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Amanpour
Demanding Justice in Mexico; Bringing War Home; Imagine a World
Aired November 14, 2014 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: fury on the streets of Mexico over 43 missing students. My exclusive with Mexico's
ambassador to the United States. It is the first time the government has met the press on this brutal crisis.
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EDUARDO MEDINA-MORA, MEXICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: This is a wakeup call, the reality is there. We have to face it. But we have the
understanding, the map, the road map to actually do this and the political will.
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AMANPOUR: Plus in this week of week of remembrance, memories from the battlefield. The photojournalist who risked his life to capture the
world's most difficult wartime invasion and the extraordinary man who got those pictures onto the front page, John G. Morris joins me in the studio.
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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to a special weekend edition of the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
It has been called the massacre of the innocents and it has shocked and shamed Mexico: 43 student teachers kidnapped and brutally murdered by
a criminal gang with close ties to local government officials.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): The fact that these gangs could act with impunity, seemingly in collusion with corrupt police and other officials,
has provoked a furious reaction in Mexico and an acute political crisis for the country.
In one city, firefighters had to tackle a blaze set by protesters at the headquarters of the ruling party. The international reaction has been
no less outraged; even the pope weighing in at his weekly audience at the Vatican.
POPE FRANCIS (through translator): I wanted somehow to express my closest to the Mexicans who are here and those back home, in this painful
time for an illegal disappearance. But we know it was a murder, a murder of the students. But the dramatic reality of all the crime that exists
behind drug trafficking becomes evident.
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AMANPOUR: Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Eduardo Medina- Mora, tells me that this is a wakeup call for his country. It's the first interview that a Mexican government official has given since this major
crisis erupted two months ago.
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AMANPOUR: Ambassador Medina-Mora, welcome to the program.
Thank you very much, Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Very, very difficult times for you and for your country people and the fury continues to be felt on the streets and it is
reverberating around the world.
This is a big political crisis for the president, isn't it?
MEDINA-MORA: It is a big political crisis for Mexico. We are all outraged by these brutal events and the only feeling that we can have is to
share this sorrow and pain from the parents of these students who are still missing.
AMANPOUR: And let me ask you because one of the things that no one can really understand is the state of crime and injustice in Mexico.
First and foremost, why did it take 10 days for the federal authorities to launch an investigation?
MEDINA-MORA: Well, first of all, it didn't take that long. Federal authorities went into the scene right away to take control of the security
circumstance. We deployed federal forces in 15 municipalities of the State of Guerrero right away.
And of course, Mexico is a federal system. You have to understand that we have different competencies, different areas of jurisdiction
between the state and the federal.
When this case were surrendered to the federal because it was linked with organized crime, then the formal investigation was started. But the
federal prosecutor started cooperating with the local prosecutors of the State of Guerrero from day one.
AMANPOUR: Nonetheless, people watching think that it took too long, despite your various administrative issues. And clearly the parents think
it's too long.
And we have all sorts of pictures, which I'm sure you've seen as well, obviously, YouTube video taken of the parents during a meeting with the
president, asking for more competence, more searches, you know, really wanting to see a much more dramatic involvement by the government.
What are you telling the parents now?
Because they say, listen, we saw our children alive and we want to get them back alive.
MEDINA-MORA: We have 10,000 people deployed on the terrain as we speak, searching for these students actively. We have a very clear path of
investigation. We have a hypothesis that actually shows that it might be the case that they are there, that they have been killed.
But we are not stopping the search here. The investigation is an open one. And we are actively searching for these students with 10,000 federal
officers in that area as we speak.
And of course, the parents are just entitled to get a response from authorities, both at the local, at the federal level and we are deploying
every single means at our reach to do that.
AMANPOUR: Can I play for you something that is still shocking all these days later? The words of the attorney general of Mexico describing
what he believes and what you have decided is the murder of these 43 students, the brutality of it.
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JESUS MURILLO KARAM, MEXICAN ATTORNEY GENERAL (through translator): Those detained pointed out that they deprived of their lives the students
and then they threw them to the lower part of the dam and they buried the bodies and they spent their hours on the watch, throwing tires, wood,
plastic and fuel for hours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: I mean, the cold-blooded, brutal murder of these 43 students.
I guess, Ambassador, your reaction to that and also to -- you know, I ask myself, how can a country watch 43 students brutally murdered like this
simply because they got in the way of the ambition of the wife of a local politician?
How is it possible?
MEDINA-MORA: This is brutal. This is inhumane. This is unacceptable. We need, of course, to respond to this from the basic
sentiment that we share with the parents.
We certainly devote every single resource in our reach to face this.
This is, of course, a circumstance that is very unacceptable in the State of Guerrero. We certainly face this with every single tool at our
reach in order to impede this to happen again.
And of course, to go after the perpetrators, we have so far detained 73 people, 36 local police officers, the mayor and his wife, the head of
the criminal group and a few members of this group. We are still searching for many more. And these shall not remain impugned.
And we will, of course, see that the full force of the law is faced by these people that perpetrated these crimes.
This is unacceptable and we are certainly sharing the sentiment of the parents of these students.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Ambassador, I hear you loud and clear. You say you will use every tool at your disposal.
But here's the problem. First of all, the people don't trust this. And I'm not sure why they should trust this because, by Mexico's own
statistics -- and we have these statistics -- 93.8 percent of crimes in Mexico were unreported or uninvestigated in 2013, last year.
So does President Pena Nieto have to change the way of accountability and the way of justice in Mexico?
MEDINA-MORA: Christiane, this is a wakeup call for all of us in the shortcomings of our institutional advancement, particularly in states like
Guerrero.
We have advanced a lot. But it is very clear that we are not yet where we need to be in terms of responding to the basic obligation of the
state, which is to provide certainty to all the united citizens, to live lives in peace, in tranquility with their families in what can be called
normality.
We are certainly not there, particularly in areas as Guerrero, that are certainly facing these dramatic circumstances. And I can assure you
that government, President Pena Nieto, is fully and personally committed. No one can stay really without a reaction to this.
We are parents and we understand the circumstance. And we certainly understand the political responsibilities that we face. The president
does. The government does. We do and we will, of course, face this with a very strong political action.
AMANPOUR: Because of course, the parents will be asking, just as each and every one of us ask, every time there's a terrible crime like this in
Mexico, and there have been many, how is it possible that the police, who are sworn to uphold the law, actually take these kids and hand them over to
these brutal drug trafficking gangs?
MEDINA-MORA: It is totally unacceptable and --
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: But it's corrupt. How do we stop this corruption? It's at the heart of the matter.
MEDINA-MORA: It is -- we have to see if the institutional design behind having municipal police forces, which are highly fragmented and
small in terms of numbers, are actually able to deal with these issues in these particular areas that are facing organized crime. We need to
actually build up institutional strength.
And a democratic state, Christiane, needs a very strong and large police force, at the end, in order not to use it. We have to develop very
strong, reliable, accountable police institutions to respond to these challenges. And maybe the design that we have had to this date is not up
to this task.
We have to review this clearly, nationally, but now as for the most important element in the State of Guerrero and all those areas that are
facing these dramatic circumstances, in which organized crime plays a role, our problem is not a drug trafficking problem, it's a security problem,
which is made much worse by drug trafficking.
We need to first build up the security forces that are institutionally strong enough to face these challenges and to provide certainty to our
citizens, to have all territorial control in order to impede these groups to take control of them.
This is a much more larger and deeper endeavor and task for all of us.
AMANPOUR: Ambassador Medina-Mora, thank you very much for your frankness. And thank you for being the first Mexican official to explain
to us what happened and what you're going to try to do to fix this.
MEDINA-MORA: Thank you very much to you, Christiane.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And after a break, honoring the fallen: a final ceramic poppy was placed at the Tower of London on Tuesday, Armistice Day, to
complete a poignant art installation that's captured the heart of a nation. Large crowds watched 13-year-old Army Cadet Harry Hayes place the last of
more than 888,000 flowers, each representing a British or Colonial life lost in World War I. The young cadet's great-great-great uncle was one of
them.
Their stories of courage and sacrifice wouldn't have reached us without the brave photojournalists who documented the bloodshed. The
world's most famous photo editor, who put history on the front page, when we come back.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
It's 100 years since the end of World War I. Allies here and around the world and in the United States paused to remember the dead and the
sacrifice of so many.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): The sacrifice of soldiers and also of war correspondents who put their lives on the line to bring the reality of
battle to the millions back home.
One of the greatest ever was Robert Capa, who, 70 years ago, snapped those legendary frames of the D-Day Normandy landings. His picture editor
at the time was John Morris, now 98, he has seen it all and he's just published his own book of war photos.
I asked him how the iconic images got onto the front pages and into our history books.
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AMANPOUR: John Morris, welcome to the program.
It's great to see you again. And at this amazingly poignant time, 100 years since the First World War, we're right in the middle of Armistice and
remembrance of fallen heroes.
I want you to take me back to those incredible days: Normandy landing, D-Day 1944, where you were the editor, the photo editor, for young
Robert Capa.
These amazing pictures of soldiers disembarking onto those beaches on D-Day, how did Robert Capa manage to get so close?
JOHN G. MORRIS, PHOTO EDITOR: Well, he was partly lucky, but he was also very courageous. It took a lot of guts to do that.
I was the London picture editor of "Life," and it was my job to get the pictures back to America in time for a deadline, which was Saturday
afternoon in New York, when "Life" closed an issue every week.
So we were in -- let's face it. We were all propagandists. We wanted an Allied victory.
AMANPOUR: And you wanted to get these -- I guess heroic pictures back to show the world.
MORRIS: We felt that was a war that had to be won, unlike many subsequent wars, which I have not believed in at all. Capa was stuck with
his own reputation. He had -- he had, fortunately or unfortunately, built up a reputation as the greatest war photographer.
So he was stuck with it. He almost had to land with the first wave -- and he did.
AMANPOUR: And yet you discovered that only a handful of about 106 frames that he had shot that day were usable.
MORRIS: We were under terrible deadline pressure. We rushed development. And the darkroom lab came rushing them out, saying, John, the
films are ruined, you were in such a hurry.
I put them in the cabinet to dry and hung them and they -- and the emulsion melted. I couldn't believe it, but I ran back to the darkroom
with them. And on the fourth of four rolls, found 11 frames, which we told the story.
AMANPOUR: It still makes me sick to my stomach to think that that evidence may have been lost forever.
MORRIS: Well, it now seems that maybe there was nothing on the other three rolls to begin with. Experts recently have said you can't melt the
emulsion off films like that. And he just never shot them.
So I now believe that it's quite possible that Bob just bundled all his 35 together and just shipped it off back to London, knowing that on one
of those rolls there would be the pictures he actually shot that morning.
So we may not have lost anything at all that he had shot. That remains to be seen.
AMANPOUR: That's news.
MORRIS: That's new.
AMANPOUR: You called him the most famous war correspondent, war photographer of all time.
And you yourself became the most famous editor of all time. But one of the things that's little known until now is this book of your own
pictures, that very same D-Day summer.
How on Earth and why on Earth did you decide to go to Normandy?
MORRIS: Well, I was a little crazy. So for four weeks, I carried a camera. I never felt that I -- I never thought of myself as a
photographer. After all, I'd worked with the best photographers in history. And you don't go around shooting pictures beside Cartier-Bresson
if you're working with him. So anyway, but I shot the -- I just shot things that interested me.
And the result is this book and an exhibition.
AMANPOUR: One of the things that I know affected you a lot and it's an amazing picture, really, is this young boy, at the very end of the book.
And you say, "The Face of My Enemy."
MORRIS: One day, I was working near the front with Capa on the outskirts of Saint-Malo. And he took me across the street, inland, and the
shots rang out. So I said, "Run for it when we go back," which I did.
And more shots. An hour or so later, they've brought in a bunch of prisoners, including this kid.
And when I looked at him, I thought, my God, he's -- he must be 15 years old.
And I thought, that's my enemy. It's ridiculous.
And I photographed him and wrote a piece about it, called, "The Face of My Enemy," because, see, I don't believe in war. I believe in peace.
AMANPOUR: And in fact, you did take that sentiment to your next editorship, when you were editor, picture editor at "The New York Times."
And you put two of the most shocking war photos from the Vietnam War on the front cover, on the front page in "The New York Times," the famous
shot of the execution.
MORRIS: One day in early 1968, the war in Vietnam had intensified. Lyndon Johnson was now sending thousands and thousands of troops to
Vietnam. And I was totally opposed to that war. And when this picture by Eddie Adams of AP came over the wire in mid-afternoon, I was determined
that it would be prominently played on page one.
And that picture really shocked people to the point where it, I think, it had an influence.
And the second picture that had such an influence was the picture of a naked girl --
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AMANPOUR: The young -- the young girl with the napalm, running through the streets.
Yes, I mean, it's shocking still to this day.
MORRIS: Right, exactly.
I'll never forget the news editor discussing that page one with me, as he made it up and saying, it's a good thing that she's not showing.
AMANPOUR: That she hadn't reached puberty.
MORRIS: Exactly.
AMANPOUR: Because otherwise you wouldn't have put that on the front page of "The Times."
MORRIS: He would have been nervous about putting it on page one. Now we accept it, but it was -- it was revolutionary at that time.
AMANPOUR: And what did you hope that these pictures would achieve?
MORRIS: It was to build public pressure for peace.
AMANPOUR: Now you keep saying your judgment, your opinion. I wasn't, you know, for this. I was against this.
By what right?
Who voted you president?
MORRIS: I ain't president. I never fooled myself that I had the power to stop war. But all I had to do -- I had the compulsion to try to
stop war. That's all. That is all I could try to do.
AMANPOUR: And you've been at it for all these decades. And we really, really appreciate you being here. It's a wonderful book, this,
that shows the ordinary face of people caught up in war. And it's really important to remind everybody about that.
John Morris, thank you very much.
MORRIS: Thank you. It was my pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: After a break, an out-of-this-world story 300 million miles away. This week's space scientists everywhere celebrated the very first
time a spacecraft landed on a speeding comet -- next.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world of sheer breathtaking human ingenuity. Imagine a spacecraft the size of a washing machine
landing on a speeding ball of ice 510 million kilometers away from Earth for the very first time. Today it happened, and Mission Control in
Darmstadt, Germany, erupted into cheers.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Now landing on a comet is major by any space standards.
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AMANPOUR: Comets and their graceful tails shooting across the heavens have been observed since ancient times. But no one knows what secrets they
hold. Anxiously awaiting touchdown, a top NASA scientist told our Fred Pleitgen why the spacecraft's mission is so vital.
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JAMES GREEN, DIRECTOR OF PLANETARY SCIENCE, NASA: These comets are made up of dust material, gases and ices in a combination that's been
brought together at the very beginning of the solar system. In fact, these comets are older than the Earth itself, the first things that have formed.
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AMANPOUR: Comets are frozen capsules from the very beginning of our solar system and scientists hope this one will hold the answers to some of
life's essential questions, like where do we come from? How is life possible?
Ten years ago, the iPhone, Twitter and YouTube were all still distant dreams. But the Rosetta Spacecraft was already en route to Comet 67P.
Along the way, in 2007, it took this selfie with Mars. But the landing was fraught with tension. The comet is only a few kilometers wide, hardly
bigger than Central London and it has barely any gravity.
So rather than simply touch down like on the moon 45 years ago, this one had to anchor itself to the surface.
And in our world of instant satellite communications, it took 28 minutes for the signal announcing the landing to reach us on Earth. And to
deliver those answers about where we all began, it'll need to remain on the comet as it approaches the sun, melts and begins to disintegrate.
Now on Greek mythology, Icarus' wings melted when he flew too close to the sun, but we can only hope that this winged messenger will survive and
open up a whole new world of knowledge.
And that's it for our program. Thanks for watching. You can always watch our show online at amanpour.com and always contact me on Facebook and
Twitter. Good night from London.
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