Censorship in Mexico includes all types of suppression of free speech in Mexico. 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 ranked Mexico 149 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index, declaring Mexico to be “the world's most dangerous country for journalists.” Additionally, in 2010 the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that Mexico was "one of the worst nations in solving crimes against journalists." Under the current Mexican Constitution, both freedom 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 which gives them the responsibility to uphold these established laws regarding freedom of expression.
Government corruption found within Mexico has been linked with the killing of journalists. Many deaths since the beginning of the Mexican Drug War have been linked to drug cartels and government officials connected to cartels since 2000. Different administrations have attempted different policies, but the issues of corruption have prevented widespread success of these policies. Mexico is consistently graded low in their corruption and safety for journalists. Transparency International gave Mexico a 31/100, ranking it at 126 out of 180 countries that were graded.
Mexico also prohibits cultural appropriation.
Attacks and threats against journalists.
The dangers posed to journalists in Mexico have been an ongoing issue since the Mexican Revolution, but in more recent times the crimes against journalists include attacks, kidnappings, being forced into exile and murder. In August 2016, Reporters Without Borders wrote that Veracruz 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 Mexican Drug War has been a major source of conflict between drug cartels, the government, and journalists in Mexico. Throughout the war, each administration differed in their approach to the war. Threats and attacks against journalists have however remained consistent. Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration focused on social and economic progress for citizens rather than using military force. However, success was limited due to issues of corruption within the government. Drug cartels have influence in many regions of Mexico. As a result, individuals with connections to the cartel have also been employed with the Mexican government. These individuals act in the interest of the cartel either for financial gain or to avoid danger. Government officials acting in the interests of the cartel have impeded the success of any administration’s policies, and Peña Nieto’s approach was no different.
Many of the threats journalists have faced stem from reporting on such government corruption. This issue has led to incidents occurring as recently as the Lopez Obrador Administration. In August 2022, Fredíd Roman was killed hours after posting an article. In this article, he discusses and the role that the Mexican government played in the disappearances. Such acts of violence have happened as a result of government corruption. Drug cartels will retaliate with violence against journalists who speak out. Speaking out against certain government officials or agencies has since caused retaliation from drug cartels as well.
The Organization of American States (OAS) claims to uphold the principles that believe “the murder, kidnapping, intimidation of and threats to social communicators, as well as the material destruction of communications media violates the fundamental rights of individuals and strongly restrict freedom 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.”
Government Policy and Corruption.
In a 2010 issue for the Committee to Protect Journalists, they describe the criminal justice system in Mexico as failing journalists from being unable to "successfully prosecute more than 90 percent of press-related crimes over the past decade."
The Mexican government established the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in 2012. The mechanism was designed to support journalists under threat and ensure their safety. However, it has been criticized for its lack of resources, slow response times, and failure to address the root causes of violence against journalists. In many cases, journalists who receive protection from the government are still exposed to danger because the cartels and corrupt officials are able to bypass the system or retaliate against journalists.  Miroslava Breach, was a journalist who covered corruption and organized crime in the state of Chihuahua, was killed outside her residence. Investigations subsequently showed that the assassins received information from a local mayor.
International Perspectives.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international nonprofit organization that advocates for press freedom, has consistently reported on the limitations of this program, noting that many journalists who request protection continue to face violence, including murder. Local law enforcement throughout Mexico has also been linked with Mexican cartels and supporting their operations. Looking at the case of Lourdes Maldonado Lopez, a well-known investigator of political corruption, was shot outside her Tijuana home. She had openly raised concerns about her life during legal proceedings with a prior governor, illustrating the lack of protections even for people covered by government safety programs. Proving that Mexico has developed a double standard in which they are portraying as a responsible nation that has taken into account the right of freedom of the press when the nation is witnessing a completely different reality. Furthermore, the case of Fredíd Roman, a journalist who was killed outside of his home. This came shortly after he published an article highlighting a government official’s potential involvement in the disappearance of college students.
In Mexico, organized crime and government threats drive violence against journalists, which restricts press freedom and encourages self-censorship. Mexico is among the deadliest countries for media professionals, with 67 journalists slain in 2022 alone. This is indicative of a larger pattern of violence that compromises the efficacy of the government's protection mechanism for journalists and human rights defenders.
Mexico's position on global press freedom indices reflects the country’s challenges in protecting journalists. Reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and other organizations consistently rank Mexico as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. In 2022, Mexico was ranked as the deadliest country for journalists in the Americas, surpassing conflict zones like Colombia and Honduras.
Mexico’s poor performance on these indices is a direct result of the combination of criminal violence, political corruption, and the lack of effective legal and institutional responses. In July 2023, Luis Martin Sanchez Iñiguez, a journalist for the daily La Jornada, was discovered dead in Nayarit. His coverage of organized crime and corruption in the area is connected to his death. Days before his death was discovered, he was kidnapped, which raises questions about the impunity of crimes against journalists.
History.
The history of censorship in Mexico can be traced to the extension of inquisitorial practices from the Spanish Inquisition 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 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 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. The current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has called out critical journalists by name.
Censorship by the Inquisition.
The Holy Office of the Inquisition 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 until 1569, many practices of the Spanish Inquisition 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 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 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 used torture as late as 1562 in his Inquisitorial procedures against indigenous Mexicans in the province of Yucatán and infamously burned Maya codices (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. The first Bishop of Mexico Fray Juan de Zumárraga (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 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