Raul

Vania Pineogutt

Verónica Espinosa, one of the most experienced journalists in the state of Guanajuato, says that in her 30-year career she only began to hear the term fixer around 2017.

Guanajuato has been the most violent state in Mexico for three consecutive years, with the highest rate of intentional homicides in the entire country, according to the Common Jurisdiction Crime Incidence Report issued by the National Executive Secretariat of Public Security.

Until October 2023, Guanajuato continued to be the state with the highest number of intentional homicides, registering 2,024; Following behind were Baja California (1,958), State of Mexico (1,756), Chihuahua (1,576), Jalisco (1,095), Michoacán (1,088) and Guerrero (1,073).

In her journalistic work, Verónica skillfully covers the scourge of femicides and violence against women in Guanajuato. She is also the correspondent coordinator for the Mexican magazine Proceso and occasionally works as a fixer. She most often fields requests seeking local guides in Celaya county, the heart of the area known as Laja-Bajío.

“Celaya and the surrounding counties; That entire area has seen journalistic coverage for very strong incidents such as road blockades, vehicle fires, shootings on public roads, massacres in homes, in businesses… businesses like restaurants, bars,” she says.

Verónica says that toward the end of Felipe Calderón’s presidency, between 2010 and 2011, the deployment of the militarized strategy against organized crime caused a sharp increase in violence that continues to this day. The criminal organizations known to operate in the area were La Familia Michoacana, Los Templarios and Los Zetas.

“Colleagues began to come on those occasions, particularly from some media outlets in the United States. A reporter contacted me. There were two topics that interested her: the leather footwear business, which, as is known, León is a city that has a very significant contribution in this sector, and also the issue of women imprisoned for crimes related to abortion in 2009,” she recalls. “Afterwards, more media came to Guanajuato. They look for me, and then I suggest they contact other colleagues who are in Celaya specifically, because they have territorial knowledge,” she says.

Despite the risks of doing journalism in areas where violent incidents are on the rise, she has never worried about writing and publishing what is happening in the state because, Verónica says, what’s happening there is very serious and it is important to let it be known.

“But that has not freed me from receiving threats, from being exposed to risky situations and from having even suffered serious security incidents. Many times it is something that those looking for fixers do not value. What needs to happen is that they acknowledge this,” she says.

Paloma Robles is another journalist who delved into the issue of the forced disappearances in her native Guadalajara, Jalisco. She began covering stories about mothers searching for their sons and daughters in clandestine graves; this allowed her to work as a fixer and interpreter for foreign colleagues.

“In September 2018, it was important for us to spread the word about [the disappearances], but at first, [they said] no violence. When the media requested information about disappearances from las compañeras, the issue caught fire,” she recalls.

She says that the media outlet she worked with did not cover search parties organized by the relatives of the missing. She found it difficult to explain to this media outlet how rude it was to leave the mothers who were looking for her children waiting. They had planned the day, spent their own money, but the media outlet killed that coverage.

Some other time, she had to deal with a lack of empathy and professionalism from the colleagues she was guiding. They were interviewing the mother of a missing person. Something went wrong in the recording and the foreign journalists did not realize until they were already on their way home.

“The interview was with the mother of a missing person. It was cathartic, very hard… When we got in the car they told me: ‘You know what, let’s interview the woman again. We didn’t get good audio,’” she recalls.

Paloma believes that colleagues who come to carry out these assignments must be empathetic with the relatives of missing or murdered people, in addition to being considerate of the person who is their liaison or fixer.

Jennifer González, who lives in Aguascalientes, started in journalism in 2009 working for the now defunct La Jornada Aguascalientes newspaper. She covered health and the political parties. Later she would delve fully into the political beat.

“La primera vez que trabajé como fixer formalmente fue para un equipo que vino a hacer una cobertura sobre el tema industrial. Y básicamente mi tarea fue acompañarlos a levantar imágenes. Originalmente querían que les ayudará a pactar entrevistas o a traducir entrevistas, a hacer la traducción simultánea”, dice.

“The first time I officially worked as a fixer was for a team that came to cover industrial issues. And basically my task was to take them to get images. Originally they wanted me to help them arrange interviews or translate interviews, to do simultaneous interpreting,” she says.

She remembers not signing a contract, but she did communicate by email with the team to find out what they needed, the budget, and what she would do each day.

“The fact that they pay you in dollars, given the salary disparity due to low salaries in local Mexican newspapers, of course it was super convenient for me. In terms of experience and the opportunity to connect with colleagues from other countries, the biggest gain is that I am in contact with them, especially with the one from the United States.”

She feels like she’s done her part regarding stories and narrative angles.

“Above all to demystify,” she says. “All of a sudden they arrive with the idea that Mexico is a violent country. Also the experience they bring has a lot to do with it. A colleague had covered violence in the north of the country when Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Durango and Coahuila were very hot; and he arrived in Aguascalientes and it was difficult for him to understand that here organized crime does not figure in such a visible and spectacular way.”

Thanks to these experiences, Jennifer has become close friends with colleagues she has helped by explaining the problems of her state. She finds it positive to connect with colleagues from the United States, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Vania Pigeounutt

Being a fixer is not always a good experience. Many times this job involves dealing with the bad practices of national or international reporters who hire the services of a “fixer.” Melissa del Pozo, a multimedia journalist and producer who specializes in human rights coverage, knows very well about that. She has come across reporters who have requested assignments that violate journalistic ethics and the rights of those interviewed.

“They have the urgent need to come and tell Mexico from their imagination, from folklore and cliché,” Melissa says.

On one occasion, a renowned media outlet hired her to make a mini-documentary about femicides. To her, how this media outlet approached the story seemed sensationalist. They wanted access to a morgue where a coroner was performing an autopsy on a recently murdered woman to record the scene. The plan was to then look for the woman’s relatives to interview them. Melissa tried to change the angle of the story only to realize what this outlet was actually up to.

“Instead, I got a powerful story with the testimony of a woman who had been attacked and in another context, far from blood and sensationalism; and the production decided to cancel a day before because they did not consider it ‘bled’ enough,” she says.

She thinks that this mini-documentary would only reinforce the stereotypes that people have about Mexico abroad: “a place of third world tragedies.”

“On top of that, they didn’t pay me for any of the pre-production days. They also didn’t care about the agreements I had reached to secure other interviews. Later I was informed that they had hired someone who had obtained for them more shocking situations, thus exposing the victims without the slightest journalistic ethics,” she laments.

***

Diana Manzo is a Zapotec journalist who lives in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, in the state of Oaxaca. After many years of journalistic work, Diana is now a recognized reporter with extensive experience covering the most important issues in the region. She is the gateway for many of the reporters who come to cover issues in that area of Oaxaca, since she has the contacts, the innate knowledge of the region and, above all, enough knowledge to explain the reality of the people considering their own customs and worldview. That makes her work as a fixer doubly valuable.

She started working as a fixer in 2015, when international media began contacting her to help them produce stories about the environment and the damage to nature that her region was suffering.

In that first fixer job, she was not thinking about collecting, but the media outlet she helped paid her about 3,000 pesos, as she remembers. After that job, more reporters and photographers began to arrive looking to cover the topic. And although she felt good about exposing those topics to audiences in other parts of the world, she also began to become more aware of the responsibilities and risks she assumed.

“What I have noticed is that right now with the topic that is harder and more dangerous, you are taking risks by being a fixer. Because they come and they go. I have to stay. I say this because the people who they interview or those who did not like the angle of the story know you; they see me hanging out with journalists; they complain to me for taking them on the tour […] they think I’m an accomplice because if I don’t shown them [the foreign journalists] they won’t even notice,” she says.

Fixers are at risk even if they don’t get credit in the published work or conduct interviews. It is enough to accompany and guide foreign journalists: “due to the conditions [of insecurity] in the country, being a fixer is a risk even if my name does not appear in the written piece.”

Diana feels a responsibility to her community. She has developed trust that she cannot throw away because of the poor journalistic work of a foreign reporter.

“We tour small towns where everyone knows each other. They easily know when a stranger arrives. I have been very careful with this. […] People here warn me not to bring bad people. I tell them that they are not, that they just want to know more and do their job. They believe me because they are the people who see me every day,” she explains.

Diana estimates that she has been a fixer about eight times. She has been asked to be a guide to cover traditions in the region or the Day of the Dead festivities. But she worries because she often does not know what the foreign reporters who come asking for her help will publish. For her, it is extremely important to see the final product because it depends on whether she decides to collaborate the next time an outside journalist knocks on her door.

Violence against Mexican journalists directly hit the Isthmus of Tehuantepec on February 11, 2022. Journalist Heber López was shot dead by two individuals. They attacked him in front of his son when they were inside the office that the journalist had in his home. Heber, Diana’s friend and co-worker on dozens of assignments, was also known for helping other colleagues who asked him for help.

***

Robín Canul is a Mayan audiovisual journalist who works throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, the largest Maya region in Mexico.

For him it is important to make the distinction between local producer and fixer.

“I like the term local producer. I also do not look down on the term fixer, but in my experience everything I have done through the fixer label has not been paid well enough; treatment has been different when I am a local producer,” he says.

He thinks that there must be fair agreements between local journalists and international media. Furthermore, he thinks that the concept of a fixer clashes with that of a local producer, because it is not only about getting credited, but also getting a better pay, he says.

“It is only a matter of terms, but it is about generating agreements between us who are in the field willing to work and the international or national media who want to learn,” Robin says.

Yucatán is one of the states with the lowest rates of intentional homicides and disappearances. However, work as a local field producer has not been easy, nor well paid, and much less recognized.

“It has been less than fifteen years since I got this job of being a fixer or being a translator during assignments… …We did provide some advice and help, but we were not recognized for that work,” he points out.

Furthermore, he says, sharing people’s contacts is quite delicate because he, as a local journalist, took quite a bit of time to build relationships with his contacts.

“It is not an issue of ownership, of not wanting to share, but some of these (contacts) came from the trust that you can generate with your sources,” says Robin.

Part of Robin’s work in the peninsula has been investigating environmental problems and their consequences. This work also implies a risk for the reporters who document this problem and who clash with politicians and businessmen who have large investments in tourism projects. His work has attracted national and international media that also investigate these issues.

In the last 50 years, the area known as the Riviera Maya has been developed, a place where the big bet is on tourism and a lot of labor is needed to carry out these projects.

However, Robin believes that the jobs these projects create expose local people to classism, racism, poor wages and labor exploitation, conditions from which local media workers do not escape.

When they hire him, Robin explains the context of the Yucatan Peninsula and, if necessary, shows them a risk area. He also facilitates finding sources and contacts who can talk about certain topics.

“The bad thing about being a fixer is that you are the last link in the production chain. We are the people who facilitate access for other people to come and carry out their interviews, without any type of involvement and many times without any type of responsibility. The consequences are diverse: risking sources, risking yourself as a fixer for having that much visibility. Because national and international journalists come and go, and the problems stay and grow,” he says.

Robin remembers a bad experience he had working with a magazine that asked him for a written report. He spent a lot of time researching the story with another reporter and a photographer, but in the end, due to delays and administrative changes at the magazine, the photographs were not used.

“We worked for four months to adapt the publication, working twice as hard for the same pay. Finally, when it came time to curate the images, the outlet sent a star photographer who came to live in the Yucatan Peninsula,” he recalls.

For Robin, these types of situations reveal the colonial attitude of foreign media toward local reporters and that this colonialism, in addition, violates the trust of the people who agree to give the information and appear before the cameras.

For Robin, journalism and audiovisual production are tools for social change. However, he recognizes that the precarious working conditions of reporters, who do not have health insurance, a fixed salary or benefits, make being a fixer an important source of extra income that he will continue to go after.

Vania Pigeounutt

Tere Montaño is a reporter with 30 years of experience working in the State of Mexico. She has distinguished herself by investigating political corruption in her state like few others. At the same time, she has also lived first-hand the violence Mexican journalists are exposed to.

She has been kidnapped; she has suffered harassment, threats, job insecurity and censorship. Her state is a reflection of the criminality prevailing at the national level with complex circles of violence, including femicides. 

“I have been a fixer without knowing I was one. The first time they came looking for me it was some journalists from Spain, from El País (newspaper). I helped them several times. I don’t remember who gave them my number, but with all good intentions I helped them with the contacts I had at hand,” she recalls.

Tere remembers the exact date foreign journalists started looking for her more frequently. It was on June 30, 2014 when a group of soldiers murdered 22 civilians in San Pedro Limón, Tlatlaya, State of Mexico, near the border with the state of Guerrero.

“I put the compañeros in contact with other compañeros so that they could go together to the most dangerous areas of the state,” she says.

Tere did not know the term fixer at first. Like many other local journalists, she has shared generously with other colleagues what she has learned over many years of experience.

In her career as a local journalist she has encountered obstacles—lawsuits and other legal issues—that have kept her from publishing in national outlets. Early on in her fixer career she understood that her work as such must be fairly compensated.

Unable to find work in publications in the State of Mexico, she maintains her portal, The Observer, a bilingual medium that verifies and qualifies the statements of government officials. But this work is insufficient to cover her expenses. So, along with her journalistic work, she runs a lunch shop.

For Tere, the COVID-19 pandemic worsened job insecurity in the State of Mexico. Violence continues, but in her opinion, seeking other sources of income is a matter of survival.

Vania Pigeonutt

Benjamín Alfaro has been a multimedia journalist in southern Mexico since 2005. He grew up in Tapachula, Chiapas, a city very close to the border with Guatemala, a turnstile on the route of migrants from Central America and people who travel from all over the world with the dream of reaching the United states.

Every time a team of journalists looks for a local fixer or producer in Tapachula, Benjamín’s name comes up. He’s highly recommended because he knows very well the southern border corridor that encompasses Chahuites, Oaxaca, Tapachula, Chiapas, Tenosique, Tabasco, and even Guatemala. He considers himself part of the border community, and has built alliances with “acquaintances, braceros, the person at the little store, with colleagues in local media in Guatemala, and others.”

Bejamín has been part of award-winning international productions. His job is to be aware of the local and international contexts, and make alliances with colleagues. With 16 years working as a fixer and local producer, he has managed to secure fair remuneration and credits in the news stories that get published.

But it was not always like this. The first time a German public television station called him in 2008 to work as a fixer, he thought it was a scam. They were going to pay him 2,500 pesos a day; and in four days he would earn more than what he earned all month at the local media where he was a reporter and cameraman. Despite his reservations, he accepted. He took vacation days from his other job and did well in his first fixer experience.

Later on he began to have some less fortunate experiences.

“I have experienced that the U.S. media outlet media wants to cheapen my work, even foundations, which have a budget for everything: for coordinators, plane tickets, meals, hotels and transportation. But in the end they only leave a tiny fee for the fixer; the fixer gets whatever is left over. These are foundations that highlight the rights of certain people but violate the labor rights of the fixer,” says Benjamín.

His worst experience was when he worked for a Spanish media outlet that ended up charging him.

“We were in Tapachula. And in the end, the interview that the media had agreed to fell through. And they fined me 20 dollars. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how this worked, neither did I know that they could fine me because an interview that they themselves had booked fell through,” he recalls.

Over time he has learned how to avoid these slights and violations of his labor rights. He does not think it is fair that journalists in the northern border with the United States can charge more when he also runs as many risks; but he recognizes that there is not much he can do about this disparity.

“As a journalist, I always prioritize that they respect me and my work. I like to get in return the same professionalism with which I share my knowledge and my work. And not only toward me, but also toward the sources we interview.” Benjamin says.

He worries about how some foreign journalists treat the people they interview. Many of these sources are people in vulnerable conditions who travel in migratory caravans or who have been detained by authorities along their journey.

“Reporters present themselves as company employees. They understand themselves as a business, as an authority, and not as a human being. It is difficult for them to create bonds with people. They do not question themselves in order to understand the story with empathy, but rather they want to extract certain answers to look good with their outlet,” he says.

Due to the dangerous conditions for journalists in Mexico, Benjamín says it is necessary to know where risk lies. He says that if someone contacts him for a risky assignment, it’s best to let it go because in the end it can be more costly.

“We must understand that in risk areas, fixers are not the only ones who are in danger, sources too. You are the one who finds a source and explains to the reporter what is happening; you are also the one who gets the visual resources. It is necessary to have professionalism, because then they lie to give their work greater visibility. You fall into that trap of being sensationalist and alarmist,” he says.

He mentions that at times he has opted for anonymity, as he believes it is safer for him.

“In terms of violence in the region, it’s until now that Chiapas has its conflict zone. I avoid going there. Many times I have practiced self-censorship to protect myself. I have remained anonymous many times. Not wanting to take credit is also a security measure,” he says.

He’s concerned by the normalization of violence against journalists, since it is common for a communicator to be murdered and for this colleague’s death to receive, if any, very little news coverage.

“Violence is on the rise. It is due to society normalizing certain prejudices; they justify or blame the attacks by saying ‘why do they get involved?’ or ‘they shouldn’t get involved in those things,'” he says.

He compares the situation of journalists working in small towns with that of teachers in rural areas, where both lack the necessary conditions and tools to do their job but are blamed for not doing it well, and people believe all the lies about them shared on social networks.

Benjamin emphasizes the same saying that colleagues use in other dangerous places: “a story is not worth your life.”

Furthermore, he recognizes the value of belonging to his family and community, and of contributing to society with his journalism.

We are fathers, husbands, wives, mothers, children and members of a community. If we, the reporters who walk the streets, are no longer here, who will document these stories? These images and stories will only be dust in the wind.”