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MEXICO
Attacks and crimes against journalists, especially
by organized crime and drug traffickers in particular, are still the norm in
Mexico. These occur in a very specific area near Mexico's northern border with
the United States, where journalism remains a high-risk occupation.
The violence occurs in a complex geographic, economic and cultural setting,
in which the drug trade seriously, and often brutally, undermines the life of
the community. With unlimited financial resources at their disposal, drug lords
can dominate at all levels of society from government authorities to the man
on the street, with isolated cases of journalists in between. The dilemma faced
by many journalists working in the area is to either look the other way or risk
their lives. As a common saying in the region goes, "they have to choose
between two metals: gold or lead." Those making deals with drug traffickers
run no less of a risk. They may fall victim to a rival gang or be executed for
perceived disloyalty or breach of trust. Journalist Félix Fernández
was killed on January 19 in the border town of Ciudad Miguel Alemán,
Tamaulipas, when his car was riddled with machine-gun fire from another moving
vehicle. Fernández was editor of the local magazine Nueva Opción,
which is owned by a local ex-mayor whom federal authorities have tied to the
drug trade. Two people have been arrested in connection with the crime.
The police have reported no progress on solving the murders of three journalists
killed near the border in 2001: José Luis Ortega Mata, who died on February
19 in Ojinaga, Chihuahua; Valentín Dávila Martínez, killed
in August in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; and Saúl Antonio Martínez,
killed March 24 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
Impunity still surrounds the April 29, 1988 murder of Héctor Félix
Miranda and the July 3, 1991 murder of Víctor Manuel Oropeza. IAPA investigations
into these two cases prompted recommendations from the OAS Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights, which holds the Mexican government accountable to the international
community for these crimes.
Court proceedings are also dragging on considerably, such as the case of the
December 1998 murder of US journalist Philip True in an indigenous area of the
west-central state of Jalisco. The alleged murderers had been incarcerated awaiting
a verdict, but were released in August 2001, apparently for disappearance of
evidence.
The state courts have yet to rule on an appeal brought by the journalist's wife,
Martha True, in conjunction with the state prosecutor's office.
On January 15 journalist Jesús Blancornelas, co-editor of the Tijuana
weekly Zeta, reported in his column that he had received threats a few days
earlier by e-mail. On November 27, 1997, Blancornelas had been severely wounded
in an attack that killed one person with him.
In November 2001 the chief of the Federal Prison Police, Gen. Francisco Arellano
Noblecía, filed a defamation complaint with a federal judge in Mexico
City against the Hermosillo newspaper El Imparcial. The paper had published
in June of last year that Arellano Noblecía was the same person who had
coordinated a police operation 25 years earlier, in October 1975, to evict tenant
farmers from land in Sonora, in which a number of the farmers were killed. Arellano
Noblecía initially had published in a Mexico City newspaper copies of
checks apparently from an unidentified drawee, on the basis of which he accused
El Imparcial of taking money from drug traffickers. The publisher filed a criminal
complaint in response to the accusation.
On February 19 Laura Eugenia Mendoza Sarao, a reporter for Campeche radio station
XEA, was attacked by neighborhood leaders while covering a rally. The authorities
have still not properly investigated her complaint.
National newspapers and such news agencies as the Associated Press have published
reports of harassment of journalists by state authorities in Ciudad Juárez,
Chihuahua, in response to investigative reporting into the authorities' inability
to deal with public safety issues in the area, especially the deaths of dozens
of women working in local cross-border assembly plants.
In an unprecedented event, on March 16 a group of eight security guards from
the Tamaulipas private security company Grupo de Servicios Impulsos S.A. de
C.V., led by an alleged Mexican Social Security Institute representative known
as Gerardo Rodríguez Valdés, who showed no identification, attacked
the facilities of Saltillo newspaper Vanguardia, knocked down the front door
with a crane, caused property damage, disconnected the telephone switchboard,
threatened the paper's employees with guns and held them at bay for over two
hours, preventing them from coming in, going out or moving freely about their
workplace. The attackers also attempted to unlawfully take over management and
editorial control, trampling on the rule of law, the personal protections afforded
by the Constitution and the key principles of press law.
After winning lawsuits for emotional distress and defamation brought by Campeche
state authorities in 1994 and 1995, executives from the Campeche newspaper Tribuna
filed a counterclaim for costs and damages. The cases have been halted arbitrarily,
to protect the defendants' interests.
Three bills affecting journalists and the media will be considered in the coming
legislative session. The first is an amendment to the law establishing the journalism
prize, which the government will no longer award; the second is the new radio
and television law; and the third is the information transparency law that will
give all Mexicans access to government information.
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Copyright © 2003 Inter American Press Association.
All rights reserved.
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