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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2006 
Crusading Mexican Journalist Dies at 70
 Olga R. Rodriguez - Associated Press
| | Jesus Blancornelas |
Crusading journalist Jesus Blancornelas, who relentlessly investigated drug cartels and government corruption despite an attempt on his life and the killing of colleagues, died of a chronic illness Thursday in Tijuana, his newspaper said in a statement. He was 70.
Blancornelas stepped down in April as director of the weekly newspaper Zeta, which he founded in 1980, citing his age.
The statement provided no specific cause of death, noting only that the journalist had been hospitalized since Sunday "for treatment of a chronic illness that had affected him in recent months."
His son, Cesar Rene Blanco, told a local radio station that Blancornelas had a lung problem that lead to pneumonia and other complications. His other lung was pierced by a bullet in a Nov. 27, 1997, assassination attempt, in apparent retaliation for his investigations into the drug underworld.
The winner of several journalism awards, Blancornelas founded Zeta with Hector Felix Miranda, who was shot to death in 1988.
Two men were convicted in Felix Miranda's shooting, including a bodyguard at a local race track owned by Jorge Hank Rhon, a businessman from one of Mexico's most powerful political families who is now mayor of Tijuana, across the U.S. border from San Diego.
After the killing, Zeta published a full-page notice each week under Felix Miranda's name, asking, "Jorge Hank Rhon: Why did your bodyguard Antonio Vera Palestina kill me?" Hank Rhon has denied any connection to the attack.
| In Tijuana, the name of Jesús Blancornelas had become an icon in journalism and, above all, in narcoculture. If you asked almost anybody who is Jesús Blancornelas, he or she would tell you: “Oh, Mr. Blancornelas writes about the narcos. He writes about the truth. His newspaper is the best paper in Tijuana. He writes for the people...”
See: "Mexican Newspaper Editor gets Daniel Pearl Journalism Award in LA" |
In 2004, gunmen fatally shot Zeta assistant editor Francisco Ortiz as he sat in his car with his young children.
When Blancornelas accepted the UNESCO annual World Press Freedom Prize in 1999, he said he briefly considered leaving the profession after being shot in the 1997 assassination attempt.
"If I quit I'll be considered a coward," he said. "What's more, the mafias would make me an example for other journalists, telling them, 'See what happened to him, worse could happen to you.' That's why I decided to continue."
Blancornelas began his journalism career in the 1950s, and covered the news from Tijuana for nearly five decades, investigating government corruption and the rise of violent drug gangs like the Arellano Felix brothers' Tijuana cartel.
He was one of a handful of reporters who wrote about drug trafficking, even as a wave of violent attacks led many Mexican border media outlets to tone down their coverage.
Blancornelas also wrote several books, including one about the 1994 assassination in Tijuana of Luis Donaldo Colosio, a presidential candidate for the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Blancornelas is survived by his wife, Genoveva Villalon de Blanco, and three sons. |
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