A year after the offices of the Mexican newspaper El Buen Tono were burned down by armed men in Córdoba, Veracruz, its directors and employees penned an editorial demanding the arsonists be brought to justice, according to the magazine Proceso.
Journalists at the newspaper blamed businessmen Miguel and Óscar Barquet Viñas for the attack in which 18 masked, armed men doused the newspaper's offices with gasoline and lit them on fire on Nov. 5, 2011.
The publication's employees organized a protest demanding the state prosecutor release the findings of the investigation and punished those responsible, according to the newspaper.
At the beginning of the year, the newspaper released an eight-minute video, captured by security cameras, showing the conflagration in the office.
Last February, El Buen Tono claimed that the prosecutor confiscated the video of the fire to keep the public from helping to identify the suspects.
Impunity persists in the killing of nine journalists during the last 18 months in Veracruz, driving reporters to flee the Gulf state. Veracruz is considered one of the 10 most dangerous places in the world for the press, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
