These images you will see are Mexico's everyday life since 2006
when president Felipe Calderon declared the war on drugs.
Soldiers and policemen took the streets to fight the drug trade with guns.
The criminals responded with military weapons, and this ignited a territorial war until now.
Then, I was a normal journalist covering poverty issues.
Before I knew it I was covering mass murders and reporting about mass graves.
Violence has changed my life, as well as the lives of millions of Mexicans.
I interviewed people who had been tortured by the military
and parents whose children had been summarily executed.
I was contacted by terrified displaced families who were incapable of pronouncing what happened to them.
I participated in group therapy sessions for orphan children sharing their nightmares.
Once I met thirty women. They came to me with pictures of their missing sons.
They wanted to tell their stories. At that moment I thought I could not interview them.
It was really painful, but I did it. I choose this path during these years, looking for the missing people.
As for me, all of a sudden we Mexican journalists had become war correspondents in our own country.
When president Calderon's period finished we counted 102,000 people killed.
27,000 thousand have gone missing.
Hundreds of thousands people have been displaced
and an untold number people had been wounded, crippled, orphaned or widowed.
Suddenly, with Enrique Penas Nieto's government, those few years magically disappeared.
Violence went down. It was hidden as if by a hat trick.
We understand that the main reason for this war is not drug trade but territory.
This war is about control, control of the population, control of information.
More than eighty journalists have been murdered or disappeared in the last eight years.
They don't die in crossfire or because they step on a mine like they would in a traditional war.
In Mexico journalists are being hunted, at their offices, on the streets, at their homes, in front of their families.
For fear of losing their lives, dozens have abandoned their home towns.
They seek refuge in other states of Mexico or apply for asylum in other countries.
Some of them used to be investigative journalists.
Now they sell hot dogs, mow lawns or clean schools in the United States.
Their silence have guaranteed impunity.
The threats, torture, disappearance, attacks and murders of journalists always go unpunished.
Inspite of this, Mexico's federal government announced in international forums that it has
built a mechanism to protect journalists, a law that turns into federal crimes every attack against journalists.
But the law is only good on paper. In reality we have proven that it doesn't work.
In today's Mexico, doing journalism is like walking on quicksands. It is hard to know where the danger lies.
In some areas, government officials are part of the organized crime.
And when you interview them you don't know who you are talking to.
Corruption is the signature of this tragedy. Mexican reporters are trapped between several fires.
The one imposed by drug lords who dictate the rules and punish who do not comply.
Or government censorship, which buys the silence of the media to prevent investigative journalism.
Or censorship from owners of the media outlets who manipulate the information
to avoid losing government privileges, thus becoming accomplices.
When the press is submitted to the fact of powers
people lose their right to be informed and learn not to trust journalists.
People died and nobody knows.
There are not reports of the towns where bus passengers
are randomly murdered, of the hundreds of young men
who disappeared on the highways and are forcibly recruited by the drug cartels.
Why the violence is magically disappearing from the news cycle
thanks to the shift in government propaganda.
In their desperation, people are using social media to tell their stories. Some citizens paid for this with their lives.
When we reporters realized that we were alone, that the government won't protect us
we created solidarity and training networks
like the one I co-founded with other colleagues called Periodistas de a Pie, Journalists On Foot.
We started by organizing courses to help us come back safely
from covering danger zones, or encrypt sensible information
or techniques to be emotionally healthy, to keep our souls clean in such horrors.
There were times when we became a crisis center, receiving calls from our colleagues in panic
begging for help because of a news report that upset someone.
One of the SOS calls we received was for the disappearance of Gregorio Jimenez De La Cruz
a reporter from the state of Veracruz.
He was kidnapped in February. Five armed men pulled him out of his house right in front of his family.
That same day brave journalists took the streets, demanding the government to find him.
All around the country many protested in support. His body was found a week later.
Gregorio was a common reporter. He made less than $2 per new reports.
He had several jobs because the money he earned was not enough to support his family.
He had no health insurance, no labor rights.
In the little town where he lived, he reported on the lack of basic services, troubles at bars and kidnappings.
A subject that somebody tried to silence.
Some journalists in response to his death travelled to Veracruz to do research on his murder.
For three days we were locked in a hotel, interviewing journalists
who felt they were being watched by drug lords
or powerful politicians who demand their silence.
We prepared a report on the death of Gregorio, to pull him out of the mass graves
in which the silencers meant to keep him buried.
We did what journalists know how to do, and must do.
We performed an investigation, that is what we want to keep doing
to bring life to the places where silence prevails
to make the duty of the silencers more difficult.
What we need is to ensure that anyone who is being threatened
can continue doing their work, and don't have to leave the country.
It's dangerous; by now it's impossible to hide that in several areas of Mexico narco-politics is in charge.
In the last month, we have just seen its most brutal face
when a local police force attacked students. They killed six people.
One was found flayed and without eyes. The police detained 43 others.
Since then, they are missing. We know that these police agents handed them to a local cartel.
Some versions say the students were burned alive, their bodies buried.
Once again I had to visit mass graves, looking for bodies.
I met parents crazy from the pain, searching for their sons.
The Mexican state is searching too, but only more mass graves with more bodies are found.
In just one day, were 28 bodies, not the missing students.
No one knows who these people were.
Those bodies are the clandestine graveyards of which Mexico has been filling
those that the local press cannot talk about.
They appear as if they were claiming for justice.
One of the more recent crisis was the discovery that the Mexican army massacred 22 young people.
The official report was that they were killed in combat, but in reality they were executed.
A journalistic research denounced the crime.
Investigations as this change the course of history, the human rights violations happening in my country.
For these reasons, this what we need; independent investigative teams that bring light to the dark songs.
Teams that research the crimes committed against the people.
More colleagues to shout the names of the killers and to insist that the impunity comes to an end.
Investigate without fear of ending up in a ditch.
This is not only about defending liberty of expression - it's about the citizens' right to be informed.
This is our fight against silence, this is our fight for life.
Thank you.