SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019 | MOTHER JONES 49has always been highly politicized.
During the Cold War, the United
States welcomed Cubans, Chinese,
Vietnamese, and people fleeing the
Soviet Union, but labeled most
Latin Americans as economic mi-
grants ineligible for asylum—even
as our proxy wars against commu-
nism forced hundreds of thousands
of Central Americans to flee from
their homes. Until 2017, the United
States accepted any Cuban who set
foot on American soil. To this day,
73 percent of Chinese asylum
seekers win their cases. But just
16 percent of Central Americans
convince judges to let them stay.
For Mexicans, it’s 11 percent.
Judges tend to deny most Mexi-
can and Salvadoran asylum seekers
in part because they’re not fleeing
the classic type of political perse-
cution; they’re escaping organized
crime in countries with demo-
cratically elected governments.
But Spector sees a glaring hole in
the logic of our current system. These are
countries, he believes, that are so corrupt,
so weakened by criminal organizations,
that no distinction exists between crime
and government, to the point where the
state’s failure to provide safety is a form of
political persecution. “There’s no such thing
as organized crime,” Spector says. “It’s au-
thorized crime”—and Méndez Pineda was a
perfect example.
the acapulco that Méndez Pineda knew
was not the resort city of cliff jumpers or
shrimp tacos by the bay. His grandmother
raised him in a barrio called Renaissance, one
of the poorest, most violent neighborhoods
in the city. “There is a saying here,” Méndez
Pineda says, “that if you grow up surrounded
by wolves, you can survive anywhere.”
Murders hummed at a familiar pace for
most of his childhood. Then, in 2010, federal
police arrested a leader in the Beltrán Leyva
drug cartel, and the hand guiding the blood-
shed disappeared. After the army failed to
contain the violence and even escalated the
chaos nationwide, President Enrique Peña
Nieto created a new force called the gendar-
merie. It was meant to be incorruptible.
Méndez Pineda spent most of his first
two years as a reporter driving from one
corpse to another. But February 22, 2016,
was a slow day, so when he heard about
a car that had lost its brakes and crashed
into a police truck, he grabbed his note-
book and camera. By the time he arrived,
officers had the driver in cuffs. The gendar-
merie, Méndez Pineda would later write,
stood the driver against a wall and “tried to
intimidate him with their weapons.” When
officers noticed Méndez Pineda taking pic-
tures, they demanded his camera. “I’m just
doing my job,” he said. As the cops sur-
rounded him, he tried to lighten the mood
with a smile. “What are you laughing at?”
an officer asked. “Just like you’re laughing
at me, I’m going to laugh at you.”
Méndez Pineda’s article published two
days later: “Gendarmerie Abuse and Vio-
late the Rights of Citizens.” At the urging
of colleagues, he filed a complaint with a
human rights commission. Soon after, he
answered a knock at his door. “Is it him or
not?” a voice shouted from the street while
six men pointed guns at him.
Méndez Pineda didn’t stay in town long
enough to investigate why they didn’t
shoot him. He fled for the state capital.
After officers found him, he ran 2,000 miles
north to a border city. Nine months passed
before his phone rang.
“You can’t hide,” a voice said, naming the
city where he now lived.He asked who was calling.
“Don’t play dumb.”
Reporters Without Borders connected
Méndez Pineda with Spector, who had
helped win asylum for four other Mexican
journalists. Spector’s best-known client is
Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, whose story Charles
Bowden told in this magazine in 2009. A
decade and many appeals later, Gutiérrez
Soto’s case was still pending. In immigra-
tion court, it’s not enough that his coun-
try’s soldiers threatened to kill him—judges
want witnesses, paper trails. Méndez
Pineda had that.
Spector called the case “perfect.”the credible-fear interview is the first step
in the asylum process. Méndez Pineda sat for
his on the morning of March 1, 2017, a month
after he crossed the border with Spector. The
Department of Homeland Security inter-
viewer asked why he’d left Mexico, and why
he couldn’t return. “The federal police are
everywhere,” Méndez Pineda said. Within
90 minutes, he’d passed his interview.
If Spector could get Méndez Pineda before
a judge, he planned to argue for asylum
based on persecution of political opinion.
Mexico was one of the deadliest countries
in the world for reporters, and Spector had
news clippings and (continued on page 62)The US-Mexico border in El Paso