Mexico Press Freedom Roundup, week 5, 2022
A fourth media worker was murdered in less than a month, journalists elsewhere in the country continue to be targeted and president López Obrador attacks Carmen Aristegui.
Roberto Toledo, a 55-year old collaborator for news website Monitor Michoacán, was shot dead by unidentified attackers on January 31 in Zitácuaro, a town in the central Mexican state of Michoacán. According to editor Armando Linares, Toledo worked as a camera operator and video editor for the website. He was also an assistant to Joel Vera, a lawyer, editor of and regular contributor to the website.
Details about the attack were provided by Linares, with whom I spoke several times earlier this week, and Michoacán state authorities, who briefed the press in short statements sent via messaging app. According to those reports, Toledo was at the office of Joel Vera on Monday afternoon to record a video, when the attackers rang the doorbell and shot Toledo when he opened.
According to photos shared with journalists, the attackers left two messages on pieces of cardboard at the patio where Toledo died of his injuries. At least one of those messages alluded to Vera’s work as a lawyer, but it is still unclear whether the attack was directed at him or Monitor Michoacán.
Armando Linares told me that his website had received threats via social media after he had uploaded posts alleging that local authorities had planted evidence while arresting an alleged drug dealer. He told me he cannot be sure whether the attack was in any way related to those threats. Michoacán state authorities have not yet provided clarity on the possible motive of the attack. For more details, see the Committee to Protect Journalists’ alert published on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, I wrote about how presidential spokesperson Jesús Ramírez Cuevas almost immediately tried to downplay the attack against Toledo by denying he was a collaborator for a news outlet, an unfortunate and common practice in Mexico.
Threats and beatings
On Tuesday, two reporters were threatened and beaten in the Azcapotzalco borough of Mexico City while they were reporting on a deadly shootout. According to reports provided by local journalists, as well as a brief statement by the Mexico City police on the same day as the attack, the journalists were attacked by inhabitants of the neighborhood. The reporters had to be treated for unjuries.
At least one policeman was also allegedly involved in the attack; Mexico City state authorities confirmed in their statement that they had opened an investigation.
Meanwhile, on Isla Mujeres, a small island just off the coast of the southern Mexican city of Cancún, journalist Nezahualcóyotl Cordero of news website CG Noticias was threatened by an unidentified man bearing a small firearm Tuesday evening. According to news reports, the assailant fled the scene after neighbors came to Cordero’s aid.
He was threatened again in a banner allegedly placed at a busy traffic junction in Cancún the next morning. It is unclear why the threats happened; Cordero is enrolled in a protection scheme supervised by the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
AMLO targets Aristegui
This morning, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador attacked Carmen Aristegui, an investigative reporter, broadcast journalist, founder of news website Aristegui Noticias and one of Mexico’s most prominent media figures. According to AMLO, as the president is popularly known, Aristegui is ‘in favor of the conservative block’, a vague term the president consistently uses to discredit anyone critical of his administration.
The president has become notorious for his constant verbal attacks on critical reporters during his daily morning press conference, known popularly as ‘la mañanera’. Aristegui forcefully rejected the president’s comments shortly afterwards.
“It is very clear to me that the president’s words have only one goal: to damage,” she said.
In case you missed it
Together with journalists Wendy Fry, Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul and Rodrigo Nieto, I participated earlier today in Explaining Murders of Journalists in Mexico, a webinar hosted by the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies of the University of California, San Diego. We discussed the recent attacks against journalists in Mexico, as well as the myriad issues plaguing the country’s institutions that are supposed to protect the press from attacks.