An increase in organized crime-related violence has terrorized the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas over the past week. Conflicts between rival cartel factions in the neighboring border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros have left dozens dead, escalating the present danger for journalists practicing in the region.
After fracturing her jaw with a single stroke, Susana Morazán’s aggressors made a threat: “stop talking bad about the government.” The event took place on Jan. 19, when two men riding motorcycles intercepted the TV Azteca Guatemala host while she was driving her car, according to Prensa Libre.
Advocates are reporting that criminal gangs and paramilitary groups in Colombia, one of the most dangerous Latin American countries for journalists, have been issuing death threats for journalists and human rights defenders for the past two months. Media and government representatives have called for investigation to find the sources behind these threats.
The body of journalist José Moisés Sánchez Cerezo was found in the early hours of January 24, according to the Office of the Attorney General (PGJ) in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The journalist had disappeared on January 2, when armed and unidentified individuals pulled him from his house, located in Medellín de Bravo.
Paraguay, Brazil and Mexico placed in the top 20 deadliest countries for journalists in 2014, according to a special year-end report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In Brazil and Mexico, ranked seventh and eleventh by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the countries with the highest levels of impunity in the murder of journalists, two advocacy groups are mapping these attacks in an effort to increase their security.
Despite the comments of a senior Peruvian police official who said the killing of 22-year-old Lima reporter Fernando Raymondi was not motivated by his coverage of organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption, local journalists and international press freedom advocates continue to call for a thorough investigation of the shooting.
Impunity in the murder of journalists is not new in Latin America. In the last decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported 72 instances of journalists killed for their work. About 78 percent of these cases faced complete or partial impunity. But in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, levels of impunity have surpassed those of any other Latin American country, according to CPJ’s 2014 Global Impunity Index.
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and the Peruvian Press Council (CPP) have held a press conference to condemn the killing of the wife of journalist Gerson Fabián Cuba, Gloria Lima Calle, who was killed in an attack of the Radio Rumba office in the Pichanaki district of the Chanchamayo province, Junín.
The Mexican news site SinEmbargo has demanded that authorities investigate a series of attacks, threats, and defamatory acts that have targeted the publication regularly since Oct. 8, shortly after the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero.
The recent murder of María del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, a physician and citizen journalist known on Twitter for her reports of cartel activity in northern Mexico, has sent shock waves through the state of Tamaulipas and shaken journalists working in citizen news networks across the region.
Paraguayan journalist Pablo Medina Velázquez, murdered in the northeastern Canindeyú department while working on assignment, is the third journalist to be killed in the country this year and the latest in a series of journalists to be killed in the region in recent years. His death underscores the dangerous and deteriorating conditions for journalists working along the Brazilian border.