Madrid (EFE).- Journalism must show the reality “it hurts whoever it hurts”, even on issues as delicate as drug trafficking in Mexico, where freedom of expression “is at stake”, defended this Wednesday the Mexican journalist Víctor Emmanuel Valles.
Together with his partner Adrián Tinoco, Valles is in Madrid to receive the King of Spain International Prize for Narrative Journalism, for the report “Fentanyl: future for drug traffickers, death for humanity”, published in the Mexican media N+ on 1 August 2022.
A recognition that encourages them “to continue carrying out this type of research, long-term work and more with issues as complicated as this one,” he told EFE.
A team from this medium managed to enter for the first time in a laboratory where the drug fentanyl is made for the Sinaloa cartel.
“It took us about three months to get the access, in the case of a criminal group like the Sinaloa cartel, which is one of the most influential organizations worldwide,” he commented.
“It is obviously complicated to carry out this type of immersive journalism, also in a country like Mexico, where eleven journalists were murdered last year and it is one of the countries, if not the country, with the highest risk for this profession,” he warned.
For this reason, “getting involved with this type of issue is very risky,” because “you touch many sensitive fibers both at the governmental and criminal levels,” he confessed.
The television report, which lasts just over twenty minutes, arose after verifying that many foreign journalists went to Mexico to tell this type of story while no one from the country dared.
a different perspective
“But we decided,” he continued, despite the fact that “the Mexican government itself has denied that there is production and consumption of fentanyl in the country” and that it is “sent to other countries, mainly the United States.”
“We wanted to document from the origin, what is produced in Mexico”, to “how they send it to the border with the United States”, where this substance causes “a large number of deaths”, he stressed.
For the winning team, he added, “it is important to do this type of journalism, because you give a different perspective of what is happening.”
“Not all media are given the opportunity to document what we did, that is also the great value of this report (…) and the result is a piece that no other media worldwide has,” he asserted.
A “very sensitive issue and in Mexico it is even more so,” where the Government qualifies as false what N+ showed, said the winner.
“It is the value of journalism in a country like Mexico, where right now freedom of expression is practically at stake,” until the government has “no choice but to recognize that the things we are showing are real,” he stressed.
“Despite what the Government says or tries to intimidate you, (…) you have to continue doing your passion and your profession for journalism,” Valles concluded.
The King of Spain International Journalism Awards 2023, the most prestigious in the Ibero-American sphere, created by the EFE Agency and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), will be delivered this Thursday in Madrid in an act chaired by Felipe VI .
In addition to the economic endowment of 10,000 euros (10,800 dollars at current exchange rates) -an amount that places them at the Pulitzer level-, the winners will receive a sculpture by the Spanish artist Joaquín Vaquero Turcios from the hands of the King of Spain.