This week, the Justice in Mexico Project will host Midnight in Mexico author and Dallas Morning News journalist Alfredo Corchado from 3:30-5:00pm on Thursday, December 5, 2013 at the Warren Auditorium on the first floor of Mother Roselie Hall in the School of Education and Leadership Studies (SOLES) at the University of San Diego (USD).
The event is free and open to the public and will be co-sponsored by the USD Program in Latin American Studies (PILAS). Copies of Mr. Corchado’s book will be on sale at the event and he will sign copies following the event.
Now available in both English and Spanish, Midnight in Mexico is Alfredo Corchado’s deeply personal account of his experiences covering Mexico’s struggle against drug trafficking, corruption and violence.
The title is both a literal reference and a metaphor. At a crucial moment in 2007, Corchado lies awake at night with the realization that he has gone from reporting on a story to becoming the center of a plot to end his life. The book’s title is also a reference to nearly a decade of darkness in which ruthless criminal organizations have engaged in horrendous violence that has killed tens of thousands of people.
How many have died is a matter of much analysis and speculation. But, according to Mexico’s national statistics agency, there were more than 120,000 murders in Mexico from 2006 to 2012, during the presidency of Felipe Calderon.
Among those killed, dozens of reporters and media workers have been killed or have disappeared since 2000, many of them under threat from organized crime or corrupt government officials, according to a recent report by USD Professor Emily Edmonds-Poli for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Corchado’s is the tale of one journalist who survived a credible threat against his life for his courageous reporting. For a full review of Midnight in Mexico click here.