Five journalists murdered in less than a month and a half: the year 2022 has started in a bloody way for press freedom in Mexico, a spiral of violence fueled by impunity.
The assassination of Heber Lopez Vazquez, 39, director of the news site Noticias Web, shot dead Thursday in the state of Oaxaca, now brings the number of journalists killed since the start of 2022 to five, compared to seven for the whole of the year 2021.
The reporter was murdered while driving home in the town of Salina Cruz. Two suspected murderers have been arrested.
According to Balbina Flores, spokesperson for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Mexico, the journalist, who did not benefit from the government protection program, had received threats at the end of 2019 in connection with denunciations of corruption against a local elected official.
“A few days before (his assassination), he published information about corruption in the municipality,” she told AFP.
In January, four Mexican journalists had already been killed. Two in Tijuana, television journalist Lourdes Maldonado and photoreporter Margarito Martinez; Roberto Toledo, contributor to the online media Monitor, in the state of Michoacan and José Luis Gamboa, in the state of Veracruz.
Mexico, which has 126 million inhabitants and is experiencing a spiral of violence linked to drug trafficking, ranks 143and rank out of 180 in the press freedom ranking established by RSF.
Since the early 2000s, 150 journalists have been murdered in the country, according to RSF. Among them, 29 have been since the start of the term of left-wing president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in power since 2018.
“This six-year term is emerging as one of the bloodiest” for the press, laments Balbina Flores.
On Friday, the head of state promised “zero impunity” for the murderers of journalists. “And that’s a message to those involved in crime, both organized crime and white collar crime,” he added.
“local level”
However, RSF stresses that 92% of crimes against journalists remain unpunished in the country.
“In Mexico they kill (journalists) because it costs nothing. Those who run the most risk are journalists with their pen, their computer, their recorder, their microphone, and those who run the least risk are those who pull the trigger”, accuses Juan Vazquez, of the association Articulo 19 which defends the freedom of the press.
In addition to government failures in protecting journalists and generalized impunity, another factor appears: the majority of assassinations “take place at the local level and concern small press organs, very vulnerable like their journalists”, underlines Ms.me Flores.
Several journalists killed in recent years ran or worked for websites, sometimes even Facebook pages, where they disseminated information about local authorities, which are often in collusion with criminal groups.
Faced with the difficulty of making this activity profitable, some journalists have to alternate with other jobs.
“In Mexico, journalism is very precarious” economically, underlines Balbina Flores, for whom few are those who manage to live from the profession.
This situation sometimes leads the authorities not to consider these assassinations as crimes against freedom of the press.
This growing violence against journalists is also part of a context of mistrust between the government and the press sector.
President Lopez Obrador does not hesitate to qualify the media as “mercenaries” because they serve, according to him, private interests that are enemies of his “process of transformation”.
On Friday, while deploring the assassination of Heber Lopez Vazquez, he did not hesitate to disclose the high income allegedly received by journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, one of his biggest critics.