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Media and communities ignoring Mexico massacre

Fri 17 Jun 2016 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA

48 hours after GayNZ.com Daily News broke the news to our readers of the massacre at a gay bar in Xalapa, Mexico, English-speaking mass media and even the LGBTI media around the world are yet to acknowledge the tragic event in which many people lost their lives. On May 22nd, gunmen stormed into La Madame gay bar in Xalapa, in the state of Veracruz, and sprayed bullets into the crowd of 200 patrons. Unofficial reports and a raft of eye-witness accounts put the number of dead at around 15 people. Official sources say this number sits at 7 dead and 12 injured. Our New Zealand readership took notice of our first coverage of this event and our servers have been struggling to keep up with the resulting increase in traffic to our website. Our first news item, published on Wednesday evening NZT has, at the time this news story is being written, been shared 1707 times on Facebook from readers both here in New Zealand and around the world and yet there has been practically no media or public traction. While the world mourns for Orlando it seems to be turning a blind eye to the horrific event that took place in Xalapa, says journalist Sarah Murphy, who has been leading the GayNZ.com Daily News reporting. The only English-language media which have so far acknowledged the massacre are the alternative Latin media company Remezcla, a small scattering of nichemedia, including an online newspaper for the English-speaking community in the Yucatan Province of Mexico, and a small intersectional feminist media website. In Britain's mass-readership publication, The Guardian, two short paragraphs appeared at the bottom of a story highlighting the Mexican victims of the Orlando shooting that made passing mention to the shooting in Xalapa. A small AP-sourced item on Yahoo News at the time of the attack also briefly mentioned it. Then their reporters appear to have moved on. In the two days since those off-hand mentions there have been no more headlines and no further mention of the tragedy. The Spanish-language reporting of the Mexican mass shooting, although it featured in some of the large outlets, was downplayed.It also has to be noted that it took three weeks, after the Orlando shooting hit headlines, for English-language media outlets to hear about the shooting and acknowledge it, which also can be said of our own coverage. One of the world's most respected and well-resourced LGBTI media outlets, the USA's Advocate, currently has an online headline "All LGBT murders deserve our attention... " yet it too has not reported on the Mexico massacre. “It disturbs me greatly that this story is not being picked up by the English-language media around the world, and the gay media especially,” says co-publisher of GayNZ.com, Jay Bennie. “Gay lives matter, regardless of where they are and however powerful the country or well-known the city in which they are gunned down or otherwise killed is.” “The Mexican Government and media have downplayed this tragic event. No Eiffel Towers are being lit up for our Mexican  LGBTI brothers and sisters shot to death in a mass shooting, no flowers are being laid outside Mexican embassies, no candlelight vigils anywhere,” he says. "The western media and gay communities' silence is disgraceful." When a GayNZ.com Daily News reporter rang several Los Angeles gay, and hispanic gay, community centres late this morning no one there appeared to have heard of the Mexican tragedy. Bennie says GayNZ.com Daily News will continue to, with the resources available to us, work to cover this until now ignored massacre of gay people in the hope that bigger, better-resourced media pick up and run with it. [Editor's note: It would be helpful if someone fluent in Spanish and with a little time to offer would be able to assist in our continuing investigation. If you can help for an hour or so here and there please contact: news@gaynz.com]   20-year-old Luis Donaldo Rivera Calderón was one of those killed in the shooting at La Madame bar in Xalapa.    

Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff

First published: Friday, 17th June 2016 - 1:06pm

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