Dissident Spotlight: Lydia Cacho
Lydia Cacho exposed a child pornography ring and has done other groundbreaking investigations in Mexico. Mexican authorities have not appreciated her work.

Corruption is endemic to Mexico’s political system. Political elites award money and power to loyal underlings. That corruption brought stability to Mexcio in the early 1900s, but it has remained a catastrophic source of dysfunction for modern Mexico.
Lyrida Cacho is one of the journalists who made a career out of uncovering and reporting on Mexican corruption. Her most high-profile investigations revealed sexual abuse against children by local and federal figures.
For example, her 2004 book Demons of Eden broke down a hotel owner’s role in a child pornography ring. That book came from her reporting on sexual abuse of minors she uncovered the previous year. It also named the politicians who protected the hotel owner from criminal charges.
She was arrested and charged with defamation as a result of her book. In 2007, she made her case to Mexico’s Supreme Court that the state had no cause to bring a case against her. The Supreme Court ruled against her 6-4.
The hotel owner was finally charged in 2011. Eight years after his crimes had first been reported, he received 112 years in prison for child pornography and child sexual abuse.
Ongoing Harassment
The Mexican government’s reaction to Cacho’s work is emblematic of the country’s approach to unpleasant truths. The government attacks the journalist who uncovers corruption rather than the journalist who uncovers sex crimes against children, identifies the people responsible for committing the abuse, and names the politicians covering it up.
Cacho is in PEN America’s Writers at Risk database for the continued harassment she faces for doing her job. PEN America recorded a breakin into Cacho’s home in 2019 and citizenship granted by the government of Spain to give her somewhere to flee.
She remains an active journalist and commentator on Mexican politics. In a column about Claudia Sheinbaum about two weeks before she took office as Mexico’s first female president, Cacho wrote:
“Sheinbaum backs the militarization of the law enforcement forces implemented by López Obrador [the former Mexican president] and has made it clear that she would continue to support the growing power of the Mexican Army in civil and public security tasks, despite the fact that police violence against women and journalists has increased by 33% with the militarization of the country. The president-elect argues that thanks to militarization, violence in Mexico has decreased, but official figures say otherwise. Mexico counts 10 femicides a day and 27,323 unsolved disappearances of girls and women.”
Cacho also pointed out that while Sheinbaum was Mexico City’s mayor, she oversaw a crackdown on women’s rights protestors on International Women’s Day. Cacho is clear-eyed enough to recognize the false feminism that Mexico’s first female president is running on.
It’s the kind of clarity that corrupt governments like Mexico’s routinely punish to protect power instead of ordinary people.