Murder in Oaxaca — We know who murdered independent journalist Brad Will. Why are his killers still
(Aug. 9, 2007) John Ross, a former resident of Arcata, has been the Mexico City correspondent for the San Francisco Bay Guardian for 22 years. He is the author of eight books on Mexican politics and has lectured extensively on Latin America on college campuses from Harvard to UC Berkeley. His book Murdered By Capitalism takes its title from the Trinidad gravestone of E.B. Schnaubelt.
This story was commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. It is appearing simultaneously in 20 papers across the country.
OAXACA — Those of us who report from the front lines of the social justice movement in Latin America share an understanding that there’s always a bullet out there with our names on it. Brad Will traveled 2,500 miles, from New York to this violence-torn Mexican town, to find his.
Throughout the summer and fall of 2006, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca was on fire. Death squads rolled through the cobblestone streets of this colonial state capital, the pistoleros of a despised governor, peppering with automatic weapon fire the flimsy barricades erected by masked rebels. Hundreds were killed, wounded, or imprisoned.
Will, a New York Indymedia video journalist, felt he had to be there.
Xenophobia was palpable on the ground when Will touched down. Foreign journalists were attacked as terrorists by the governor’s sycophants in the press: “ Si ves a un gringo con cámara, mátalo !” the radio chattered. “If you see a gringo with a camera, kill him!”
For much of the afternoon of Oct. 27, Will had been filming armed confrontations on the barricades just outside the city. He was trapped in the middle of a narrow street while gunshots boomed all around him, but he kept filming, looking for the money shot.
And he found it: On his final bits of tape, you see two killers perfectly framed up, their guns firing. You hear the fatal shot and experience Brad’s shudder of dismay as the camera finally tumbles from his hands and bounces along the sidewalk. Photos taken by El Universal , the Mexican newspaper, at the same time show the same gunmen, and they’re perfectly identifiable.
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