A report by Reporters Without Borders found “serious problems that require urgent changes” in the mechanisms for protecting journalists in these four countries, which account for 90% of the murders of journalists perpetrated in Latin America in the last ten years.
Stories about gangs and criminal organizations, border areas with the ambiguity of their limits and jurisdictions, marginal urban towns or a simple central plaza of a city taken over by drug cartels are some of the Latin American topics and scenarios where journalists of the region can find their best reports or a life or death situation.
The journalists who were victims of the wave of violence at the beginning of 2022 have common denominators such as being independent or working on their own native digital projects on local issues of politics, insecurity and corruption.
After López Obrador revealed what journalist Carlos Loret de Mola allegedly earns in a year, more than 64 thousand people joined a Twitter Space in which the actions of the president and the growing violence against the press in Mexico were condemned. To date, more than 1.5 million people have listened to the audio recording.
Whether in Mexico or Ecuador, as in Colombia, Honduras or Nicaragua, the coverage of violence has posed new challenges for journalists, because the traditional concept of armed conflict is being challenged in the region. The diversity of armed groups also means broadening the definition of the term. It is not just regular security forces, such as armies or police, and paramilitary groups such as guerrillas, but it can also involve drug traffickers, gang members or private security forces.
So far in February, Mexico has recorded an attempted assassination of a journalist, two beaten photojournalists and the murder of the son of a well-known journalist from Tijuana, in addition to verbal attacks and disqualifications to members of the press from the Presidency.
For the second year in a row, President Jair Bolsonaro is the lead attacker of the press in Brazil, according to an annual survey by the National Federation of Journalists. According to the organization, the upcoming national and state elections in October, when Bolsonaro seeks re-election, will increase the risk for journalism in the country in 2022.
On January 25, 1997, photojournalist José Luis Cabezas was kidnapped, beaten, murdered, and cremated in a vacant lot on the Atlantic coast. On the 25th anniversary of his crime, the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA) invited 25 journalists to remember him with anecdotes and reflections on what his death represents for Argentine journalism.
In the first month of 2022, Latin America took the lead as the deadliest region for the press, with seven journalists killed: four in Mexico, two in Haiti and one in Honduras.
Three years after personally asking the President of Mexico for protection, journalist Lourdes Maldonado was shot dead in Tijuana. She is joined by two other colleagues who died violently in the country in less than a month, which colleagues, press freedom organizations, and citizens condemned.