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By Root 1396 0

newspaper that a convoy of seven hundred soldiers and one hundred vehicles sweeps the area from Palomas to Casas Grandes. In Ascensión, they ransack the house of a friend, a guy who runs a pizza parlor. The friend is given the ley fuga, the traditional game of the military where they let you run and, if you can dodge the bullets, you live. His friend is mowed down in the street in front of his home. That night, twenty people vanish from the town and only one ever returns, a Chilean engineer who is saved by his embassy. The others simply cease to exist. The reporting of these events illustrates how the press functions: In his first story, Emilio mentions an army convoy sweeping the area. But in later stories about the killings and people vanishing, there is no army, simply armed commandos. That is how an honest reporter tries to avoid becoming a dead reporter.

He thinks, “This is behind me,” and he will put it out of his mind.

When the president of Mexico floods his zone with soldiers in April 2008, he learns the army has a long memory.

After midnight, on May 5, 2008, he hears a loud knocking on the door of his home. Fifty soldiers raid the house. Emilio screams, “Press, the Press from El Diario,” and a soldier says, “Hands up, asshole. On the ground!”

They tell him they are looking for guns and drugs, and separate him from his stunned son. When they leave, the commander advises him, “Behave well and follow our suggestions.”

On June 14, he steps out of his house and waters his small garden of squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers. He has a pear tree, also an apricot tree and three roses blooming pink and red. He is going to make his son breakfast, a task he enjoys. It is a Saturday. He notices five guys in a green pickup seventy yards away. They look like soldiers and they are watching him. But he is not certain because there is a store down the block where the soldiers come to buy cocaine, and so he thinks just maybe their presence has nothing to do with him. Then, they start the truck and cruise slowly past him. They are short, dark, and clearly from the south of Mexico. A while later, they come back, but this time in a white vehicle. And they park and watch his house.

Still, he thinks this cannot really be happening. He has behaved properly. Local drug people have offered him money, not to mention the tiendas selling cocaine.

He’s told them, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to pay me. I am not going to write about them.”

Besides, he knows that both the army and the police are involved in the local drug sales, so just who is he going to inform about these illegal businesses? Instead, he’s picked up his extra money by writing publicity releases and selling ads for the newspaper.

But he knows, “The hardest part of the job is to survive on the salary. That is why sobres exist.” It has been years since he completely trusted anyone he works with.

He goes inside and makes machaca with eggs for his boy. He tells his son that he is going to his office and that the boy should keep an eye on the house.

He reads the papers at his desk, then goes three blocks to the police station to talk to a drunk the police have arrested, the usual small moments of a small-town newspaper. Outside, the green pickup is back and watching him. He leaves his office around noon and stops by a friend’s welding shop. This time, he realizes the white vehicle is trailing him. Now he is worried, so he and his friend go to a little store, buy some beers, and return to the shop. There is a place nearby where people buy cocaine, and he sees a guy from the green pickup go in there and then come out. He does not like what he is seeing.

He calls home to make sure his son has showered, because he must be at church at 4 P.M. Emilio heads home and brings some food for his son. Then he returns to his friend’s welding shop. After a while, he goes out to get some more beers and now the white car is back. It pulls up right in front of the store he is in. Upset now, he calls his friend and tells him to come around to the back of the store. He escapes, and