The reporter Lydia Cacho tells her life to dissect Mexico

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The journalist uses her letters and diaries to fight the biography that was supposed to turn her into a corrupt governor, now in prison

Mexican reporter Lydia Cacho soon turned out to be a precocious child. At the age of 12 he wrote about death and suicide. At the same age, a cousin of hers attacked her in bed. It is not considered an exceptional case. Not surprisingly, a woman is raped in her country every 18 seconds. If sexual assault is something tragic, it is even more painful that 95% of those who commit sexual assault in Mexico go unpunished.

The journalist, now in exile in Spain at the age of 59 since hitmen raided her house and killed her three dogs, is a brave woman. In 2005, after the publication of “The Demons in the Garden,” a book in which she exposed the existence of a child pornography network, Cacho was kidnapped and tortured by a group of police officers. The reason: he was undeterred and denounced a pederasty plot involving powerful businessmen and politicians. Nor was he deterred when he recounted that horrific experience in Memories of a Shame, which has been brought to the theater.

In her new book ‘Letters of love and rebellion’ (Debate), the reporter shamelessly uncovers aspects of her intimate life. Since his mother gave him a diary as a child so he could write down whatever he wanted, he hasn’t stopped writing.

Lydia Cacho has been encouraged to deliver documents to the printer and tell her biography so that no one would offer a so-called version of her life. “The former governor of Quintana Roo, whom I was investigating for corruption and involvement in organized crime, paid a former local deputy to write a fake biography of me.” That man’s name is Roberto Borge and he’s been in prison for four years. Not a single colleague paid attention to the series of lies painted by an unlikely Lydia Cacho, illiterate, who used blacks to write her books and who prostituted herself. “I got tired, I knew I had to run because I suspected they were going to kill me. But I also said to myself: why should they tell my story?

Lydia tells about her life, pulling away the veil that hides the existence of many compatriots. His early writings speak of a PRI-ruled Mexico, describing the disappearances of students, the contradictions and idiosyncrasies of a country that little by little becomes accustomed to violence and lies. vicissitudes told with a deft wrist by a quirky middle-class girl who runs away from home for refusing to accept a machismo-determined fate.

Cacho, who as a young man had Oriana Fallaci as his reference, argues that the murders of reporters, exile and smear campaigns have put the finishing touches on Mexican journalism. “Violence has been glorified in literature, in music and in movies.” She argues that her country’s journalists pioneered a machinery of men where women were not well seen.

With ‘Letters of love and rebellion’, the author paints a portrait of a life devoted to existential quest, romance, passion, poetry and the indignation of living in an unjust world. “By transcribing the letters and fragments of the diaries, I brought the life of who I am in 2022 closer to that of the young woman who dreamed of a life full of adventures,” writes the journalist.

“I felt like I had to emotionally save myself. Of all the things in my life, the only thing I have kept and valued deeply in material terms is my house, because I didn’t want a man to support me, a car, my photos, diaries and my letters. All I could find were my diaries and letters: they are my personal treasure’, says the journalist.

No one comes out of the torture unscathed, not even Lydia Cacho. He has had to resort to therapy to face the open wounds. She is convinced that stress and suppressed anxiety accentuate the predisposition to a tumor. The fact that her mother was a psychologist helped her enter a psychotherapist’s office without as much prejudice as other people.

Cacho is a wounded lyricist and a prolific writer. He has published 19 books translated into several languages ​​and has received dozens of awards for his work, including the UNESCO-Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize (2008) and the Nicolás Salmerón Award for Human Rights (2013).

Source: La Verdad

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