My name is Patricia Mayorga and I am a journalist from Chihuahua, México.

In april 2nd 2017, I’ve had must get out of my country; the autorities and security experts
say that my life is in danger because of my work in the Sierra Tarahumara, specially the
narcopolitic, something that allows forced eviction of residents in the Sierra and remains in
impunity.

During the goverment of César Duarte Jáquez, giving voice to the victims was risky for
journalism; the forced eviction in the state was invisible for the rest of the country, but
every day were more families that had to ran away because of the armed groups that kept
their harvest, cattle and his lands to plant drugs. The largest number of victims are
indigenous communities.

Making journalism and writting about human wrights in that time were a lonely task. There
was a dark time for the guild. It may be the worst from a long time ago, because the censor
came from the newspapers and radio stations. The media were silence with publicity and
there were no liberty for the fellows.

When Javier Corral arrived to the goverment, and even when he based his campain in the
promise that he would investigate and fight the Duarte’s corruption, the process of the news
during transition were complicated.

Miroslava Breach and I decided to join efforts and worked together since 2015, when the
forced eviction of indigeous communities were intesified.

In march of 2016 both published a story about precandidates of the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional who intented to be part of the goverment and they were working for the
crime.

After the publication the candidates were replaced and we’d received threats from the
group that had the control of one part of the sierra Tarahumara, the municipality of
Chínipas. We didn’t get the full situation at the time.

In June of that same year we’d received a call from Alfredo Piñera, spokesman of the local
office of the Partido Acción Nacional. He wanted us to gave him our sources of
information. That party was in the goverment of Chínipas. The conversation was recorded.

On march 23rd, 2017, the threads were met. They murdered Miroslava Breach with eight
shots outside her house and they forced me to leave the country, with my daughter.

Governor Javier Corral said from the day of the murder, that there was no doubt about the
motive of the crime: the work that the narcopolitics exposed. Over time and knowing that
there were politicians from his party involved in the recording of calls, whose audios
appeared on the top of a narco during the search of one of the houses of the investigated,
who belong to the group that controls Chínipas, the governor erased the narcopolitics of the
official discourse.

The forced displacement continues in the Sierra Tarahumara. The impact on the journalistic
guild of Chihuahua, for the murder of Miroslava and for my exit, is strong. The coverage of
that region has not been reinforced, only transcends the cases that non-governmental
organizations manage to place on the public scene, but there are hundreds or thousands of
indigenous people and mestizos who live at risk, who must flee their land because they are
alone.