Posted on 04/16/2005 4:54:07 PM PDT by Scenic Sounds
MEXICO CITY -- Northern Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places in the hemisphere to be a journalist, mostly because of its violent drug cartels, media groups say.
Attacks in the past week alone have left one editor dead, one reporter missing and another barely alive after she was shot nine times.
"Some of the media outlets here have hired guards," said Roberto Galves, news director of radio station XHNOE.
Its crime reporter, Guadalupe Garcia Escamilla, 39, is recovering from wounds to the chest, abdomen, legs and arms after an April 5 attack in the tough border city of Nuevo Laredo.
On a global scale, Iraq is considered the most dangerous country for journalists: Nineteen were killed there in 2004.
The Philippines, where six reporters were killed last year and two this year, is considered the second most dangerous.
In Latin America, Colombia has always been considered perilous for reporters because of the continuing battle between insurgents, drug traffickers and the government.
Yet the situation there seems to be improving: One reporter has been killed this year.
In contrast, the situation is growing worse in Mexico, a country with no armed insurgencies that has been recognized for its expanding democracy and modernization.
Northern Mexico "has been worse than Colombia" in terms of the danger for journalists, said Lucie Morillon, a spokeswoman for the Washington office of the French watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders.
There is one overriding reason for the danger: Mexico's drug cartels. They are numerous, deadly, and they hate attention from the news media.
"When someone dares to denounce them, the threats come immediately. The violence comes immediately," said Mexico's top organized-crime prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos.
Ms. Garcia Escamilla had received death threats, as had newspaper director Raul Gibb Guerrero, who was killed three days after the attack on Ms. Garcia Escamilla near the Gulf Coast city of Poza Rica, in Veracruz state.
"He always had gotten death threats . . . but he never went around with bodyguards or a security detail," said Abel Andrade, the news manager of Mr. Gibb's paper, La Opinion of Poza Rica.
On April 2, Alfredo Jimenez, a crime reporter who frequently wrote about the drug trade for El Imparcial newspaper in the western border state of Sonora, disappeared after saying he was going to meet a contact.
"We have hope that he is alive," said the newspaper's general director, Fernando Healy.
Asked whether Mr. Jimenez may have been targeted because of his work, Mr. Healy replied, "We think so, and the authorities have said the same."
Some of the killings have been particularly sadistic.
Last August, in the northern border city of Matamoros, assailants beat newspaper columnist Francisco Arratia Saldierna to death, fracturing his skull, breaking his hands and damaging his spine before dumping him from a moving vehicle.
Gregorio Rodriguez, a photographer who worked for El Debate newspaper in the neighbouring state of Sinaloa, was killed on Nov. 28, 2004, apparently because he had taken a picture of a local drug trafficker.
Several men gunned down Mr. Rodriguez while he was having dinner with his family at a local restaurant.
And in Nuevo Laredo in March of 2004, the news editor of El Manana newspaper, Roberto Mora, was stabbed to death by an assailant who was later killed in prison.
In the face of what it called "fears of a mounting wave of violence," the InterAmerican Press Association has called on Mexico's federal government to "take a greater role in investigating and punishing those responsible" for attacks on journalists.
That's quite a week!
Northern Mexico
You mean California ?
This sounds suspicously like a quagmire. Do American reporters have an exit strategy?
Mexico has NEVER had a government..
The Mobs have always ruled Mexico..
Like, Canada and England and URP...
Monarchy is Mop rule as is democracy...
this has been going on for a couple decades.
the drug cartels kill with impunity.
they kill lawyers, city officials, police, journalists, even a catholic bishop....
mexico is imploding.
Smuggling drugs and Illegal Mexicans into the US is Mexico's biggest source of wealth. The illegal Mexicans send money back to mexico and the Drug dealers do the same.
I cannot fathom why President Bush cannot see that Vicente Fox is not a national leader just a clown placed in the Presidency to ask Mr. Bush to allow more drugs and Illegals to be smuggled in, and to ask for more of our jobs to be sent across the border. Mexican police are a joke.
>> the situation is growing worse in Mexico <<
>> "When someone dares to denounce them, the threats come immediately. The violence comes immediately," said Mexico's top organized-crime prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos. <<
>> Some of the killings have been particularly sadistic. <<
Thanks AD for the ping.
For citizens of the United States or The Lone Star Republic it hasn't been very good since The Alamo. For me, until I move to Texas (a very real possibility within seven or eight years) it's not on my radar screen. I'll never visit that country simply because I would be forbidden to go about armed. That is a nonstarter at this stage of life.
This whole thing makes me shudder.
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