PEN ONE HUMANITARIAN AWARD Duration: 00:19:21
Earlier this week, Mexico's top-selling newspaper, E-l Universal, released this tally: cumulatively, twelve reporters, photographers, editors and radio hosts have been murdered in Mexico so far this year. That number -- and numbers from years past -- makes Mexico the most dangerous place for journalists to work in the Western hemisphere.
That's not news to Lydia Cacho.
Six years ago, Ms. Cacho wrote a series of articles for the local Cancun newspaper Por Esto. The articles examined allegations of child sexual abuse, made by social service organizations like UNICEF. Those organizations were claiming that some popular Mexican tourist destinations, including Cancun, were becoming centres for child pornography rings. Ms. Cacho's reporting was fearless -- she dug deep, and exposed high-level officials implicated in these rings.
A couple of years later, she published a book about her work entitled The Demons of Eden: The Power That Protects Child Pornography. And that book made her a target.
Eight months after its release, in 2005, Lydia Cacho was arrested. Police picked her up in Cancun and drove her from Cancun to a beachfront twenty hours away. They tortured her, and told her that, unless she retracted her allegations and renounced her book, she would die.
Today, the Mexican journalist is in Toronto to receive PEN Canada's One Humanitarian Award. PEN Canada is a not-for-profit organization that defends freedom of expression for writers and journalists around the world.
Lydia Cacho joined Carol in our Toronto studio, earlier today.
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