The farce of protection
The remains of Edith Guadalupe Valdés Zaldívar are already underground. Private ceremony, as is usually the case when the State fails and wants to turn the page quickly. They found her lifeless in the basement of a building at Avenida Revolución 829.
But this wasn’t just any building. It was an official shelter of the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists. The same system that should safeguard lives.
Irony hurts more than any bullet.
“That building is very protected; there was always more than one guard in the booth,” journalist Luis Cardona, who lived there, explained to EL UNIVERSAL.
Cardona knows the mechanism well. He was kidnapped and tortured in 2012 in Chihuahua. He survived, but lost everything: home, family, normal life. After questioning former President López Obrador in 2019, he received death threats and entered the protection program.
A security labyrinth… useless
Cardona’s story describes an apparent strength:
- Access controlled by cameras and electronic lock
- Mandatory access cards for residents and elevators
- Three cameras in the basement where the body was found
- Constant monitoring from a guardhouse
- Income between 24 and 30 thousand pesos per month
“I went out to sunbathe on the terrace to breathe… I felt very safe, for me the security was very effective,” declared Cardona, who now bitterly regrets those words.
But all that paraphernalia was revealed as theater. Someone entered the basement and murdered Edith Guadalupe. The protocols either failed or never really existed.
Negligence has its own name.
“The prosecutor’s offices are corrupt, whoever is located there, but everyone knows and the authorities that provide protection to these groups,” Cardona openly accused.
His complaint goes further: he has experienced the same negligence that the victim’s family suffered. The mechanism that should protect them keeps them in perpetual limbo.
The price of telling the truth
Cardona’s current life is the portrait of institutional failure:
- He lives “in a prison” according to his words
- He cannot go out or see his family for safety reasons
- Suffers from paranoia, stress, night terrors and insomnia
- Receive psychological care via Zoom as digital comfort
- His house has cameras connected to the Government, steel bars and surveillance by the National Guard
- Their media “Diario 19” is inactive due to lack of resources to pay for hosting
“Now I live in a prison,” the journalist crudely summarizes.
His protection expires in June 2026. The clock is ticking against him as he asks prosecutor Ernestina Godoy to review his folder: “I already gave them a phone number,” he says about his identified attacker.
Memory is the only thing that remains.
Luis Cardona’s story was captured in “I am number 16”, a short film that won the Gabo Award in 2016. A testimony that should have been warning enough.
But here we are: another body, another failed shelter, another broken promise. The mechanism protects papers, not people. And journalists continue to pay with their freedom – and sometimes with their lives – the price of practicing their profession.
