of unsolved crimes against the press. Though the exact figures of those killed are often conflicting, press freedom organization ...
Further reading
*
*Gillingham, Paul. ''Unrevolutionary Mexico: The Birth of a Strange Dictatorship''. New Haven: Yale University Press 2021.
*Gillingham, Paul, Michael Lettieri, and Benjamin T. Smith. ''Journalism, Satire, and Censorship in Mexico''. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018.
*
*Reporters without borders Mexico http://mexico.mom-rsf.org/en/
*Smith, Benjamin T. ''The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940-1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018
External links
*Committee to Protect Journalists Mexico https://cpj.org/2013/02/attacks-on-the-press-mexican-self-censorship-takes.php
Notes and references
*
Bibliography
* Aalbers, Geert, and Nick Panes. "Mexico, the Next Brazil?" Foreign Affairs. October 7, 2015.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/mexico/2015-10-07/mexico-next-brazil.
* "Constitution of Mexico - OAS." Accessed November 16, 2016.
http://www.oas.org/Juridico/MLA/en/mex/en_mex-int-text-const.pdf.
* "Disastrous Toll – 21 Latin American Journalists Killed in past Six Months , Reporters without Borders." Reporters Without Borders. July 5, 2016. Accessed November 16, 2016.
https://rsf.org/en/news/disastrous-toll-21-latin-american-journalists-killed-past-six-months.
* Green, Jonathon. "Mexico." In ''The Encyclopedia of Censorship'', 348–50. New York, NY: Facts on File, 1990.
* "Mexico: Threats against Author of Book about Veracruz Governor , Reporters without Borders." Reporters Without Borders. August 11, 2016. Accessed November 16, 2016.
https://rsf.org/en/news/mexico-threats-against-author-book-about-veracruz-governor.
* "Mexico: Two Mexican Journalists Murdered in Space of Three Days , Reporters without Borders." Reporters Without Borders. September 20, 2016. Accessed November 16, 2016.
https://rsf.org/en/news/mexico-two-mexican-journalists-murdered-space-three-days.
* "Mexico : Violence and Impunity." Reporters Without Borders. Accessed November 16, 2016.
https://rsf.org/en/mexico.
*
* "Reporter Gunned down in Veracruz While under State Protection , Reporters without Borders." Reporters Without Borders. July 22, 2016. Accessed November 16, 2016.
https://rsf.org/en/news/reporter-gunned-down-veracruz-while-under-state-protection.
* Simon, Joel. "ONE Informing the Global Citizen." In ''The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom'', 11–31. Columbia University Press, 2015.
* Simon, Joel. "Silence or Death in Mexico's Press." Committee to Protect Journalists. 2010. https://cpj.org/reports/cpj_mexico_english.pdf
{{World topic, prefix=Freedom of speech in, title=Freedom of speech by country