Violence Against Journalists and Social Accountability: The Mexican Case

This paper analyzes the relationship between the violence against journalists in Mexico and the structural context of the state order that allows this violence and the impunity of crimes. We explain how in the Mexican state system, beyond institutional reforms that aim to improve processes of democratization with mechanisms of accountability, another set of extralegal mechanisms operate, which function as containment of reforms and preserve power relations based on concentration, opacity, hoarding of opportunities and freedoms. In this context, the practice of vigilant journalism, as a social accountability of governmental actions, constitutes a dangerous practice insofar as it threatens the established de facto order, being the object of persecution and violence.