The Guadalajara Reporter

A mixed week for Mexico

When Mexican-born U.S. citizen Yanira Maldonado, 42, was released May 30 after “only” a stretched week in Sonora’s women’s prison, everyone following what was dubbed Mexico’s “shakedown justice” was relieved. 

This undoubtedly included President Enrique Peña Nieto.  The president has recently clamped down on media outlets in Mexico, admonishing them not to deal in the number of casualties, carved up bodies, civilian deaths caused by Mexico’s law enforcement system, and associated official corruption.  In other words, no drug gang tales no matter how appalling.  That would reflect poorly on Mexico’s already well-known image – and coincidently on government’s slippery grasp of Mexican culture, though that wasn’t directly mentioned.  

But Maldonado‘s experience couldn’t be hidden.  It seemed that every media outlet and blogger worldwide aggressively followed the story throughout the drama’s increasingly odd life. Nieto’s “anti-democratic gagging of the media,” as some called it, hasn’t been able to stifle the Niagra of far-flung stories here, and especially abroad. Locally, both the incident at a military checkpoint in the Sonoran town of Querobabi, and Yanira’s jailing in the Nogales women’s prison, was seen by many Mexicans as typical: at once dauntingly touchy and chocked full of looniness.

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