Watchdog journalist unmasked corruption

Published 12:00 am Sunday, January 18, 2015

MEXICO CITY — Julio Scherer García, a newspaper and magazine editor who created a school of critical journalism that unmasked Mexico’s political corruption and helped lay the groundwork for the country’s democratic transition, died Jan. 7 . He was 88.

His death was announced by the magazine Proceso, which he founded in 1976. He had been treated for a gastrointestinal illness for two years, the magazine’s website said.

Over seven decades, Scherer defied Mexican presidents, shook up the newspaper culture by introducing political reporting and diverse opinion, and interviewed some of the world’s most notable figures — including John F. Kennedy, Zhou Enlai, Fidel Castro and Pablo Picasso.

But it was as the founder and editor of the weekly Proceso, an investigative magazine, that Scherer made his deepest mark. Its extensively documented articles broke the stranglehold on information imposed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed Mexico for more than 70 years through coercion, corruption and distribution of the spoils, including to owners of the more docile media.

Proceso published articles exposing the lavish homes built by Mexico City’s brutal police chief, Arturo Durazo Moreno, an emblematic figure of corruption in the 1970s, and the luxurious Acapulco hideaway of former President José López Portillo.

The magazine’s success emboldened other publications to become more independent, contributing to the PRI’s electoral defeat in 2000. Scherer helped train a generation of reporters who now work at Mexico’s top daily newspapers and emulate his hard questioning.

Scherer was born on April 7, 1926, in Mexico City. He studied law and philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, but dropped out to work as a messenger at one of Mexico’s main daily newspapers.

Scherer’s wife, Susana Ibarra Puga, died in 1989. He is survived by nine children and a number of grandchildren.