Mexico and Brazil are among the countries that saw the highest increases in impunity ratings in cases of murders of journalists over the past 10 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and its 10th Annual Global Impunity Index.
Journalist advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF for its acronym in French) and TV5-Monde honored journalists and media outlets from Colombia, Mexico and El Salvador as nominees for their 2017 Press Freedom Prize.
Following her murder on March 23, 2017 in Chihuahua, Mexico, journalist Miroslava Breach has entered the tragic list of communicators who have been targeted by violence in Latin America for bringing to light the illegalities of criminal groups and public power in the region.
Mexican photojournalist Edgar Daniel Esqueda Castro was found dead on Oct. 6 in San Luis Potosi in central Mexico, a day after being kidnapped by men who allegedly identified themselves as police officers.
The Gabriel García Márquez Journalism Festival in Medellín, Colombia recognized four Latin American journalism reporting projects from Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Honduras on Sept. 29 as part of the 2017 Gabo Awards.
When you think about the situation of journalists in Mexico, the first image that comes is one of violence. And for good reason. The country is considered the most dangerous in the American continent to practice this profession. In 2017 alone, at least 11 journalists have been recorded as killed for reasons related to their work.
“It’s been 17 years of this red accounting (cuenta roja) in which we have not stopped counting the number of journalists killed. There are 109, and a good part of them in the last two administrations,” said Daniela Pastrana, director of Mexican journalists organization Periodistas de a Pie. “But the counting began, paradoxically, with the start of the democratic transition. That is one of the things that I still cannot explain.”
The press in Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico, no longer conducts investigative journalism following the death of Javier Valdez, a journalist from the Sinaloan weekly newspaper Ríodoce, who was killed on May 15 of this year.
Juan Carlos Hernández Ríos, 29, was shot dead upon arriving at his home on the night of Sept. 5 in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. The killers were two unknown men who, according to the neighbors, had been waiting for him for hours. Hernández died in the hospital, reported Mexican site Sin Embargo.
Mexican journalist Cándido Ríos Vázquez was killed in southern Veracruz on Aug. 22, 2017 despite being under the federal government program to protect journalists.
Almost a decade ago, Brazilian journalist Marcelo Moreira traveled to Mexico for the first time to participate in a working group to study the situation of journalists in that country, considered then and now the most dangerous place to practice journalism in Latin America.
A Mexican radio journalist in the state of Puebla is recovering after an attack on his life.