Media
Media companies, public funding and political power in Veracruz
By Ricardo Balderas y Paula Mónaco Felipe
Almost all, 19 of the 20 journalists murdered and disappeared in Veracruz 2010-2016, worked in print media. In newspapers, magazines and portals.
We reviewed and systematized which were the print media with greater corporate structure, greater activity or agenda-setting power. We ordered them by region with commercial names (brands or corporate identity) and fiscal names (company name). We investigated what type of companies they were, who their shareholders are or were, and who their administrators were.
The result is a surprising map: oligopolies, inbreeding of notaries and a tangled web of companies. Media-lands that are the preserve of a few families, surnames of weight. Three companies behind the edition of 23 media, 35 companies linked to them. Media that have multiplied in a few years with shareholders that go from one side to the other. Commercial groups that publish newspapers as well as sell food, give credits or are in the oil business.
Map of new landscapes, of the public-private intersection, to analyze the violence against the press.
“Behave yourselves,” said the then governor Javier Duarte to journalists in June 2015.
– “Behave yourselves, we all know who are on the wrong side of the tracks, they say that in Veracruz you just don’t know what we still can’t think of. We all know who, in one way or another, has links with these groups… we all know who has links and who is involved with the underworld… Please behave yourselves, I beg you. Difficult times are coming,” said Duarte and many took it as a threat because at that time 13 journalists had already been murdered and 3 had disappeared during his government. That same day, in the municipality of Medellín, reporter Juan Mendoza Delgado was killed.
But that was not all he said. In that event of controversial statements, the governor said more:
-Those who make up those criminal cells have quarrels, those who are at the bottom want to be at the top. I say it with full knowledge of the cause, unfortunately crime has bridges, links with notaries public, businessmen, public officials and also some of the collaborators, media workers, are also exposed to these situations.
Duarte named notaries, businessmen and officials. A misstep, excess of sincerity, or whatever it may have been, unveiled a map of Veracruz broader than just thinking about government versus crime, good versus bad. He went out of the communicational script that, up to that moment, his government had maintained.
In those days his administration was already faltering. Journalists had unveiled networks of ghost companies that the governor, his friends and family used to divert billions of pesos, in theory labeled to fight poverty, donate to the Red Cross and other presumably noble purposes. It was beginning to be known that they had stolen money from treatments for children with cancer. That some officials had bought dozens of properties here and in other countries. That the state economy was marching towards collapse because the public finances were in the red, in total deficit. That government offices were awarding millionaire agreements for official propaganda without any bidding process. The famous “direct bids”.
Nobody knows how many millions. But all those who were consulted know that much of the money was allocated to strengthen the state’s propaganda. Did this involve commercials, photos of the governor or advertising works? Not necessarily. Journalists who worked at the time explain that the authorities sometimes paid to speak well of them (the politicians) by pretending what the editorial position of the media was, other times they simply gave money as a perk. They bought silence.
Until this moment the total amount of money allocated for official advertising in 2010-2016 is unknown but at least two clues appeared.
The first one in 2017, when in a court hearing the prosecutor Julio Rodríguez Hernández said that it was about 5 billion pesos, about 294 million dollars. The second, almost at the same time but very dissimilar, came during an appearance of the next governor, Miguel Ángel Yunes, before the Veracruz congress. Yunes said that “in 70 months, the government of Javier Duarte paid two thousand 582 million pesos to newspapers, 152 million to magazines, 15 million to cartoonists, two thousand 700 million to television stations, 515 million to individuals and 280 million pesos in billboards, among other expenses related to the media.” In other words, more than 8 billion pesos, some 470 million dollars. Almost twice as much.
We began this investigation by asking via transparency to the Coordination of Social Communication and the Ministry of Finance and Planning of the government of Veracruz about the official advertising agreements of the 2010-2016 period. The responses from the Veracruz state were negative. “There is no information requested” and ‘No documentary evidence was found’, responded to us for example the head of the office of Contracts and Agreements and the deputy director of Government Contracting (official letters CGCS/DJ/OCC/006/2023 and SCGARA/199/2023).
But the silence of the authorities spoke volumes in their silence. We then followed the trail of the map that Duarte himself opened with his pórtense bien. Where before there was a blank sheet of paper, mountain ranges appeared, covering the territory with their companies, bodies of water that reflect networks of power, clear boundaries and other more diffuse ones.
We found a map.
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Companies make money. That’s what they do, that’s what they are born for, that’s what they spend their efforts on.
And although we are not used to look at it from that perspective, it is undeniable that the media are companies. In the two meanings that the word can have: they are organizations dedicated to profit and they are the difficult task of achieving an end. The daily business so that every morning you have a newspaper in your hands, with that cover and with each of the words contained in its pages. The monthly business of having advertisers, paying salaries or that when you press the switch in the newsroom, a light comes on.
As companies, the media are obliged to make the necessary decisions to survive, but the particularity of newspapers, television stations, portals and radio stations is that they work with words, images, information: contents inseparable from ideologies and various interests. It is impossible -and naive- to think that media companies can be free from making decisions linked to ideologies and interests.
It is also impossible that the media do not have owners. But who the owners are determines to a large extent what messages they will (and will not) broadcast. What they will talk about, what they will keep quiet about.
This is where the situation becomes complex. The gray point of the intersection between business and freedom of expression. A desirable horizon, a non-negotiable flag, but sometimes also intangible or moldable. Here, at the crossroads of company-owners-interests is where everything descends from the cloud of the ideal to the feet on the ground, and crashes not infrequently.
We are reporters, we work with media-companies (or in them) and we want to look there because the commercial part is one of the missing pieces of the puzzle to explain the violence that has cost the lives of almost 200 journalists in Mexico in the last 23 years.
It is no longer enough to look only at crime or the authorities: there is a third factor which is the private sector. Media companies are a fundamental part of the information machinery.
To analyze them, we start from two premises: a) that these media-companies are inscribed in time and space: contexts; b) that they interweave commercial, political and ideological links with other people, companies or groups: networks. All these situations are decisive because the form these networks take and the contexts in which they are inscribed will determine how free journalism will be, how tied it will be and to what.
We looked at Veracruz 2010-2016 focusing on the private sector media companies and their links to politics. We sought to better understand what happened then in order to, from that key, continue asking ourselves why they have not stopped killing us.
We found a different map than the one we knew before.
1- Physical map: topography of the concentration
Most of the print media in the State of Veracruz were owned by a few families. An oligopoly disguised as plurality. In the period analyzed, 24 newspapers, magazines and internet pages were edited by companies belonging to only three editorial (and family) groups whose shareholders and legal representatives were in turn linked to a network of at least 34 related corporate names.
Grupo Editorial Sánchez, owned by the Sánchez Macías family, had 9 media outlets in Veracruz (plus one in Chiapas and another in Tabasco); La Voz del Istmo, owned by the Robles family, at least 7 print media outlets; and Grupo Olmeca, owned by the Álvarez Peña family, at least another 8 media outlets in Veracruz (plus 2 in Tabasco and 2 in Chiapas).
We searched for documents to understand how these companies were formed and organized. Several general topographical particularities emerged from the 106 documents counted in this investigation, including records of the Public Registry of Commerce and the National Register of Printed Media of the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB).
In the first place, we found that most of the companies that publish media in Veracruz are variable capital corporations. This is one of the most used commercial figures in Mexico because it is relatively easy to manage and allows many internal movements: changing shareholders, modifying internal positions and volume of capital, as well as allowing its shareholders -owners- to be individuals or legal entities, that is to say, other companies. A situation used for example by Editora La Voz del Istmo, in turn composed of other companies of the same owners that act as shareholders: INBE del Istmo S.A. de C.V., Impresora La Voz del Istmo S.A. de C.V., and Inmobiliaria La Voz del Istmo S.A. de C.V.
As far as shareholder movements are concerned, there are many. Each group is almost always conformed by related persons, relatives with the same surnames who also opt for an inbreeding of the process by repeatedly using the same notaries.
To be more precise, 55% of the companies analyzed were registered by only 4 notaries public. Francisco Javier García Gea and Juan Hillman Jiménez, also a relative of the shareholders, handle most of the documents of the group La Voz del Istmo. In Grupo Olmeca’s companies, Flavino Ríos Alvarado, a PRI politician who was the last secretary of government of former governor Javier Duarte and remained as interim governor when the incumbent fled, appears as notary public.
Another characteristic of the media companies in Veracruz is that they are family businesses. In general, they have a history of several decades in the editorial-informative field, but it is surprising that the persons publicly identified as owners often do not appear as such in the official records. As far as documents are concerned, for example, articles of incorporation of variable capital associations, these important surnames are absent or appear with the identities of sons, nephews, cousins, brothers, while the public persons, those whom everyone identifies as owners, on paper are only shareholders, even minority shareholders.
That is the case of former magistrate Edel Humberto Álvarez Peña, absent in the initial conformations of most of the companies that publish media and belong to his family, only publicly shareholder in Novedades del Golfo S.A. de C.V., according to the documents found. However, the names that do appear show that the borderline between public and private is very thin: his wife, his children and his brother are the owners on paper.
On the other hand, just as almost all the companies are variable capital corporations, it is surprising that practically none of them has as its “corporate purpose”, i.e. authorized commercial activities, to edit the media. That is to say, none of them is exclusively dedicated to that.
Some mention it, such as the companies of Grupo Editorial Sánchez, which have the same corporate purpose in practically all of their companies, but others only include it at the beginning of an extensive -and very diverse- list that always includes the purchase and sale of real estate and the execution of various types of contracts. They declare as their main activities the most diverse and dissimilar situations of news publishing.
For example, Infosur S.A. de C.V. (FME 3072), a company created in 2001 that publishes Diario Acayucan, defines the purpose of its business as the purchase and sale and supply, distribution, import, export, maintenance, manufacture and supply of “any electrical equipment, household appliances, electronic equipment, computer equipment (…) air conditioning (…) emergency plants (…) ) emergency plants (…) alarm systems (…) all types of aggregates, finishes, paints and construction materials (…) stationery, personal property and real estate (…) purchase and rental of memberships in cultural and social sports clubs (…) telemarketing (…) vehicles and machinery (…) cable television service”, among others. Only in 2020 they added to its object the “elaboration, printing and sale of newspapers, magazines and any kind of printed and digital communication or advertising media”.
And if the corporate purpose represents the commercial activities that the companies declare before the authorities that they are capable of doing and for which they requested legal endorsement, how can it be interpreted that those who publish media do not declare that they publish media? Social objects with typing errors, spelling mistakes, poorly cut and pasted, but above all of such breadth that they are an open letter for any type of business, not only media.
1st Region Grupo Olmeca (Álvarez Peña family)
Grupo Olmeca published at least 12 media outlets, 8 of them in Veracruz, 2 in Tabasco and 2 in Chiapas. Just by mentioning some of the newspapers, the name of Edel Humberto Álvarez Peña immediately comes up in Veracruz.
He is not a journalist, he is a lawyer. In several decades of political career he was municipal president of Coatzacoalcos (1991-1994), state president of the PRI, coordinator of advisors of the state government and director of the Public Registry of Property (2006-2010), among other positions. In 2010 he was proposed magistrate by the then governor Fidel Herrera, one of the strongest men of the PRI in Veracruz, and appointed by the state congress in the last days of that administration. Then, in December 2016, on the first day of the government of Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, Álvarez Peña was appointed President of the Superior Court of Justice and of the State Judiciary Council.
He retired recently and has been singled out for alleged corruption: simulating contracts for some 350 million pesos with ghost companies linked to the international laundering scandal known as the Panama Papers, according to the journalistic investigation by Flavia Morales.
As his political career grew, so did the list of companies linked to his family and himself, although it is not easy to follow this trail. Because he, a well-known man of weight in the Olmeca Group, is absent in most of the incorporations of companies and barely appears in later documents, in changes of shareholders, as in Novedades del Golfo S.A. de C.V. (FME 1582), where he is incorporated later. Paths that complicate the task of following the money trail.
José Lorrimer Álvarez Peña, his brother, is the one who appears in official documents as administrator and shareholder in most of the 14 companies of Grupo Olmeca that are linked in different ways to the media. A similar situation occurs with María Inés Núñez Monreal, goddaughter of the former magistrate, and her sister Margarita Núñez Monreal, both shareholders and sometimes attorneys-in-fact.
But in two companies of this group the borders are thinner: El Liberal del Sur S.A. de C.V. (FME 604), which publishes the newspaper Liberal del Sur, and Editoriales Cempoala S.A. de C.V. (FME 25637), which publishes Diario Cardel. The former was founded in 1999 and the latter in 2008. In the first one the sole administrator is José Lorrimer Álvarez Peña, his brother, and the president of the board of directors is Amalia Delong Tapia, his wife. In the second one, the shareholders are Amalia Delong Tapia and José Edel and Juan Pablo Edel Delong, that is, the wife and children of the former magistrate.
A very thin line, already dotted, between the politician-official-magistrate and media companies.
1.b Region Sanchez Publishing Group
Between 2010 and 2016, Grupo Editorial Sánchez edited at least 11 media outlets, 9 of them in the state of Veracruz, most of them with the same name, heraldos. El Heraldo de Xalapa, El Heraldo de Veracruz, El Heraldo de Tuxpan, El Heraldo de Poza Rica, El Heraldo de Martínez, El Heraldo de Coatzacoalcos and El Heraldo de Córdoba. In addition, Revista El Heraldo de Veracruz and El Diario Martinense.
The publishing group had -and has- presence in practically all the Veracruz territory. Articles of incorporation and documents of 12 companies of this family were found, 8 of which are exclusively dedicated to the publishing business (in Veracruz and Chiapas) and another two to agribusiness. In practically all of them, the sole administrator is Eduardo Sánchez Macías, also a shareholder together with his brothers Francisco Javier and Stalin, all with the surname Sánchez Macías. In general, all three are present in each company, although the percentage of their shares changes.
The surprises are in the growth peaks. During the period under study at least three of their press companies were born: Editora Sur Centro S.A. de C.V. (FME 14563), which publishes El Heraldo de Coatzacoalcos; Editora SAMHE S.A. de C.V. (FME 29786), which publishes El Heraldo de Xalapa; Revista Heraldo de Veracruz S.A. de C.V. (FME 1421), which publishes under the same name.
In other words, Duartismo was a good time for this publishing group. But before that they also had two peaks of prosperity: 1998, when they founded two companies, and 2007, when they founded three.
Triplets dedicated to the publishing business: they were born in the same year, have identical corporate purpose and identical administrator, Eduardo Sánchez Macías. The companies were born just weeks apart: Diario de Campo S.A. de C.V. (FME 989) on June 29, Diario de Poza Rica S.A. de C.V. (FME 7005) on September 18, and Diario de Tantoyuca S.A. de C.V. (FME 2173) on October 24.
Why create three identical companies with different names? How to read these prosperity peaks?
Perhaps the context explains the companies and their moments of prosperity. The period 2007-2010 coincides with the time when Javier Duarte was Undersecretary and Secretary of Finance of the government of Veracruz (2004-2008 and all of 2008, respectively). The publishing group’s second growth peak, 2010-2015, coincides with the time when Duarte was federal deputy (2009-2010) and governor (2010-2016). Did they simply have a good relationship with the rising politician? Were they favored by agreements?
The editorial group is headed by people with the surname Sánchez Macías: that is, they share the second surname with Javier Duarte’s wife, Karime Macías. A situation that generates doubts and will be discussed later.
But there is also another factor: conflict of interest. Eduardo Sánchez Macías was a media businessman at the same time as a politician and governor, he walked through the public sector at the same time as the private sector. He was director of the media group and sole administrator of all his companies at the same time as local deputy of the Green Party for district VIII, Martínez de la Torre (2013-2016). For further contradiction, he was also secretary of the State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists (CEAPP).
In 2019 he was arrested and put on trial accused of diverting funds from Congress to allocate public money to his own newspapers.
1.c Region La Voz del Istmo (Robles Barajas and Hillman family)
La Voz del Istmo is a group that was born in the Coatzacoalcos area at the end of the 1990s but has been expanding to other latitudes. It publishes a magazine, Llave Negocios Política, and seven newspapers: El Diario del Istmo, Imagen de Veracruz and Imagen del Golfo, and the órale!, Jarocho Órale! and Xalapa Órale!
Administratively, they are a company made up of companies, something that is allowed by law, although it blurs the names of the owners a little by substituting individuals for ever-changing (and less transparent) legal entities.
And although the common name is Editora La Voz del Istmo, a closer look at the documents reveals a peculiarity: the same shareholders have two companies with practically identical names: Editora La Voz del Istmo Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable (FME 10404) and Editora La Voz del Istmo S.A. de C.V. (FME 4767). One was created in 1999, the other in 2006.
In this publishing group there is a founding couple, the patriarch José Pablo Robles Martínez and the matriarch Roselia Margarita Barajas y Olea, born in 1937 and 1938, respectively. They are present in most of the companies, but as time goes by, their descendants have become more relevant: their children José Pablo, Laura, Jair and Mónica, all with the surnames Robles Barajas.
The group is a sort of multiple combinations of the surnames Robles, Martínez, Barajas and Hillman: grandparents, parents, children, siblings, spouses. The family members rotate in the decisive positions -for example that of “sole administrator”-, they “donate” or “cede” shares among themselves, and the companies also pass shares from one to another in a seemingly infinite movement.
As for the corporate purpose, in general they are focused on informative topics, but there are also some with broader activities. For example, Orbi Conecta S.A. de C.V. (FME N-2020029096) is authorized to edit media, disseminate contents and carry out marketing as well as other tasks such as foreign trade, credit titles, franchises and the purchase and sale of all kinds of real estate.
And in this regional landscape it is useful to take a closer look: the Robles-Barajas family is not only dedicated to publishing newspapers. The matriarch, Roselia Margarita Barajas y Olea, was a federal deputy ( 1997-2000) and continued in the political world, having been ambassador to Costa Rica sent by the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Her daughter Mónica Robles Barajas, who in the documents is sole administrator of most of the media companies and publicly president of the corporate Imagen del Golfo, was a state deputy for the Green Party in the 63rd legislature (2013-2016) and for Morena in the65th legislature (2018-2021). Monica’s husband, Ivan Hillman Chapoy, was mayor of Coatzacoalcos (2004-2007) and her brother, Pablo Robles Barajas, a biologist and also part of the companies, has been a senior official of the National Water Commission since 2021.
While she was a local congresswoman, Monica Robles Barajas appears in official documents of the electoral authority as legal representative of the media Imagen del Golfo Multimedios S.A. de C.V. (number 47 among 88 authorized for official advertising) and currently (2023) she is still appointed in hierarchical positions of the media group, according to the National Register of Printed Media of the Ministry of the Interior.
This is how the Robles-Barajas (and Hillman) family walks with one foot on the side of politics-government and the other foot on the side of the media. Simultaneously.
They have frequently found themselves stuck in the mud of various controversies. In the past, former Governor Fidel Herrera criticized the patriarch of this group, Pablo Robles Martinez, whom he called “the professional sucker” in reference to the amount of agreements he said he obtained. In other times the family denounced political persecution and now seems to live in peaceful times:
In 2023 they were visited in their editorial office by the federal Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández.
2-Political map: conflict of interest
The magistrate’s wife and children own several newspapers. The congressman presides over a group of newspapers. The ambassador is a shareholder in several publications. Many Veracruz media do not only belong to powerful or wealthy families: their owners were and/or were politicians and civil servants at the same time as media entrepreneurs. They were part of the public sector at the same time they were part of the private sector.
One of the consequences of this double belonging is that they can condition the editorial line to their political interests and those of their fellow party members, government or ideological tendency. Also, as officials or politicians, they are in a position to participate in the allocation of public resources to their companies (i.e., to themselves).
In the media map of Veracruz there are even more examples than those of the three regions already mentioned. Just to look at a few:
Alejandro Montano was a federal deputy between 2012 and 2015 while running Milenio El Portal, an affiliate in the Veracruz capital of the national daily Milenio.
Marco Antonio Anaya Huerta, legal representative of Notisur, one of the most influential newspapers in the Coatzacoalcos area, was at the same time secretary of public works in Marcos Theurel’s mayoralty in Coatzacoalcos (2011-2014).
Gabriela Arango Gibb, PRI congresswoman, is one of the owners of La Opinión de Poza Rica.
The owner of Radiocentro de Córdoba and Xalapa, José Luis Oliva Meza, was a congressman for Misantla.
Many, if not most of the companies that published newspapers in Veracruz between 2010 and 2016 have as shareholders and founders people from politics, whether public officials or governors for elected office.
It is clear that in Veracruz then -and probably also in other times-, many of the media have been businesses of politicians, governors and officials. Infinite revolving doors that, beyond millionaire businesses or self-assignments of public resources, deepened the climate of confusion and multiplied the risks for press workers in each territory. How many of those businesses conditioned, risked and pushed reporters, photographers and editors to expose themselves in blind shootings?
3-Geographical incidents
3.a Non-Cousins
The same last name: Macías. It is carried by Eduardo Sánchez Macías, owner and holder of practically all 11 media outlets of Grupo Editorial Sánchez. Karime Macías Tubilla, wife of former governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa.
Around it, a controversy that has been going on for years, are they or are they not cousins, the largest media businessman in Veracruz and the wife of the governor imprisoned for corruption, now a fugitive with extradition request?
Although rumors in Veracruz indicate that Karime Macías’ father, Antonio Tony Macías Yazegey, has a decisive participation in the companies of Grupo Editorial Sánchez, the truth is that he is not named in any of the documents found for this investigation, where the owners are always Eduardo, Francisco Javier and Stalin Sánchez Macías.
It is also true that the father of the governor’s wife was present at the inauguration of the building of El Heraldo de Córdoba, an unmistakable symbol of the expansion of this group during the Duartismo. “It corresponded to the Coatzacoalquense businessman Antonio Macías Yazegey, the honor of being the one to cut the inaugural ribbon,” says the chronicle of the event, published on March 21, 2014. In the cover photo there are several people: all very smiling, all scissors in hand, ready to open the new newspaper. In the center is Tony Macías Yazegey, to his right Eduardo Sánchez Macías.
Nothing is said in the chronicle about the alleged blood relationship, but there are many publications at the time that refer to the fact that the businessman and the governor’s wife were cousins (distant cousins, some say, cousins, others say). Nobody was bothered then by the mention of kinship, even Duarte appears in a photograph hugging the businessman Sanchez Macias, but a few years later they began to ignore each other.
It all started in 2015 with Captain Israel Ruiz Zepeda. A young man who at that inauguration was also in the front row, smiling and scissors in hand, when he was appointed first director of El Heraldo de Córdoba. Months later he denounced that Eduardo Sánchez Macías “deceitfully convinced him to make an investment of more than 10 million pesos to establish the newspaper”, that he stripped him of the brand name and that he sought to “pretend that the media of Editorial Sánchez Macías was bigger than it really is and thus obtain more important contracts” (from the government). Moreover, he accused Sanchez Macias of “combing”, “pressuring” and “blackmailing” municipal presidents and various authorities using the alleged kinship with the family that occupied the governorship. He said that he asked them for monthly quotas of 39 thousand pesos plus VAT.
In 2018, with Duarte and his wife already fallen in disgrace, he in jail and she fugitive, Eduardo Sánchez Macías sent a letter to Proceso Magazine where he assured that there is no kinship, that they are not cousins. The following year, in November 2019, he was arrested for the crime of fraud by simulation (and linked to fraudulent networks in which later Karime’s father also appeared).
Cousins or not, Grupo Editorial Sanchez, had splendors coinciding with times when Javier Duarte had the power to allocate resources (as undersecretary and secretary of finance). But even more so, the corporation expanded and strengthened during the 2010-2016 period, when Karime Macías’ husband was governor.
Miguel Ángel Yunes, who succeeded Duarte in the governorship, has denounced that in less than six years they assigned to Grupo Editorial Sánchez official advertising for about 230 million pesos, that is about 14 million dollars. But 13 years and two governors later, there is still no certainty about the amounts that were assigned in advertising or any other type of agreement.
3.b Miscellaneous Businesses
Newspapers are not the only thing to live by: some of Veracruz’s media entrepreneurs also exploit other quite diverse businesses.
Edel Humberto Álvarez Peña, the man who was mayor of Coatzacoalcos, magistrate and PRI politician, is linked to Grupo Editorial Olmeca but is also sole administrator of two oil companies dedicated to the sale of hydrocarbons: Servicios y Suministros Pétreos Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable (FME 12760) and Servicios y Suministros Pétreos S.A. de C.V. (FME 10023). It is also a shareholder of a construction company for services and concessions, Jakarta S.A. de C.V. (FME 114).
The companies were created in 2002, 2009 and 1999, respectively. That is, Jakarta (construction company) was created while Álvarez Peña was mayor of Coatzacoalcos, and at least one of the oil companies while he was director of the Public Registry of Property of Veracruz (2006-2010). In Jakarta S.A. de C.V. he does not appear in its founding document although he is already a representative as of documents dated 2002.
Álvarez Peña also appears as part of two other companies with an extremely broad corporate purpose that ranges from footwear to wines and liquors, minerals, handicrafts, credits, purchase and sale of properties, patents and real estate subdivisions, among other possible businesses. They are Comercializadora Kabator S.A. de C.V. and Melting Point International S.A. de C.V., 2000 and 1999, companies that publicly boast some of their agreements with governments (Kabator, for example, obtained several contracts for installations for public prosecutors and Pemex).
Another publishing group that has diverse businesses is that of the Sánchez Macías. In addition to newspapers throughout the state, as of 2016 it seems to have turned to agribusiness. On the same day he founded a pair of twin companies, with the same shareholders and identical corporate purpose: Ganado y Campo S.P.R. de R.L. de C.V. (FME N-2016009352) and Sembrando con entusiasmo y cosechando feliz S.P.R. de R.L. de C.V. (FME N-2016008371). The twins were born on June 7, 2016, in the midst of a storm of corruption scandals, resignations of officials and shortly before Javier Duarte asked for a license and went on the run.
The map was being reconfigured.
3.c Inequality
Even when in theory they received large official advertising agreements, the Veracruz newspapers paid their reporters miserable salaries. Even worse was the inequality towards police reporters without a professional degree, who were called empirical reporters. They were paid between 20 and 40 pesos per story or 1,500 to 3,000 pesos per month.
It is important to look at them: most of those murdered and disappeared in that period are empirical journalists. Of the 20 victims, only three had the opportunity to study journalism.
It is evident that politicians and media businessmen, generally belonging to the upper classes, the oligarchy or recently enriched, used the newspapers as instruments to obtain resources from the State.
Large amounts remained in their hands but did not imply better salaries for their workers. On the contrary, they dragged reporters and photographers to greater and greater risks as they were caught in the middle of ambitions, disputes and other people’s business.
Three victim journalists worked for Grupo Olmeca in the 2010-2016 period. Gabriel Fonseca and Sergio Landa, disappeared in 2011 and 2013, reporters at Diario de Acayucan and Diario Cardel; Gregorio Jiménez, murdered in 2014, reporter and photographer for Liberal del Sur.
Journalists who once participated with CEAPP think that improving conditions is almost impossible:
-We took a project to the state congress so that the agreements given by the state government to large media outlets would be supported by all media outlets paying them, professional salaries to reporters and giving them social security. That is the minimum we should have. And no parliamentary fraction wanted to enter, none of them.
3.d Extinction
At least 27 media outlets, almost all of them newspapers, closed in Veracruz around 2016, when the six-year term headed by Javier Duarte was coming to an end. Another 5 newspapers canceled print editions and migrated to be purely digital.
Some of those that closed are linked to politicians and it is public that they received significant amounts in official advertising agreements. For example AZ Veracruz, Milenio El Portal, Oye Veracruz and Capital Veracruz.
Government financing to the media can be so large that an example in the State of Mexico illustrates it: the businessman Luis Maccise Uribe, owner of Capital Media (Reporte Indigo, Efekto TV, among others), who in the period under study owned Capital Veracruz, openly announced to his workers that he would stop printing newspapers and would dismantle his radio and TV stations once he ran out of agreements.
Towards the end of the Duarte period, some journalists and directors protested in front of the government house demanding unpaid agreements, while from the public account a list was leaked with the specific debts that the administration had with media outlets, individuals and companies for official advertising.
It is evident that many media closed when the 2010-2016 government was shipwrecked and ended: the resources they received from the government were that important in their internal finances.
It is evident that agreements mark eras: there are media that are born when a six-year term begins and die with it.
4- Impossible scale: no law or limits, opacity
Scale is the relationship that exists between a dimension represented on a map and the actual size in the world. What will be the scale of the official propaganda agreements, how much money they allocated?
In the period 2010-2016, the state of Veracruz had no legislation or legal framework that delimited the allocation of public resources for advertising or official propaganda. Contracts, agreements and all kinds of official advertising could have any amount or recipient, the decisions were always at the discretion of officials and the office of social communication.
The situation was not exceptional since at the federal level only in 2018 a General Law of Social Communication was created as a regulatory basis and in 2022 a maximum cap of 0.1% of the annual expenditure budget of each state was set. It was an important advance but it was short-lived: in 2023 the cap was removed by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation when it invalidated the whole package of electoral reforms.
Although at a national level the first legal advances arrived in 2018, it seems that in Veracruz the rules to agreements advance with special slowness: only on March 15, 2021 the congress of that state approved a Social Communication Law that defines parameters. However, it does not establish the amount or percentage limit for agreements, advertising or official propaganda.
And thirteen years after the end of the government headed by Duarte, no documents have yet been made public that provide accurate data on the actual amount of money allocated to alleged official advertising. There are no lists, no certainties, much less contracts. Only small leaks in relation to the possible total.
We asked the authorities and they answered in the negative. We asked again when we were finishing this investigation. The last answer is especially revealing: there are no contracts nor will there be any because official advertising was never contracted but also everything is destroyed after a year and even if it existed we could not give it to them because it is classified information.
Textually, they say:
“By means of the present and in observation to the relative instruction and according to the request of the official letter N° cgcs/ut/084/2023 dated October 23, 2023, turned by you to answer the information requirement with folio number 301147623000023, I hereby inform you that, we DO NOT have the requested information.” (Government of Veracruz)
“In this regard, I attach herewith the official letter No. CGE/UAIP/271 dated May 29 of this year, signed by Mr. Pedro José Vargas Zarrabal, General Director of Integrity and Ethics of Public Servants of the Comptroller General’s Office, as well as the minutes of the fifth extraordinary session of the Transparency Committee of this agency, through which the information requested by you is classified as confidential.” (Comptroller’s Office of Veracruz)
“I hereby inform you that the information requested is NOT available since no advertising expenses were contracted” (Coordination of Social Communication).
The money and the names of those who took it are still a state secret.
The map is erased, it has no borders. Only silences remain.