Mexico Press Freedom Roundup, week 6, 2022
The murder of Heber López marks the most violent period for Mexican journalists in more than a decade, while three suspects were arrested for the murder of Lourdes Maldonado.
Less than two weeks after media worker Roberto Toledo was shot and killed in Michoacán, reporter Heber López was killed in Salina Cruz, a port city in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. López was the editor of news website NoticiasWeb, which uses Facebook as its platform and covered local news, politics, corruption and crime and security in the Salina Cruz area.
According to information provided by the Oaxaca state prosecutor’s office (FGE), the journalist was attacked by at least two men earlier today in the afternoon while entering a residence. He was shot multiple times and died of his injuries. A spokesperson for the FGE told me this evening via messaging app that two suspects were arrested shortly after the attack by municipal policemen. They were carrying a firearm.
The FGE was not yet able to provide details about the identity of the attackers or the motive of the killing. Initial reports from journalists in the region that one of the suspects is the brother of a former police officer López had written a critical article about have not been confirmed by the authorities.
Earlier today, federal undersecretary for human rights Alejandro Encinas announced on Twitter that federal authorities were in the process of enrolling López’s family in a protection program coordinated by the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
Heber López was the fifth Mexican journalist to be murdered this year, after José Luis Gambia, Margarito Martínez, Lourdes Maldonado and Roberto Toledo. His murder marks the most violent period in recent history for the Mexican press.
Arrests in Maldonado case
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Wednesday that authorities in Baja California had arrested three suspects for allegedly carrying out the murder of Lourdes Maldonado in Tijuana on January 23. According to Zeta, Tijuana’s leading news magazine, the suspects have ties to the Arrellano Félix cartel, a notorious criminal organization that dominated drug trafficking in the border city in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
Neither federal nor state authorities provided much detail about the suspects, the motive of the killing or whether they were hired by someone else to murder Maldonado. The Baja California state prosecutor’s office (FGE) requested yesterday that media are not given access to the initial court hearing in the case, citing the privacy and safety of witnesses. The FGE cancelled a scheduled press briefing yesterday.
More this week
Reporter Leonardo Martínez Peralta, a reporter from Zihuatanejo (Guerrero state), told El Universal on Tuesday that he had been threatened by an unknown man over reporting for local newspaper El Despertar de la Costa. Martínez had previously fled Zihuatanejo over threats related to his work and is enrolled in a federal protection program.
Álvaro Cuitláhuac López López, a journalist from Oaxaca, told Proceso magazine on Wednesday that unidentified men wearing police uniforms attempted to abduct his brother on at least two occasions. Oaxaca state authorities denied to Proceso that the men were active duty policemen.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador faced criticism over his highly controversial decision to question the finances of Carlos Loret de Mola, one of Mexico’s most well-known broadcast journalists. The president said in his mañanera, his daily morning press briefing, that Loret de Mola ‘makes much more than I do’, in an apparent attempt to discredit the journalist, who has been highly critical of the president. The reporter responded on Twitter, accusing the president of placing him at risk by using inflated information about his income.