"[2] Under the current Mexican Constitution, both freedom of information and expression are to be protected under the legislation from Article 6, which states that "the expression of ideas shall not be subject to any judicial or administrative investigation, unless it offends good morals, infringes the rights of others, incites to crime, or disturbs the public order,"[3] and Article 7 which guarantees that "freedom of writing and publishing writings on any subject is inviolable.
[11] She had openly raised concerns about her life during legal proceedings with a prior governor, illustrating the lack of protections even for people covered by government safety programs.
[14] Mexico’s poor performance on these indices is a direct result of the combination of criminal violence, political corruption, and the lack of effective legal and institutional responses.
The history of censorship in Mexico can be traced to the extension of inquisitorial practices from the Spanish Inquisition[15] into Spain's New World territories in North, Central and South America.
[17] Although there are constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, the reality is government control of media and continued silencing of journalists through violence and self-censorship due to intimidation.
The Holy Office of the Inquisition established by decree of King Philip II in 1569 created a centralized institution in Mexico to ensure religious orthodoxy.
Leaders of both periods maintained the aim of silencing individuals who spoke out against the Catholic Church or its practices and made their mission the institution of uniform spiritual and social order.
Unique to this early period were censorship efforts that focused more directly on countering the heretical speech of groups that would later fall outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Office upon its codification in the 1570s.
[21] Prior to the creation of a formal tribunal, Inquisitional efforts were carried out by mendicants in monastic trials (1522-1534) and then by bishops who served as ecclesiastic judges (1535-1571).
[21] These early monastic inquisitors focused their attention disproportionately on indigenous cases of idolatry and blasphemy and modeled their investigations and trials on informal structures they had assumed from medieval tradition.
[23] Smaller instances of idolatry that did not find themselves at the center of public burnings constituted the bulk of early censorship efforts against indigenous people and the zeal with which the Spanish perused non-Christian idols were rooted in their concern of exerting social order over an unfamiliar religion they did understand.
[24] The bishop led ecclesiastic Inquisition that followed this early monastic period was similarly active in its prosecution of the recently converted indigenous people of Mexico.
Although these bishops led Inquisitions did not prosecute a large number of indigenous Mexicans before formal tribunals, they did often extend their trials further than colonial oversight in Spain would have preferred.
[21] Despite the Bishop being unable to solicit a testimony that Don Carlos had explicitly practiced the more grave offence of idolatry and idol possession, he was executed for speaking out against the Church.
[19][25] In fact, it was this extreme treatment of indigenous people and dissenters of the Church that would lead to the formal establishment of the Holy Office in Central America in 1571, after the decree of Phillip II in 1569.
[19] The main differences being the religious nature of the investigations and the fact that the inquisitor, who served as the judge in the final trial, was also the one who would initially gather evidence against the subject.
[18] It remained controversial for people to speak out against the Church and as a result suspected heretics could be brought before the tribunal if they aroused the suspicion of their neighbors, friends or Holy Office Officials.
[26] For example, in a 1655 investigation of the private library of colonial Mexican architect Melchor Perez de Soto, the Holy Office confiscated 1,592 books and permanently impounded many that did not even appear on the Index because they were written in Flemish and could not be formally reviewed by the local Inquisition.
In instances such as this, the Mexican Inquisition had full discretion over what it would and would not allow under its jurisdiction and the boundaries of its own localized censorship gave it rather complete control over the intellectual life of its subjects.
After the great auto-de-fé of 1649, an event that found 109 people guilty under the tribunal's codes (13 of which were put to death), the focus of the Inquisition in Mexico shifted from spectacle punishments to more mundane enforcement of smaller offences.
[29] Anything from dramatic scripts to Protestant icons that made their way across the ocean and arrived in Mexican ports became subject to searches similar to those of illicit books banned on the Index.
[30][31] The Constitution's liberal changes quickly made their way to Mexico but were not initially influential due to colonial officials' present concern over the insurgencies of Miguel Hidalgo and other revolutionaries.
[32][16] Further, in 1839 then interim president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna issued a proclamation that allowed his government to pursue and apprehend authors whose works it deemed salacious, investing itself with the power to imprison journalists without the use of a jury.
The culture of repression surrounding decrees like Santa Anna's were pervasive enough to keep writers from signing their work out of fear of being investigated: a problem that became so widespread that in 1855 President Ignacio Comonfort made it illegal to publish anonymously.
[16] The 1857 Constitution signified a turning point for government censorship of expression and ushered in a more liberal conception of free speech than had existed in the first half of the 19th century.
[16] The press juries consistent use would be delayed until the French Occupation of Mexico ceased, and the Law of 2 February was successfully implemented through an identical text in the 1868 modification to the Constitution.
[16] The rise of Porfirio Díaz in the late 1870s and his subsequent seven terms as president would see freedom of the press and speech censored mainly through threats of violence directed at newspapers and reporters.