Voices of Democracy in Mexico Clamor for Greater Access to Data

With the battle for electoral democracy largely won, a new Mexican revolution is brewing--over access to information. That struggle could prove as tough as the fight for a fair ballot.

In a society where information has always been jealously concentrated at the top of the power pyramid, a movement is emerging to democratize information. Editors, academics and civic action groups are joining together to demand a U.S.-style freedom of information act. A bill is expected to be submitted to Congress within weeks.

Separately, proposals are moving forward to halt the tradition of manipulating news media through generous government subsidies to friendly newspapers and broadcasters--and punishing critics by withholding such favors.

The combination of free access to information and an end to government financial arm-twisting of the media could dramatically change the information landscape, as occurred in Spain after Francisco Franco’s dictatorship ended in 1975. Such reforms could reshape what Mexicans know about their government, and give people the tools to hold their leaders accountable.

“Lack of access to information fuels corruption and actually makes us have a lower quality of life,” said Ernesto Villanueva, a communications professor at the Ibero-American University who has joined the push for a freedom of information law.

He cited one minor example: Prospective used-car buyers can’t easily obtain information about vehicles from police records to ascertain that they aren’t stolen, “so we tend to buy from a friend if we can, or from a dealer, which adds an extra 15% to 20% to the cost.”

“Mexicans live through this daily; this is the same for all aspects of society,” Villanueva said.

Mexicans love to tell anecdotes about the lack of glasnost.

Homero Aridjis, a prominent writer, was researching the late U.S. author William S. Burroughs, who accidentally shot his wife to death in Mexico in 1951. Aridjis was repeatedly denied access to Immigration Department files. Then he tried the National Archives but was also turned away.

“Finally [the government archives] sent me a fuzzy, illegible photocopy of a newspaper story from 50 years ago. It was somewhere between inefficiency and censorship.”

“This is a very Mexican cultural issue,” Aridjis said. He recalled that, after the deadly earthquake in Mexico City in 1985, “the natural reaction of the government was to control the information--and to hide the death toll.”

Other cases: The government has never disclosed how many died in the October 1968 massacre of demonstrators by soldiers in Mexico City. Until last month, the Defense Ministry wouldn’t say how many troops are in the restive southern state of Chiapas. And the federal electricity agency refused to disclose how much power is stolen each year in Mexico by utility pirates.

Even those in power can’t always obtain seemingly routine information.

Javier Corral, a journalist turned politician, said that two years ago he asked the offices of Cabinet members for their daily agendas. At the time, Corral was a member of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. Yet he was rebuffed or given lame excuses by most Cabinet offices.

Corral, now a senator and chairman of the Communication and Transportation Committee, is pushing for a U.S.-style freedom of information law and says he will submit one if President Vicente Fox’s administration doesn’t do so by the end of the legislative session April 30.

“Information is power, and if information is concentrated in a few hands, then power is concentrated,” he said. “If information is shared, then power is more fairly distributed.”

Corral, from the president’s center-right National Action Party, or PAN, says that Fox’s election victory in July doesn’t mean that democracy has permeated every aspect of Mexican life. The culmination of a decade of hard-won electoral reforms, the vote ended 71 years of one-party rule sustained in part by pliant media.

“Guaranteeing access to information is a key issue in fully dismantling the old regime,” he said. “We must not allow our new governors to fall into the same temptation of manipulating information. This is a natural tendency of any ruler.”

The closed-door habits reach throughout the government. The judicial branch is particularly guarded, withholding trial information and explanations of verdicts. And Corral noted that the legislature itself is guilty; committee debates on crucial public issues such as the current indigenous rights legislation are often kept private.

Roberto Rock, editor of the respected daily Universal newspaper in Mexico City, launched a campaign last month for a package of legal reforms, including freedom of information. The tradition of secrecy runs deep, Rock said. He recalled a case in which a reporter asked the government to disclose the salary of the Mexican president. The written answer came back with one word: “No.”

Francisco Barrio, a former Chihuahua state governor who is Fox’s auditor general, has acknowledged the scale of the problem. In a recent radio interview, he said that “90% to 95% [of government information] is closed, which means the population does not get to know what happens in these offices.”

One proposal issued by the Mexican editors could undermine the interests of at least some media outlets. That proposal would require the government to disclose in detail all of its advertising spending, and to base that spending on clearly established criteria of circulation, specialization of the publication and relevance of the advertising in the promotion of culture and community service.

Government promotional advertising is so deeply ingrained in the national communication culture that no one seems to advocate stopping it altogether. Instead, there is a move to stop the abuse of this indirect form of subsidies, opening the spending to scrutiny and basing it on clear and fair rules.

If adopted and enforced, such a law would undermine the infamous tradition of government payouts to friendly media in the form of advertising.

A fierce battle in Sonora state illustrates one example. Legislators from the PAN in November got hold of checks worth $1.4 million paid over 10 months to a newspaper called El Independiente that, despite its name, is widely described as a mouthpiece of the once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

In a relentless investigation of the case, the rival and genuinely independent El Imparcial newspaper noted that the subsidies surged just after the former owner of the Independiente was harassed into exile by the state government in 1999, allegedly so the paper could be taken over by PRI sympathizers and used to promote PRI candidates in last year’s elections.

The rival paper noted that the subsidies paid to El Independiente during the period were higher than the budgets of 52 towns in the state.

If Mexico truly moved to a system in which government advertising was paid to media based on circulation and other clear criteria, the result could be like that in Spain after democracy returned in the 1970s--and two-thirds of the newspapers shut down.

Mexico City newsstands now offer readers the choice of more than a dozen local newspapers, many of them seemingly never bought by anyone.

Rock said the media support evolved with the founding of the PRI in 1929. “The system conceived of the media as an extension of the public administration, like in Russia. . . . It was not an issue of corruption but of culture. In Mexico, the system was prosperous for all.”

The PRI wasn’t the only culprit. Fox’s PAN and the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party are also known to have used advertising judiciously, especially at the state level.

“All political parties here tend to be censors, tend to be very PRI-ish in terms of seeking control over the media,” Rock said.

Even before a law on government advertising is passed, the executive and legislative branches have taken steps to end past abuses.

Last month, the Interior Ministry issued to all government departments guidelines covering advertising contracts. Congress also is moving to impose accountability for government advertising.

Heidi Storsberg, a federal deputy who heads the lower chamber’s broadcasting committee, said that even before any transparency laws are passed, the budget would be revised this year to require close monitoring of the government’s use of air time. Furthermore, all government departments will be required to provide details on advertising and other spending, she said. The amounts involved are huge: The total government communication budget last year was $360 million.

Corral, the senator, said: “In Mexico, access to data, to meetings, to archives, is secret. Only the exceptions are public. We want to reverse this, so that only the exceptions are secret.”