Paris (AFP)

For journalist Mago Torres, winner of the Breach / Valdez Prize for a hands-on written survey of underground pits, collective work can help deal with violence in Mexico, one of the deadliest countries for the press.

Along with six other American and Mexican journalists, Mago Torres received this prize, the second edition of which was organized in May by the UN, UNESCO and Agence France-Presse, in tribute to journalists Miroslava Breach and Javier Valdez - collaborator of the AFP -, assassinated in 2017.

After more than a year of investigation, this team of independent journalists managed to list more than 2,000 underground mass graves across the country between 2006 and 2016, and present them on an interactive map posted on a dedicated website. "adondevanlosdesaparecidos.org" (in French: where are the disappeared).

In addition to journalistic work, the authors wanted to create a tool to help the families of some 40,000 missing persons in Mexico, based in particular on data collected from local authorities, told AFP journalist passing through Paris .

"This survey was conducted because we saw the pain of families who seek answers every day from the authorities, we wondered what we could do as journalists," he said. she.

"These explorations led us to work with public documents and when we began to make requests, we realized that there were problems in the process of documentation," says the journalist.

- 3,000 pits -

Prior to this investigation, the government had identified a little over 1,100 underground pits and about 26,000 unidentified corpses in the morgues. Thanks to a change of government, a report has just reevaluated these macabre statistics to more than 3,000 underground pits containing nearly 5,000 bodies.

"We must not lose sight that behind the numbers, there are people and families who seek them," says Mago Torres, still shaken by this investigation and installed in the United States since 2015.

"Covering a subject such as missing persons in Mexico, that means a lot when you're a journalist.Independent journalists are more and more numerous, traditional support structures fade and what remains is collective work", details the journalist whose investigation was funded by an NGO (Quinto Elemento Lab).

"By working together, we not only combine our professional knowledge or journalistic techniques, but also the way we care for each other," said the one who won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for another collective survey, that of famous "Panama papers".

"It goes from the most basic security techniques, such as keeping abreast of your travels, until you have spaces of dialogue to be able to share your emotions", via messaging groups like Whatsapp.

If they were never "all together in the same room" during the investigation, it pushed them to create communication and support strategies, she recalls.

The danger preventing them from investigating in the field is the exploitation of the data and the diversity of expertise that allowed this survey to succeed, the possibility of publishing it in various media adding a form of security, explains- she.

"Today, there is a new government that is much more involved in research on disappearances, and our survey serves as a baseline," she says.

The 41-year-old journalist from Mexico City began her career as a television documentalist before moving on to research and co-founding the "Periodistas de a pie" network, now part of the International Consortium. investigative journalists (ICIJ).

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for the press, with more than 100 journalists killed since 2000 amidst violence linked to drug trafficking and political corruption.

© 2019 AFP