Checking in on Emilio Gutiérrez Soto

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It’s been nearly a year since Mother Jones published our cover story on the plight of exiled Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, and in that time the Mexican drug war death count has soared to 23,000 since President Calderón launched his war on the cartels in December of 2006. Emilio’s home state of Chihuahua has been the hardest hit, with an estimated 6,757 people killed. While Emilio is still waiting for his asylum trial, the stats don’t look good: of the 13,000 asylum claims from Mexico filed over the past three years, only 232 have been granted. Emilio is again working for his long-time employers, El Diario, in their El Paso office, where PBS’s excellent new show (and Climate Desk partner) Need to Know checks in on him:

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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