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 Travel Writers' Resources | April 2007 
Sonora: Mexican Journalists Under Siege
 Frontera NorteSur
Journalists in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora are reeling after two attacks [last] week. On Tuesday evening, April 17, an unknown assailant or assailants tossed a grenade onto the grounds of the Cambio Sonora newspaper offices in the state capital of Hermosillo. The newspaper is part of the Mexican Editorial Organization national chain. No injuries resulted from an explosion but minor property damage was reported. As in numerous grenade attacks in Mexico during the last two years, authorities did not publicly reveal the make and origin of the grenade.
Roberto Gutierrez Torres, director of Cambio Sonora, slammed the attack as a threat to journalism.
"I believe that this is a message directed against the entire media, because we are not currently doing any investigative journalism that would make criminal bands uncomfortable," Gutierrez said.
Susana Saldana, president of the Sonora state legislature, labeled the grenade attack an act of "terrorism." Sonora's chief of public security, Francisco Figueroa Souquet, pledged greater police protection for the news media. Together with murders of Sonora police officers, Figueroa characterized the grenade attack as part of a "destabilization" campaign waged by organized crime. As is other states, escalating violence tied to drug traffickers and organized crime has recently shaken Sonora.
The grenade explosion almost immediately followed a silent march staged by 30 journalists in Hermosillo to protest attacks on communicators, including the apparent kidnapping of journalist Saul Noe Martinez Ortega in the border town of Agua Prieta on April 16. A reporter and editor for Agua Prieta's Diario de Agua Prieta, Martinez was snatched by four or five men in front of the town's police station.
Martinez was the sixth Mexican journalists to have been reported disappeared since 2000, according to figures maintained by the Latin American Journalists Federation (Felap). In a recent Mexico City press conference, the group affirmed that 67 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 1987, with almost half the number, 33, killed since 2000 during the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon.
"In the Fox era, Mexico became first in the world in the number of attacks against journalists, in a place without a belligerent conflict, only after Iraq, a country that suffers from a war of intervention," said Teodoro Rentaria Arroyave, vice-president of Felap.
Amado Ramirez, a nationally known correspondent for the Televisa network, became the most recent murder victim when he was slain outside an Acapulco radio station this month, while the resort city was packed with tourists for Holy Week and the Easter holidays.
Before leaving office last year, the Fox Administration established a special prosecutor's office for journalist homicides. On a visit to Mexico earlier this month, Santiago Canton, executive secretary of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, praised the recent passage by the Mexican Congress of a national law that decriminalizes libel and defamation charges, but lamented the lack of progress in stemming violent attacks against journalists. Insisting that the state might not bear direct responsibility for murders of journalists, Canton contended that the government does hold blame for allowing impunity.
Meanwhile, new legal wrangling has emerged in the case of Sonora journalist Benjamin Flores Gonzalez, the director of San Luis Rio Colorado's La Prensa newspaper, who was shot to death in 1997. The suspected mastermind in Flores' killing, Gabriel Gonzalez Gutierrez, was extradited from the United States to Sonora, where he awaits trial. Former La Prensa reporters who witnessed the murder complain that they are being pressured by lawyers to give new testimony. According to Jesus Barraza Zavala, director of the Internet daily Regidores.com, the witnesses maintain that their original declarations are sufficient and that there is no reason to render new ones.
Sources: Cambio Sonora, April 19, 2007. Articles by Oralia Acosta G. and editorial staff. El Universal/Notimex, April 18, 2007. La Jornada/Notimex, April 17 and 18, 2007. Proceso/Apro, April 14, 2007. Frontera/PH/EFE, April 13 and 18, 2007.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/ |
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