By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 2000 (IPS)

The Mexican newspaper ‘Excelsior,’ once considered a top daily in all of Latin America and now suffering debt and loss of prestige, has been in agony since the worker-owners threw out the board of directors.

The paper, founded in 1917, currently employs 1,500 people, but it has no more than a month of life left, a source close to ousted editor-in- chief Regino Díaz told IPS.

On Oct 20, amid blows and shouts, the members of the daily’s co- operative prevented Díaz from leading an assembly in which they were to discuss the sale or closing of the Excelsior, whose circulation fell in the last 10 months from 100,000 to 25,000 copies.

Díaz took over the reins in 1976 after the removal of Julio Sherer, a caustic critic of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governments. Now Díaz faces accusations by the workers of handing the Excelsior over to the government and wasting and embezzling the newspaper’s funds.

Members of the provisional board of directors, who said they were delighted to take the paper out of the hands of corrupt government minions, are now trying to raise funds through loans and contributions made in solidarity by other media. But the situation is in a downward spiral with no way out, said the Díaz source, who requested anonymity.

Among the more than 30 newspapers circulating in the Mexican capital, the Excelsior is the only one to maintain its original format and design. It has also been one of the media outlets to openly defend the positions of the long-governing PRI.

“A long and ignominious chapter in the history of the press and power in Mexico has come to a close. The new Mexican democracy has written the final word,” said historian Enrique Krauze in comments about the Excelsior situation.

The removal of Díaz is a result of the country’s democratic opening, of the victory of the political opposition and of the end of control over the communications media, said María Gómez, congresswoman for the conservative National Action Party (PAN).

The PAN’s Vicente Fox will take office as president of Mexico on Dec 1, bringing an end to 71 years of uninterrupted rule by PRI governments.

In the history of press freedoms in Mexico, the ousting of Sherer from the Excelsior, 24 years ago, has remained as a reference point for local journalists, as it underscores the iron grip the PRI had on the communications media.

The weekly news magazine ‘Proceso,’ which Sherer founded after leaving the Excelsior, said the removal of Díaz marked “the end of a disgrace.”

Writers for ‘Proceso,’ in several articles about the Excelsior case, used headlines such as “Vindication,” “The Return of Dignity,” “The Fall of a Usurper,” and “The Traitor Has Fallen.”

But, even though the Excelsior continues in circulation with its same format, its future is dark, moribund, sentenced its former chief editor, who in turn called the co-op workers who pushed him out “traitors.”

Díaz had hoped to sell the newspaper, which has debts reaching 30 million dollars, to an entrepreneur with ties to the PRI’s former presidential candidate, Francisco Labastida.

But the worker-owners prevented him from doing so, shoving and insulting Díaz as they replaced the board of directors to seek other ways to keep the newspaper alive.

“I think Fox had a hand in preventing the purchase from being finalised,” said the source, a Díaz supporter.

The Excelsior backed Labastida in the recent electoral campaign and sharply attacked Fox, who its editorial page several times referred to as “fascist.”

The outgoing board of the newspaper had asked the journalists to obtain official advertising in order to supplement – with commissions from the ad sales – their salaries.

This practice, once common among the media, led the daily to publish news that largely had an official bent.

Rooted in Mexico’s slow but steady political and economic opening, begun in the late 1980s, many local media outlets have broken the bonds of censorship and alignment with the PRI.

Currently, Mexico enjoys greater freedom of expression, though some problems persist and many journalists suffer threats and several are assassinated each year, according to a report by the Paris-based Journalists without Borders.

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