OPC Letter to Mexico
February 28, 2008
H.E. Felipe Calderon
President
Residencia Official de los Pinos
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec
11850 Mexico, DF
Mexico
Fax: (011.52.5) 515.5729
Your Excellency:
We write to protest, in the strongest possible terms, the recent outbreak of violence, threats, and official mistreatment of journalists in Mexico.
Just since the beginning of this year, three journalists have been murdered; another has been the victim of a particularly vicious assassination attempt; yet another has disappeared after a dispute with an agent of the Federal Investigations Agency (AFI). A sixth has gone into exile in fear for his life. Official investigations into these incidents appear to be uniformly perfunctory. Meanwhile, several other journalists report being harassed by police and political thugs. This growing stain on Mexico’s image raises questions of the country’s democratic foundations.
These are just the most egregious of many events reported in two months:
Bonifacio Cruz Santiago, the publisher of the weekly, El Real, and his son, Alfonso Cruz Cruz, its editor, were gunned down on February 7 outside the town hall of Chimalhuacán. According to local reports, the gunmen may have mistaken Bonifacio Cruz Santiago for a municipal legal advisor with whom the two journalists had an appointment. The prosecutor’s office of the state of Mexico has taken charge of the case, but no progress has been reported.
On February 5, Francisco Ortiz Monroy, a reporter for Diario de México, was shot dead by hit men in the municipality of Camargo, in Tamaulipas state. The motive for the murder has yet to be determined. The police investigation is progressing slowly, according to the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Abel Magaña. In the account by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office, Monroy’s killers fired on him from a moving truck. He apparently tried to flee, taking refuge in a nearby home, but was found by the gunmen. His body, with eight bullet wounds, was reportedly found on a bed.
Octavio Soto Torres, the founder-director of the weekly, Voces de Veracruz, was driving with his 16-year-old son through a remote area on his way to cover a highway accident on the Pánuco-El Molino highway. He noticed that a truck with tinted windows and Kentucky license plates was following him. The truck eventually cut him off and three masked persons bearing arms got out and tried to force him to stop. The journalist drove directly at two of his assailants and carried on, until he was forced to stop when the tires of his vehicle were shot out. At that point, he and his son fled the vehicle and escaped into the bushes on the roadside. Soto Torres believes that the attack was in retaliation for an article disclosing a secret agreement in which the leaders of a sugarcane growers’ organization — the Asociación de Cañeros CNPR-UNE of the Ingenio Fagsa A.C. sugar mill — agreed to make a loan of 2.5 million pesos without consulting their members.
On January 30, Carlos Huerta Muñoz, of the newspaper, Norte, of Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua, fled the country after receiving death threats. Only the day before, the newspaper’s management decided to strictly limit all reporting on drug-trafficking for security reasons.
Mauricio Estrada Zamora, a crime reporter for La Opinión de Apatzingán in the central Mexican state of Michoacán, disappeared under highly suspicious circumstances late on February 12. Police found his car next morning in a nearby municipality, its engine running and the doors open. In a recent article, Estrada had mentioned an agent of the AFI, referring to him only by his nickname, “El Diablo.” Estrada had told his family that the article led to a dispute with the agent. In its February 14 edition, La Opinión accused the agent of being behind Estrada’s disappearance and called for the intervention of the Prosecutor-General of the Republic, Eduardo Medina Mora.
AFI agents briefly detained reporter, Jorge Sosa del Bosque, of the Saltillo-based El Heraldo, and Raúl Coronado Garcés, of the Torreón-based La Opinión Milenio, on February 12 and obliged them to erase from their digital cameras photos they had taken of the police agents’ rounds on the streets of Saltillo.
On January 27, sympathizers and bodyguards of Gregorio Sánchez Martínez, who is running for mayor of Benito Juárez in Quintana Roo, mistreated reporters, assaulting and seizing the camera belonging to one of them, in Cancún. After a violent dispute between Sanchez Martinez’s PRD backers and a rival PRI faction at a political rally, one of the reporters who attended a press conference given by the PRD-led coalition candidate questioned him about the assault the reporters had witnessed. The candidate’s supporters became aggressive and shoved them out of the conference, even though they identified themselves as reporters. Susana Mariscal, a correspondent for Diario de Yucatán,. was among those forced out. Emilio Carrasco Hernández, a reporter with La Raza radio station, remained inside and was beaten. His assailants also took his still camera, credit cards, cash and other belongings. He was treated at the local hospital, after which he filed a complaint at the office of the Attorney General of Quintana Roo state indicating that he had been the victim of assault causing bodily harm, illegal denial of liberty and theft.
Your Excellency, this is a sorry record, as we do not need to tell you. We understand and sympathize with Mexico’s problems in dealing with the drug cartels, corruption and general lawlessness that have plagued Mexico in recent years. But there can be little progress in dealing with these problems without the active cooperation of an informed public. That cannot happen unless the media in Mexico are able to do their work without fear of violence and official mistreatment.
Respectfully yours,
Larry Martz
Kevin McDermott
Co-chairmen, Freedom of the Press Committee
cc:
Hon. Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza
Attorney General
Avenida Paseo de la Reforma, Nos. 211-213
Mexico, DF, C.P. 06500
Mexico
Olga María del Carmen Sánchez C.
Ministra
Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación
Pino Súarez, No.2
Colonia Centro, México, DF
México
Fax: (011.525.55) 522.0152
Genaro David Góngora Pimentel
Ministro Presidente
Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación
Pino Súarez, No.2, Colonia Centro
México, DF
México
Fax: (011.525.55) 522.0152
Arturo Sarukhan Casamitjana
Ambassador of Mexico to the U.S.A.
Embassy of Mexico
1911 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Fax: (202) 728.1698
Ambassador Claude Heller
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations
2 United Nations Plaza, 28th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 688.8862
Antonio O. Garza, Jr.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
Embassy of the United States of America
P.O. Box 9000
Brownsville, TX 78520
Fax: (011.52.55) 5080.2005
Lcda. Rosario Robles
Presidenta
Partido de la Revolución Democrática
Huatusco # 37, 5o. piso
Col. Roma Sur
México, D.F.
Fax: (011.52.55) 5207.1200
New York City Independent Media Center
4 West 43rd Street, Suite 311
New York, NY 10036
Patricia Mercado Sanchez
Editor
El Economista
Mexico
DF
Mexico
pmercado@economista.com.mx
Leonardo Valero
Editor – International
La Reforma
Mexico, DF
Mexico
Leonardo.valero@reforma
Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz
El Universal of Mexico City
Bucareli N° 8, Col. Centro
Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06040
México
Ramón Darío Cantú Deándar
El Maňana
Mexico
Fax: (011.52.5) 714.8797
Carmen Lira Saade
La Jornada
Av. Cuauhtémoc 1236, Col. Santa Cruz Atoyac
México DF, C.P. 03310
México
Alberto Ibargüen
Miami Herald Publishing Company
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132