If anyone understood the beauty and contradictions of Mexico, it was the late independent reporter, activist, poet, John Ross. Ross covered social movements in Mexico and Latin America for nearly half a century.
He authored 10 nonfiction books, 10 books of poetry, as well, before he died in 2011. Now a new book captures some of the lectures Ross gave to journalism students to teach them how to cover stories and create change. It’s called Rebel Reporting: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists.
In lecture one, the first chapter of the book, John Ross writes, “A good rebel reporter doesn’t just take notes on rebellion. A good rebel reporter incites rebellion, makes people angry, encourages organization, offers them hope that another world is possible. A rebel reporter is a participant in rebellion or resistance or revolution or whatever you want to call the struggle for social change. Like the Zapatistas, our words are our weapons,” he said.
Norman Stockwell talking:
John had done these lectures initially in San Francisco at New College. He developed this series for journalism students. And he then traveled around the country and did them in several other places, including here in Madison. And he said, “I want to publish these.” And his original title for the book was Handing It Down: Four Lectures on Rebel Journalism. We kept that in the book, but the main title becomes Rebel Reporting, which is how he talks about the craft. So, he wanted to produce this as a book. We looked for a publisher, and then John tragically passed away five years ago in January. And I—for me, it became a mission to bring this book out. And I had a great crew of people working on it, including an introduction by yourself, a foreword by Bob McChesney, who was on earlier this morning, and some wonderful contributors that helped put this book together.
JOHN ROSS poem.
The Midnight Special
burrows into the bowels of
the North American nightmare
like a sleek silver tapeworm
consuming the body fat of
the most overstuffed nation on earth.
The rules for travel
are posted at the terminals:
Report all suspicious activities.
Do not leave luggage unattended.
Protect your back at all times
from suicide bombers,
Homeland Security,
GMO corn, AIDS, Anthrax,
The Anti-Christ.
the New York Times.
I scratch out a map
in a wilderness of white paper
that bloodies the nation
with crimson headlines
from sea to stinking sea.
I can no longer parse the horror.
The scales have fallen
from my snake eyes
and the serpent has shed its skin.
There is no one lie
worth dying for.
Ir al lugar de los hechos,
Go to the place where it happens.
This is the first rule of the finding.
They will not want you there
but you will learn much
from their fury.
Write it all down
right away in your head.
Do not let the details leak out
no matter how badly
they beat you.
Do not forget their faces.
Do not believe everything
they say. Do not believe
anything you read.
“Journalism.”
John’s always—his style was to go to the bottom, to go to the people that were affected by the policies of the corporations, of the politicians, and tell their stories, to give voice to those unrepresented and underrepresented voices. So, in 1985, when the earthquake occurred in Mexico City, instead of going to the large hotels where a lot of the other reporters were, in the unaffected parts of the city, he moved into the central historic district of Mexico, which was very affected by the earthquake. He moved into a hotel called the Hotel Isabel, took up a room there and lived there for most of the rest of his life. And from the Hotel Isabel, he covered the day-to-day life of the people of Mexico after the earthquake, the movement of people rising up, calling for government services in response to the earthquake. And then, of course, the Zapatista uprising in 1994 and all of the other things that affected the people of Mexico, telling their stories to a global audience.
John Ross said,
“These are hot-button issues in the U.S. press—immigration and drugs. Washington uses these issues to pressure Mexico, to win concessions, and they’re not necessarily concessions in terms of the drug war or immigration at all. They look at security, and they look at economy, and basically energy, you know? Washington wants to see Mexico privatize its oil industry, Pemex. And so, they utilize this pressure that comes from immigration, comes from the drug war, in order to win those concessions.
Washington wants greater control over Mexico’s security apparatus, so they use things like the ASPAN, the security and prosperity agreement, to be able to—which would integrate security forces throughout the entire continent under Washington’s control. They use things like the North Command, which now penetrates Mexico’s airspace, because Mexico has been declared the southern security perimeter of the United States.
So those are the two aims of Washington at this point: to gain control over the Mexican security apparatus and the privatization of Pemex. And all of this Mexico bashing that comes out of immigration and comes out of the drug war is really directed at that. And that’s how the White House has operated in Mexico as long as I’ve been there and much longer than I’ve been there.”
I think that, you know, what John’s commitment was to the everyday people of Mexico, he would go to places where no one else was, and he would ask everyday people, the workers, the families, you know, “What’s going on here?” And that’s how he would tell the story, and that’s how he responded to all of these global issues, was to go to the bottom and look up.
When we put this together, we wanted to include something for students, because really what I hope for this book is that this will become, you know, a recommended reading for journalism students across the country. And so, Catherine Komp of Free Speech Radio News and Laura Brickman, who is an intern at WORT, and I put together this appendix. It’s web links, it’s resources. It’s something to basically take what you’ve learned in these lectures and get going and go out and do it yourself.
___________________________
Norm Stockwell
operations coordinator with WORT community radio in Madison, Wisconsin, and co-editor of the book Rebel Reporting: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists.
— source democracynow.org