On the first weekend of August, a series of rumors shook up the state of Zacatecas and, after its dissemination on several national media, the whole country as well. Through social networks it was reported that after three consecutive nights of fights between alleged members of two rival cartels in three state municipalities, almost half a hundred individuals were dead. Immediately, Governor Miguel Alonso Reyes disregarded the information. Likewise, the Zacatecas’ Inter-institutional Coordination Group on Security, composed by local and federal security and justice procurement authorities, denied the events. Meanwhile, the state’s Attorney General, Arturo Nahle, stated that there were violent facts but only resulted in two deaths. In the act of contradictory versions, how can one distinguish what is real? And, given the case, what makes a rumor’s “virality” so powerful?
Certainly, it is undeniable that Zacatecas also suffers from the insecurity crisis happening throughout the country. When talking about trafficking among cartels, the aforementioned state is a part of the centric route that begins in the Central American Border and ends on Ciudad Juárez, without mentioning the gateway that comes from Colima and Michoacán towards the Southern U.S. The dispute for these drug roads makes the state an easy victim for violence among crime groups. However, there is no harsher reality than hard data, that is to say, the number of legal complaints whose investigation ends with the ascertainment of facts. We know that in Mexico, people do not file complaints out of fear of criminal revenge and if crime occurs between groups linked with drug trafficking, its registry becomes even more complex. Thereby, the vicious circle boosted by the lack of lawsuits, the frequent temptation of using sensationalism to belittle authorities and the lack of trust that general population has on justice procurement institutions are all factors for a scenario in which speculations rise or untrustworthy criminal indexes.
In the face of this setting, it is difficult to know what is actually truth and what is fiction when rumors are spread regarding shootings, assaults, roadblocks, kidnappings and similar crimes. Paradoxically, this is aggravated whenever authorities and media try to artificially diminish the insecurity perception among citizens, for instance, through pacts of non-dissemination of crime-related events – like the currently forgotten Agreement for News Coverage on Violence in 2011. Media self-censorship – which in many cases is not a product of an agreement with authorities but of fear of criminal vendettas – might be a double-edged sword, given that it also boosts the citizens’ lack of trust by not giving certainty of the information it receives. These reserves might empower social networks, especially when the control over their content’s dissemination – whether they’re true or false – is, for the moment, an impossible task. The problem is when these kinds of networks are hailed and given a legitimacy that, in which several cases, certainly lack of.
What is true is that there is a reality marked by insecurity and violence, contaminated likewise by the lack of trust in authorities, media and, in some cases, even at one’s own neighbor. This scenario allows society to slip from one extreme to another in an unstable platform that goes from the psychosis of a rumor to the indifference typically associated with a perpetuation of crisis. Mexico is at a critical point and it is no longer possible to waste time on palliatives. A solution is required now.
CIDAC
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