The crowd at i3, https://i3sma.org/ at San Miguel’s La Casona convention center, was both exhilarated and chilled by AP investigative journalist Katherine Corcoran’s book about the murder of a legendary woman journalist here in Mexico.
This journalist, Regina Martinez, had been thoroughly vetted by the Associated Press office in Mexico City and declared clean of any government or narco payments, a scrupulous reporter with many supportive colleagues in the country. Basically, Regina Martinez was an energetic and a brave straight-arrow. Regina was also on the verge of writing about the local government — not narco — corruption in Mexico’s Vera Cruz.
What did the i3 audience learn about the thrust of Kathy Corcoran’s book — about investigative reporting in Mexico?
Pres. Vicente Fox helped reporters when in 2006, he created the Special Prosecutor's Office for Crimes against Journalists (FEADP).
But the central government, for decades run by the PRI party, since the turn of 2000, is now up for grabs. This has allowed money and corruption to sink from Mexico City control down to local levels. And this is what Corcoran calls the dangerous “third rail” where “local government, the state and organized crime have become indistinguishable.” And Regina Martinez encountered, and was murdered by, this dangerous third rail in Vera Cruz.
What other reviews have said of Katherine Corcoran’s book:
NPR Online: “Epic, deeply reported…and riveting.”
Mark Bowden, The New York Times Book Review:
“Chilling and nuanced … a murder mystery but also,
more important, a portrait of a nation where no one
knows what to believe, or whom to trust."
Kathy Corcoran’s In the Mouth of the Wolf looks at how silencing the free press threatens our basic protections and the rule of law not only in Mexico but worldwide.
To order the book, try Amazon, or her site:
https://www.katherinecorcoran.com/books
