Real Lydia Cacho June 2020
“We are all afraid. They fear losing the power they have won through oppression, economic violence and lies. We fear losing lives—our own and our loved ones’—for daring to rebel, to riddle our profession with coherence, for being honest in a country seduced by the illusion of magical realism that hides the tragedy of planned inequality, of systemic racism, of dehumanizing capitalism and structural sexism.“
Lydia Cacho, journalist
The following is how I imagine it to be, even as my erstwhile cultural critic asks me how a member of the white male patriarchy has the gall to think he can possibly imagine what Lydia Cacho is experiencing. It must feel lonely to reject all those asylum offers. Her dramatic career as an author, a human rights activist, and a political dissident is internationally recognized and the stuff of a suspense movie on location. Scene.
Lydia Cacho has a reputation for blowing the lid off a story. She often says, “Aqui nadie se rinde.“ Nobody here gives up. Her investigative report on the corruption of Laura Fernandez in 2017 proved seminal in Puerto Morelos, as I’ve written about before. No one else has been brave enough to publish since. So when Lydia says Nadie, she means Lydia, the one that never gives up. Just last year the bad guys broke into her secluded home outside Cancun, stole her computer, and killed her 2 precious rottweilers with poison. Today her whereabouts are unknown but she continues to publish.
Years earlier, in 2005, a Cancun pedophile ring was destroyed thanks to Cacho’s unconventional reporting. She assumed daring roles to gain entry to the violent world of the filthy rich, as she documented in Los Demonios del Eden, where she learned who the evil masters were, and she called them out by name.
Suddenly the routine threats and harassments of everyday life became political persecution. She was promptly seized by police at a women’s shelter she founded in Cancun, arrested and cuffed, tortured and threatened with rape or death, then summarily transferred to a different state, before ultimately learning that she faced charges of “defamation and calumny.“ She happened to offend one man in particular.
Jose Kamel Nacif Borge, known as the Denim King of Puebla, is one of Mexico’s richest men. His intimate association with high-rise owners in Zona Hotel came to light in Cacho’s book, yet the dungaree man’s associations ran deeper still. Indeed, the warrant on Lydia Cacho was signed by his friend Mario Marin, the ruthless Governor of Puebla. She faced a minimum of four years if found guilty by a judge, who likely would have been among Nacif Borge’s influential associates.
In 2006, while still sitting in jail awaiting her libel trial, a recorded telephone call came to light, which exonerated her and fueled a subsequent countersuit. It was between Borge and Marin, exchanging congratulations and thanks, with the Denim King promising the Governor “a nice bottle of cognac.“ The syrup sickens like a telenovela—outlandish yet never changing.
After her release, Lydia continued to impersonate prostitutes and nuns in pursuit of her stories, chronicling her ongoing mission to free the slaves. In 2014, she published Slavery Inc., her first book in English, in which she exposed illegal human traffic all over the world, from Cambodia to the Caribbean. She is familiar with the insidious network that includes American presidents, the British royal family, wolves of Wall Street, law school deans, the Vatican. She has been called Mexico’s Moses. Her fans hope their hero does not become a martyr to the cause, but it is never a good sign to be labeled “Dangerous Woman.“
Nevertheless, she takes on the oppressors with a messianic zeal. Her writing is raw and personal, necessarily so, as she explains: “To be a woman in this investigative field means having to become part of the ‘merchandise,’ and bait for the mafias, whereas a male journalist can pretend to be one of the ‘consumers.’“ Goodness knows how she is able to get those captive children to trust her, while eluding murderous men.
I remember thinking that it seemed highly risky when she collaborated with Kirk Semple of the New York Times, in 2016, and their story of an overnight mafia takeover of the Tulum waterfront produced a front-page sensation. However, this was before I knew Lydia’s history. In the two years since I’ve lived away from Puerto Morelos, my admiration has turned into something deeper, more raw and personal, a sort of shared struggle, experienced vicariously, from a safe social distance, in the magical reality of Mexico.
I should let Lydia describe the scene: “I look over my shoulder every time I turn a corner, to smell danger like someone sniffing red roses on an April afternoon.“ And action.