Why are journalists killed in Mexico?

1. Page editing

It is afternoon rush hour. Rushing to make sure the article is well written, checking to see if the photos are there. Adjust here, cut there. Does the headline work or should it be changed? No newsroom is quiet in the afternoon; everything is a race against the clock.

Dario Cardel’s windows are open because it is hot. Even in winter, the temperature can reach 30 degrees Celsius. It gets worse when the north wind blows: a soporific, headache-inducing wind invades every corner.

«What will you publish tomorrow?» asks a man through the window.
He asks today, as he asked yesterday, and will ask again tomorrow. And it will not be just one man, but many. Sometimes with visible weapons. Other times they do not even need to show their weapons, because everyone knows who they are: gunmen working for the boss of the plaza. They often come to the newspaper to ask what will be in the next day’s edition.

They are not the only ones. Some afternoons, policemen also knock on the door. They come from different departments to check and decide what news will make the headlines, what photo will be shown, or how the news will be reported. They also ask to come inside or wait outside for detailed information. In other cities of Veracruz, and in many others across the country, the press is controlled by telephone. Calls at night to tell reporters what can be published; messages on reporters’ phones to dictate what the news will be.

It is known that for years some major newspapers in Veracruz have sent their front pages to be reviewed by the sitting governors. But in Cardel in 2012, it goes beyond anything imaginable. Drug cartels and police come to review – and sometimes edit – the front page.

From 2007, Cardel went through a very dark period. Organized crime invaded and took over many media outlets and many of the people who worked for them. A journalist who fled Cardel for their safety recalled that it was impossible to even talk – even if you were at home – because the criminals could find out what you were talking about.

No one wanted to talk, but everyone wanted to read. The crime reporting business exploded. Diario Cardel began selling between 3,000 and 3,500 copies a day, which meant that one in six residents bought the paper.
Every morning, the most important news was announced on motorcycles equipped with loudspeakers like those used in cars to make community announcements. And people rushed to buy them. Information about murders always sold newspapers.

In the photo, he is smiling as he displays his congressional candidate registration. He wears a white polo shirt and a backpack on his left shoulder.

«Foul-mouthed, like all the people of Veracruz. But noble, honest and without malice. This is how Jesús Augusto Olivares Utrera describes his former colleague Sergio Landa.

He says that Landa was always popular and well-liked in his community, which is why the Nueva Alianza political party offered to register him as a candidate for congressman for the 13th district (Huatusco). He never took the position; he withdrew one day before the elections because the political party had not fulfilled its promise to finance the campaign with a car and to give an advertising contract to the newspaper with which he worked. Sergio Landa was born in El Zapotito, a town that has 762 inhabitants today and was even smaller during his childhood. His parents were farmers and he had many brothers and sisters.

He loved to draw and always hoped to be able to study. He started a career in graphic design, but could not finish it due to a lack of funds to pay for his studies. So he became a sign painter, an old trade that consisted of hand-painting letters, logos and advertisements on signs or walls.

Sergio also made belts and was a soccer referee. His friends remember him as a partygoer, dancer and salsa enthusiast. But also an entrepreneur, someone with a big heart and a fearless desire to succeed. Maybe that is why he became a journalist.

He was unemployed when he heard that Diario Cardel was hiring a designer. When he arrived, it turned out that they needed a reporter, and Sergio said yes, even though he had never worked in the media before. For his enthusiastic but haphazard approach, some called him Speedy González, because he would ride his motorcycle at full speed to get to the scene of the crime on time. Others nicknamed him «the rubber journalist» because he often fell off his bike but quickly got back on his feet.

2.The agreements.

A mystery: at least 27 media outlets, almost all of them newspapers, were closed in Veracruz around the year 2016.
Some of them are: El Diario del Sur, AZ Veracruz, Milenio El Portal, Marcha, Oye Veracruz and Capital Veracruz. Also, El Diario de Minatitlán, Matutino Expréss, El Mundo de Poza Rica, El Despertar de Veracruz, Veracruz News, La Voz del Sureste, and Mundo de Xalapa, among others. They come from different regions of Veracruz; they all have different histories and owners. But they all stopped publishing at almost the same time, disappearing from one day to the next, as if struck by an evil spell. The mystery deepens: around the same dates, at least five other newspapers stopped their print editions and went digital only. Many have closed or reduced their newsrooms to a minimum.

The crisis facing print media is global; even the New York Times has considered ceasing publication, and other major publications such as El País have suspended editions in some regions. But something else happened in Veracruz at the end of the 2010-2016 administration. The malaise that spread from newsroom to newsroom was the end of the magic potion that sustained everything: government advertising contracts.

These agreements meant that the government of Javier Duarte directly awarded contracts to news outlets to publish content commonly known as «official publicity. These funds were sometimes unlabeled, with unclear objectives, and distributed as blank checks.

 The Office of Social Communication went from a budget of 50 million pesos in 2011 to 304 million pesos in 2016. It multiplied its budget by 452 percent, according to the 2011 Budget Law and a report prepared by the Comptroller General at the request of local legislators. Outrageously higher figures were later revealed: Duarte’s government paid out nearly 5 billion pesos, or about $294 million, in press contracts, according to statements made by prosecutor Julio Rodríguez Hernández in a pretrial hearing.

The allocation of this budget was decided by only one person: María Gina Domínguez Colio. With short hair, blond highlights, thin eyebrows, and a fierce look, she was one of the most powerful figures in the administration. As a result, she was nicknamed the Vice Governor. In addition to her personality, her professional background stands out: she is a journalist with extensive experience, familiar with every aspect of Veracruz’s media landscape.
«She was in charge of damage control,» says a journalist who requested anonymity. She was in charge of denying news that had already been published. She also called newsrooms and said, «Take down that story; put up this one instead. She identified people and put them in danger. She was so powerful that when they found the 34 bodies in houses in a residential area of Boca del Río [in 2011], Gina denied the news. Then the Navy denied what she had said. But she was not fired.

Domínguez handled mountains of money, perhaps even more than the documents reveal, because at the end of the administration, some outstanding contracts were made public. A detailed list of these debts, with the names of the companies, amounted to at least 400,146,820.86 pesos, while the approved budget for that year was 304 million, according to Plumas Libres. When journalists requested the amounts and details of the payouts to media outlets, the government responded that this was classified information.

The price of silence. Paid mutism. Debts «to media and journalists who have helped to «incense» the current governor, hide shootings and deaths, and report violent events as if they were robberies, when in some cases they were executions. They looked the other way when they knew it was a case of a mother looking for her son, disappeared by the Zetas, by the Jaliscos, or by police patrols,» wrote Ignacio Carvajal in an article published on July 11, 2016. Years later, in 2023, during a book presentation in Mexico City, journalist Norma Trujillo sums up: «In Veracruz, there is no real independent media; government advertising sets the tone.»

Another colleague, who asked not to be identified, talks about this almost without surprise, as if it were normal:
«It’s well known that almost all media outlets reported to Duarte’s social communications office. That was my job when I worked at the newspaper I mentioned earlier; I was in contact with [a particular person] because I was the editor-in-chief and was asked to contact him to know what statement the governor wanted to publish. I always called him. That went on for years.»

According to a list published in 2016, there are 127 unpaid government advertising contracts. The list includes legal entities, anonymous variable capital companies, and the names and surnames of individuals. There are publishing houses, communications companies, radio stations, and consulting firms mixed with acronyms that say little about who they are. Most are linked to the state of Veracruz, but they include leading national media such as El Universal ($3,800,000), Excélsior Newspaper ($4,000,000), the NRM Communications Group ($2,970,400.31), and Reporte Índigo ($7,795,200).

This is a list of those who tried to claim debts at the end of the 2010-2016 administration, with no certainty about the total number of claims or the destination of the money that came out of the Veracruz Social Communications Office (Gina Domínguez’s office) during that six-year term. In 2023, more than a decade later, the Office of Contracts and Agreements of the Government of Veracruz responded to freedom of information requests that «the information requested is not available. Either they have nothing to share or they choose not to share.

3.Is it possible to say «no»?

It was one of those routine stories – the ones that don’t matter much. Taxi drivers protesting for more safety. A short article that appeared in the print edition and seemed to get lost among the others. But at eleven in the morning, the editor called.

«Are you alright? There was a problem with the story you published.»
«But it’s informative!»
«You know you’re not supposed to publish things like that.»

His stomach was in knots, his heart was racing, and a shiver ran down his spine. Journalists in Veracruz know how much danger lurks behind the phrase «there was a problem with your story»: it means your life is in danger.

The terror of non-negotiable calls and appointments. The certainty that the chief of the zone had paid the director and that he had accepted the money, conditioning the journalists without telling them which side to play for. And that he did not distribute the money.

The payments in the newspaper were forty pesos, or two dollars per story.
Two dollars every time you risk your life, because in Poza Rica, where this story takes place, the years 2010-2016 were hell. The journalist who tells this story asks to leave out any detail that could reveal their identity, because the same people are still in power and the risk still exists a decade later.

«If something happened to you before and you went to the police, they would hand you over to «them.»
You couldn’t even go out at night or be in dark places. It was terrible.There were thousands of crimes here that weren’t made public.They weren’t in the press or anywhere else because they didn’t want them to be public (…).»

When they got rid of the police, everything got better. (…) Now there are four [cartels]: Zetas calling themselves Grupo Sombra, the Sinaloa cartel, Jalisco [New Generation], and the old-school Zetas.In the main square of Poza Rica, the murals from the oil boom era or the great work by Pablo O’Higgings depicting the golden years are barely visible.More and more banners of the disappeared are hung in the pavilion, from tree to tree, and on the footbridges.

Duarte disbanded all municipal police forces. The Navy took control of security, and armed forces were deployed throughout the state. On April 10, 2011, Duarte, along with former President Felipe Calderón, launched Operation Safe Veracruz, which paved the way for a single federal command with military troops, increased security resources, and the purging of police forces.
In theory, at least, because Duarte’s security chief, Arturo Bermúdez Zurita, had other plans.

«Captain Storm,» as he was known, was the secretary of public security and in charge of the state police, and he decided to create his own special forces. In 2012, Bermúdez deployed an elite unit called the Grupo Tajín, named after the region’s most important pyramid. At an event that Duarte did not attend, Bermúdez Zurita said that 206 police officers had been trained by the navy for four months. He affirmed that the goal was to «ensure first contact, rescue and action with the civilian population,» but the project barely lasted and hardly fulfilled these goals. Grupo Tajín was a corrupt force that sank a year later when elite officers kidnapped eight police officers in the municipality of Úrsulo Galván.The policemen are still disappeared.

Noé Zavaleta, the young journalist who dared to cover Veracruz for Proceso after the murder of Regina Martínez, highlights two names that are always present in the darkest stories of the Veracruz police at that time: Arturo Bermúdez Zurita, «the ominous Captain Tormenta,» and, among his most powerful subordinates, Marcos Conde, head of the Security Secretariat in the Sotavento region.

Violence in Veracruz did not come out of nowhere with the Duarte administration. It had been growing for several years, and many identify the beginning of the worst times in 2007, when the dominance of Los Zetas began. This was during the time of Fidel Herrera. This former governor was nicknamed Zeta 1.

The violence continued through the Herrera and Duarte administrations; the Veracruz-born writer Fernanda Melchor, in the prologue to «Reguero de Cadáveres,» refers to this period as «the double six-year term.» Noé Zavaleta describes Duarte’s era as «true obscurantism.» He does not choose his words lightly, speaking of the effects of the cartel disputes, the redistribution of territories, and the multiple strategies the government pursued against the press.

– Duarte was a close friend of the media owners. For example, he invited the executive director of Diario de Xalapa to foreign destinations at least three or four times. In 2013, during the tourism fair in Madrid, Duarte took 15 of them on a trip. He even invited them to the Copa del Rey final at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

These media owners travelled around, received millions of pesos in contracts, but paid their journalists miserable wages. Horacio Zamora never went on those trips. He was a journalist for 15 years at various media outlets in Xalapa and the port of Veracruz, working directly with some of them and selling content to others. These were times of executions, bodies in bags, and disappearances while he tried to make a living as a freelance journalist. He covered those years under that kind of violence, but a decade later he realized that there were other kinds of violence besides the bloodshed in the streets.

Sergio Landa was a writer and photographer at Diario Cardel. He earned 5,000 pesos a month without medical benefits or days off.
Rubén Espinosa Becerril earned the same as a photographer in Xalapa, while Gabriel Huge earned a little more, 3,000 pesos a week, in the port area.

Gregorio Jiménez worked in the municipality of Villa Allende as a writer and photographer, earning 20 pesos per article. On busy days, he sometimes earned 100 pesos, or about 1,700 pesos a month, plus 800 pesos for gas when he worked for the Liberal del Sur, a newspaper owned by the family of judge Edel Humberto Álvarez Peña, who has been accused of ghost contracts worth millions.
Similarly, in Coatzacoalcos, a qualified staff journalist at Notisur earned 3,600 pesos per month, while interns and students earned between 1,400 and 2,000 pesos per month.

The situation was similar in the port area. Journalists earned between 5,000 and 6,000 pesos per month at most companies. Only the most popular newspaper, Notiver, paid around 17,000 pesos per month.

In dollars, these numbers are painful: salaries of $500 per month for qualified journalists; half (or less) for those without formal training, the self-taught, the «empirical.» Full days of work for a salary of 8 to 16 dollars.
Hich owns

4. The press as booty.

Just three families controlled at least 24 media outlets in Veracruz, and many of the owners of news companies were also politicians who held public management positions.

Edel Álvarez Peña, associated with the Olmeca Editorial Group, owned eight media outlets in Veracruz during Duarte’s term (plus four more in Chiapas and Tabasco). He had no background in journalism. During his decades-long political career, he served as mayor of Coatzacoalcos, state president of the PRI, advisor to the state government coordinator, and director of the Public Property Registry, among other positions. He was proposed as a judge by then Governor Fidel Herrera and appointed by the State Congress in 2010. Later, in December 2016, on the first day of the administration of Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, he was appointed president of the Supreme Court of Justice and the State Judicial Council. He recently retired and was accused of corruption, including forging contracts worth around 350 million pesos with ghost companies linked to the international money laundering scandal known as the Panama Papers, according to the journalistic investigation by Flavia Morales.

Third, but not least, is Grupo Editorial Sánchez, owned by the Sánchez Macías family. They have been in the news business for decades, but Duarte’s sexenio was their heyday: they had up to 11 newspapers and a magazine, of which only seven survived. Unmistakably, they are all called El Heraldo. They had editions in Xalapa, Veracruz, Tuxpan, Poza Rica, Martínez de la Torre, Coatzacoalcos and Córdoba. The Córdoba branch was created during the Duarte administration. According to media reports from the day of the opening, March 21, 2014, state and federal officials were present. The ribbon was cut by Antonio «Tony» Macías Yazegey, father of Karime, father-in-law of the governor at the time, along with Eduardo Sánchez Macías, the man who publicly leads the group.
The governor’s wife and the owner of the media conglomerate share the same surname. They are said to be cousins or distant cousins. Without showing any birth certificates, Eduardo Sánchez Macías denied it when the Duarte government wavered. Beyond this possible kinship, Sánchez Macías was also a local deputy while he was in charge of these newspapers. In 2019, he ended up in jail for the crime of «simulation fraud» for allocating advertising from Congress to his own newspapers.

Former governor Miguel Ángel Yunes said that between 2010 and 2016, Duarte’s government awarded contracts worth 230 million pesos (more than $11 million) to his relatives. The case of Grupo Editorial Sánchez has not yet been resolved. Whether or not Eduardo Sánchez Macías was related to the governor, there is still a conflict of interest. At the same time as being a legislator, he was a media entrepreneur and, on top of that, he was appointed secretary of the State Commission for the Attention and Protection of Journalists.

«My boss called me one day, very upset,» says a journalist from Xalapa. – «Hey, I heard you were involved in this, right? Don’t you realize you’re hurting me? I have a deal here that could fall through if you keep this up. He told me to back off. «You’d better, otherwise I’ve been told they’re going to mess you up. I’m telling you, I have direct contact with the state government.»

He recounts a time when he participated in a protest in Congress and the police beat him in front of the deputies, and how one of them, sitting on a bench, witnessed the abuse without saying anything. The same deputy held a leading position in the media company where he worked.

To understand the multimillion-dollar official propaganda contracts of the Duarte government with media companies, it is necessary to mention the Capital Media Group, owned by the Maccise family, founded in the 1980s by Anuar Maccise Dibb and inherited by his sons José Anuar and Luis Ernesto Maccise Uribe. They had 13 media outlets throughout the country, including television (Efekto TV), radio (Capital), and various specialized print publications such as The News and Estadio, although they had only one newspaper in Veracruz: Capital Veracruz.

There are documents showing that the government owed them nearly 8 million pesos, which was allocated to their newspaper, Reporte Índigo. But they didn’t just receive advertising: in two direct awards in 2014 and 2015, the Veracruz government spent 66 million on granola bars, 47 million on amaranth bars, and other NutriWell brand products from the Maccise Uribe brothers, for a total of 191 million and 315 thousand pesos. According to Sebastián Barragán’s journalistic research, this purchase was for the supplies that would be delivered for school breakfasts in public school cafeterias.

5. The call.

The phone kept ringing, but Gabriel Huge did not answer it, even though it was right next to him. He looked worried. Mercedes, his aunt who raised him as her own son, looked at him.
«Why don’t you answer?»
«They’re calling me, but don’t worry, I’ll change the number.»

He did. By May 2, 2015, he already had a new phone number, but they found him anyway. He left, saying he would be right back, but he never returned.

Eventually, his family was able to reconstruct some of the events. That morning, Huge went downtown to cover a press conference, a routine procedure for police reporters. His colleagues say he was calm; they noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Around eleven, he returned home with his family, where Mercedes and Isabel chatted with him briefly. His nephew, a fellow photographer, asked if he had «been there.» Huge replied, «I’m just leaving,» and left without his motorcycle. They never knew where, but someone later told them that he had been to a place called El Cristo. Antonio Rebolledo, a friend, told the family that Huge had stopped by his shop that afternoon, explained that he was on his way to a sensitive meeting, and asked him not to call or make a fuss. He added, «If I’m not back in two hours, take good care of my daughter.

The next morning, with no news, the family began to worry. Huge did not answer his phone, and he had not returned. The authorities announced the discovery of four bodies, two of them the uncle and the nephew.

When Huge’s colleague and friend Milo Vela was killed, along with his son Misael López and his son’s mother, Agustina Solana, he was deeply affected, as were many journalists in the port city of Veracruz. A month later, when another colleague, Yolanda Ordaz of Notiver, became the third journalist from the same newspaper to be killed, Huge decided to flee. He was part of an exodus of displaced reporters-those who sought refuge as best they could or left journalism to work on something else. An almost invisible, poorly documented exodus from a time some call «the retreat.»

Huge went first to Tabasco and later to Poza Rica, where colleagues remember him fondly for the sympathy he garnered, even if his stay there was brief.
«He gave me a photo gallery and left me his Nextel phone with all his contacts; he seemed very concerned,» says Lydia López, a journalist and teacher in the northern region of Veracruz.
He had never worked as a radio broadcaster, but he did in Poza Rica. He was the enterprising type, not afraid to try new things. In addition to reporting, he spent time in pawn shops looking for bargains. He bought several computers and decided to open a cybercafé, recalls Isabel Luna, his niece, even though they were like brother and sister.

«Well, I’m not sure if the cybercafe came first, because he also opened a video store, we rented movies. Then he started buying tires, he wanted to open a tire repair shop. That’s how he was. That’s how many journalists were, then and now, who had no choice but to work several jobs to make a living. Like Pedro Tamayo Rosas, who had a food stand, or Sergio Landa, a former soccer referee, or Juan Atalo Mendoza Delgado, who drove a taxi».

Guillermo, known to everyone as Memo, was a serious child and adult. Isabel, his older sister, says that as a child he did not play much, only running around the yard. He had a sense of responsibility, and she believes that he might have liked to study, but he chose to work because he felt compelled to help support the household after their mother, Mercedes, was widowed. Later, when Isabel divorced, it was Huge and Guillermo who took care of buying diapers, milk, and everything else their nephews and nieces needed.

Memo completed his basic education, opting for technical training in air conditioning repair, but as soon as he finished his classes, he started working as a journalist. Always close to his uncle Gabriel Huge, who was already an experienced crime photographer and undoubtedly his role model in everything. After picking up the pace of reporting, Memo soon felt his calling as a police reporter. He was only able to work for two years, but they were very intense.

Makanaki has photos of Guillermo on his phone. He is seen standing guard at the scene of a car accident. Another is outside the prison, at the «base,» as crime reporters call the place where they wait for news.

Makanaki is a well-known photographer in the port city of Veracruz. He is in his sixties now, but still rides around on his motorcycle, wearing a press vest and hanging camera. It saddens him to remember Guillermo as such a happy person and to think that he was killed at such a young age.

– He was so young. He was so young. He could have enjoyed more time as a crime reporter.

Guillermo was 21 years old.

His Facebook profile is still active, with frequent messages. His sister Isabel, his girlfriend Tania, and his friends continue to write on his wall. People congratulate him on his birthday and tell him they love and miss him.
In the photos he posted on Facebook, he looks happy, wearing sunglasses, in selfies, and with friends. Isabel says he liked reggaeton and salsa dancing.

In Veracruz, and perhaps in several states, members of the cartels call newsrooms to tell them what to publish and what not to publish. They call directors, journalists, and photographers; they call to give tips about something that has happened or is about to happen, suggestions that, more than being helpful, are instructions for mandatory coverage. In 2010-2016, there were cases in which these suggestions or tips on what to cover came so quickly that they led to absurd situations, such as journalists showing up before the bodies had even been dumped at the scene.

The narcos call because they have the phone numbers of journalists. When there is a new «plaza boss,» a new leader of the drug cartel in that area, one of the first things they do is get names, phone numbers, addresses, etc.

They call, but often do not even have to introduce themselves; everyone knows who they are. They are seen on the street, recognized and greeted. Often, especially in small towns, the new boss of the plaza used to be the municipal policeman or the traffic cop. He used to be your source, the one who gave you tips and whom you used to question until yesterday. And besides being a narco, he is a neighbor; he lives two or three houses down from you. Or you went to the same school; he is your childhood friend, your cousin’s husband, or even your compadre.

In May 2012, they called Gabriel Huge in Veracruz. He left without saying where he was going and never returned. They found parts of his body in garbage bags.

They called Noel López Olguín in Jáltipan, but he said he was on his way to Soteapan and would be back that afternoon. It was March 8, 2011. Three months later they found his body in an unmarked grave.

On January 22, 2012, they called Sergio Landa in Cardel. They called him every half hour and he turned pale. He rushed out and said: «I’ll be right back, don’t turn off the machine, I’ll be back to finish what I’m doing. According to people who have read the official investigation, security cameras recorded him arriving on his motorcycle at the Tamarindos gas station, where he met state police officers. Sergio followed the police car to a small restaurant on the Conejos-Huatusco highway. He left his motorcycle there and followed the police on foot toward Huatusco. No one has heard from him since.

6.The crime reporters, the «empirical» 

– What can you not talk about?
– Crime reporting.

Hugo Gallardo answers without hesitation. He is precise in his words, with the pauses and theatricality of an experienced television journalist, because he has 36 years of experience. For a long time, he was the face of Televisa in the port of Veracruz. He reported on crime, which became almost the only thing that area contributed to the national agenda: massacres, 35 bodies dumped in a roundabout, corpses and more corpses. These were times when the homicide rate in the state reached 23.5 victims per 100,000 inhabitants, which the World Health Organization considers akin to an epidemic of violence since 10 is the limit of what is considered normal.

«In some places where I applied for jobs, they replied that there was an order from the governor not to hire me.»

The strategy was completed with another defamatory tactic: blacklists. New lists were said to exist all the time, and the names of journalists were circulated on social networks. Other times, there was just a list with no details, a rumor that many suspected came from government agencies.

Nobody trusts anybody anymore. Mistrust was sown. But more than that, the distrust was directed at crime journalists, because they were the ones who were killed – the perverse custom of being murdered and still being considered a suspect in your death. The prejudices of «they must have done something,» «they were involved in something,» echoed endlessly.

Being a crime journalist became a risk in itself. Of the 20 murdered and disappeared, 14 were dedicated to police information (only Regina Martínez did not cover it, and five others did so sporadically or focused on other topics): Noel López Olguín, Rubén Espinosa Becerril, Moisés Sánchez, Armando Saldaña, and Manuel Torres González). In addition, of the 20 disappeared and murdered, 17 were self-taught, «empirical».

Sayda Chiñas is a journalist from Coatzacoalcos and one of the few people willing to speak openly in this region of water, oil, and fear. She was the supervisor and colleague of Gregorio (Goyo) Jiménez. Chiñas was also aware of the circumstances at the time, as she was a member of the State Commission for the Attention and Protection of Journalists (CEAPP).

Tall, strong-willed and outspoken, Sayda was the one who sprang into action when Goyo was kidnapped. She alerted colleagues in the capital to spread the news nationally and pressure for the reporter’s release. Authorities and media executives alike intimidated and threatened her, trying to keep her quiet. She resisted the pressure and continued to demand justice.

Years later, after the kidnapping and murder of her colleague Gregorio Jiménez, she sums up what she witnessed. How businessmen, executives and media owners viewed journalists:

The problem is that they see us as replaceable; there will always be a new journalist who will do the same job for less money. What they did was to cut the expenses of reporters. Also, sometimes municipal governments would pay for a report by a journalist. They would say, «I’m not paying for your work. You have to send me the piece, but the municipality will pay for it.» [We leave out the details of the named municipalities so as not to jeopardize her.]

The youngest or those most in need were sent to a front that was difficult to control, even for those with formal education. They were sent to the field by editors, directors and bosses who only thought about the cover that would sell the most, but without any guarantee, protection or support for the reporters.
Something similar is happening today in the battle for likes. Live broadcasts on Facebook and social media have become extremely popular and even massive, with thousands of people watching crime scenes live. And while it is profitable, as pages like «Veracruz on Alert» already have many advertisers, everything indicates that live streaming is the new crime news.

The police reporter is born out of necessity, but also for fun, nobody denies that.

Smiling like kids who have pulled a prank, some reporters say it is a kind of addiction. The thrill of outrunning ambulances at high speed, the joy of getting the best exclusive photo, and the competition to make the front page or take the picture that will go viral. Crime reporters admit they are brave and even cunning, but it is clear that the profession has become excessively dangerous – almost like receiving a death sentence. It happened without warning. Many did not realize what was happening. Of the twenty people who were killed and disappeared, only Regina Martínez had decided not to report anything that had to do with the police.

7. Forms of death

It was a little later than usual that night. It was past eleven, and Víctor Báez Chino was about to leave the newsroom. He was the director of Reporteros Policiacos, a portal created by journalists that in less than four years had managed to be sustainable and even grow. They started with a biweekly edition, then made it weekly because of reader demand and because they got sponsors for advertising, no longer depending on government contracts. Everyone in Xalapa read it. Colleagues from different regions called and asked to work for free.

It was an unusual but understandable success: the violence generated a lot of information, the public wanted to consume it, and several experienced journalists came together in the new portal. Víctor was the leader of the project. He had 25 years of experience working for different media, such as El Diario de Xalapa, AZ Diario, El Martinense, El Sol de Córdoba, and at that time he was also the editor of the police section of Milenio El Portal, the Veracruz branch of the national newspaper Milenio. In addition, Víctor was one of those people who gathered others around him, who called and organized others (just like Rubén Espinosa Becerril, another victim).

– Each situation of violence against journalists was unique, says Noé Zavaleta, who has worked as a reporter for more than ten years. He says this in an effort to avoid simplistic explanations, so as not to fall into a superficial analysis that looks for single culprits. He says this because he knows his state (Veracruz), was born in Xalapa, still lives there, and has worked there as a reporter for more than ten years. Zavaleta is right: only in Xalapa do you feel the weight of the political capital, surrounded by ears that observe in detail, or those that take note of everything and ask questions when you take out a camera. It is different in Veracruz-Boca del Río, the economic capital, where the territorial dispute over the conquest of a port that moves all kinds of goods is still perceived through gunshots and blood. The problems in Coatzacoalcos are different. This city has suffered an epidemic of kidnappings of oil workers, who earn good salaries. The zone has not been able to control extortion because it is said that no one, not even the largest petrochemical company, signs contracts without the approval of the zone’s head. The reign of terror and silence in Poza Rica is also different; it is a declining oil region, too close to Tamaulipas and the route to the United States, where few dare to speak.

There is no single explanation for the crimes against journalists in Veracruz, no single executioner, and no single method of killing. But there are some coincidences and patterns that, if not universal, are repeated in several cases.

For example, 12 of the 17 journalists murdered had previously disappeared for hours, days or months. And if we add the 3 who are still disappeared, it turns out that 15 of the 20 victims were disappeared. Disappearance has been a constant, either as a precursor to murder or as a continuing fate in the present.

Regina Martínez was killed in her home in Xalapa. It is not clear what items were taken or if any work materials were missing, especially since it is suspected that the crime scene was tampered with. The government quickly proposed the hypothesis of a crime of passion, which it has maintained to this day, although her colleagues say that the murder was clearly related to her journalistic work, and she herself had asked her family to keep their distance because she was investigating something important.

Three members of the Velasco-Solana family were attacked in their home in Veracruz. In different ways, with various weapons and in different rooms, they took the lives of Miguel Ángel, his wife Agustina Solana, and their youngest son, Misael López, 21 years old. Both Milo and Misael were journalists.

Photographer Rubén Espinosa was murdered in Mexico City in the home of activist Nadia Vera. Both had fled Veracruz due to threats, and both were tortured. Three other women who were in the apartment – Mile Virginia Martín, Yesenia Quiroz and Alejandra Negrete – were killed first and in different ways.

In all three cases, the evidence suggests that the attackers spent some time in the homes. They did not kill the journalists quickly or with a single shot. There were signs of torture with various objects. These were planned operations involving several people. The assailants also made phone calls to other people. In front of the house of Velasco-Solana, for example, there were several trucks. And in the Narvarte neighborhood, where Rubén and Nadia were killed, there were cars waiting.

8. To cause pain (and terror).

Blade wounds to body and head.

33 shots to 3 bodies with 9mm, .38 Super and .380 caliber weapons.

The body showed signs of torture and was decapitated.

One wound on the cheek, three holes apparently caused by a blackjack glove.

Legs detached and severed.

Beating on the body.

Gunshot to the head.

Semi-naked woman, tied up and her head covered with a plastic bag.

Bruises on the back.

12 stab wounds.

Various wounds and dismembered lower limbs.

Sitting man, with disfigured face.

Male. Upper and lower limbs bound with gray tape.

Had bruises on his body and fists tied behind his back.

Blindfolded with blows all over his body.

Male with burns and abrasions to the neck. Probably strangled first, then decapitated and mutilated.

That’s what happened to the 17 journalists murdered in Veracruz between 2010 and 2016. It is not necessary to reveal their names or what torture, mutilation or dismemberment corresponds to each case; it is enough to know that this is what happened during the crimes committed. These are not invented words, but information scraped from files, excerpts from death certificates, and details leaked to the press. Words that speak of people, their bodies and their lives.
Two victims were suffocated, 6 were shot, 7 were decapitated and dismembered. Of the 17 murders, only 4 were instant deaths; of the others – 13 – we find that only in one case there is insufficient information, and in 12 others the victims showed signs of torture.

We still do not know what happened to Gabriel Fonseca, Miguel Morales and Sergio Landa, because they are still disappeared. Nor do we know what happened to Noel López Olguín, since his body was found three months after he was buried, without the possibility of a clear autopsy.

In addition, there are recurring elements in the third phase of the crime: disclosure. Of the 17 murdered journalists, only two were buried, or their bodies were deposited in unseen places. Fifteen were dumped in public places with the clear intention of being found. Sometimes in garbage bags, sometimes with cardboard signs or thrown on the ground. In downtown areas, in front of media outlets, on highways, and on the side of the road. Their bodies were almost always mutilated, thrown and displayed as messages of terror.

Javier Duarte is in prison, as is Marco Conde. Bermúdez Zurita, Gina Domínguez, and former state prosecutor Bravo Contreras were also imprisoned, but have since regained their freedom. And although almost ten years have passed since the end of that government, the situation in Veracruz remains very similar.

Journalists do not answer phone calls from unknown numbers. To contact them, you have to send them a message on WhatsApp, introduce yourself and ask someone they trust to recommend you. Only then do they agree to speak briefly, perhaps for an interview.

Many agreed to meet, only to cancel at the last minute. «I have nothing to contribute» was the most common explanation. Those who did speak were visibly affected; there were issues they simply could not address; they were crying or shaking with fear or anger. They requested anonymity for their safety, asking, «I will only speak off the record; do not even use my voice, or if you want to use it, it must be distorted.

– «The one who ordered the disappearance of Cuco Fonseca is now a plaza boss.»
– We have been attacked by crime at the request of the government.
– We continue to walk in a mined world.»

These are the words of three journalists who asked that their names not be used.
Jorge Sánchez, Moisés Sánchez’s son, has been saying for the past few years that the former mayor of Medellín, who is suspected of killing his father, is walking around in public and getting away with it.

The relatives are also angry. They feel mistreated by the press, by colleagues, friends and neighbors. By those who spoke (and still speak) lightly of their loved ones.

For example, one of them said, «Because of our experience, we do not even want to name the situation. The unfair accusations and what people said hurt us a lot. And now that (the victim’s) son is starting to realize everything, we do not want him to go through what we went through.

The message arrives via WhatsApp. The sender is the aunt of one of the murdered journalists. She is kind and affectionate; she has been in dialogue for months, but she does not want to be involved in any public statements. Like her, several people explained their reasons for no longer participating in anything, in any exercise of remembrance, or even in any demand for justice. Others said no, thank you, or did not even respond.

9. To erase, leaving no trace.

The Carlos Fuentes Library is a four-story building. Its façade has an orange color similar to that of the mammee fruit, with a polished stone floor and a style that blends Modernism and Art Deco, with balconies overlooking Juárez Park, the most central park in Xalapa. It is located in front of the government palace and the traditional café La Parroquia.

It is a public library, one of the largest, and it depends on the state government. It was inaugurated in 2004. It is open from Monday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. It has 3,500 square meters on four floors with consultation rooms, a computer and a photocopying center. It also has an auditorium with a capacity of 50 people, a central courtyard for cultural events, and a newspaper library that promises access to national and local newspapers.

This access is promised, but not guaranteed.

A young woman who works on the top floor explains that there are no more local newspapers or magazines in the building. She says the room was recently remodeled. She says some got damp. She says they threw everything out «because of space». She gives three reasons and some details.
Behind her, the shelves are almost empty, with lots of space. What is left, what they did not throw away, are some tourist magazines, a few about business, some National Geographic issues, and recent issues of Proceso.

Juan Atalo Mendoza Delgado’s family was unable to preserve the posts on his blog, «Escribiendo la Verdad» (Writing the Truth). They did not consider it at the time, and the website’s domain expired.

Jorge Sánchez keeps some originals of the newspaper «La Unión de Veracruz» that his father, Moisés Sánchez, printed, cut and photocopied. On his computer, he has also recovered some digital notes and videos, although not all of them.

Only the port’s El Dictamen newspaper has digitized most of its issues from more than 100 years of history. They are in a database with several search categories, in text and PDF format. The information, which includes the work of Juan Atalo Mendoza Delgado, can currently only be consulted in the building’s computers.

The magazine Proceso preserves all its issues in physical and digital formats. The works of Regina Martínez and Rubén Espinosa Becerril have been republished in special editions. Proceso and El Dictamen are exceptions: most of the work of journalists killed or disappeared in Veracruz between 2010 and 2016 no longer exists. Through the efforts of civil society, Defensores de la Democracia (Democracy Defenders) has recovered some texts, but many news articles, reports, interviews, opinion pieces and photographs are no longer available and cannot be read.

They have been lost. They were erased. They disappeared with the victims.

Much of what was said and done by government officials has also disappeared. Where there were press releases, documents and bulletins, there are now empty websites. It seems that the frontline team of the Duarte government has erased much of what was published by them and about them. Surprisingly, some of the most public figures of that government (such as former spokesperson Gina Domínguez Colio or former lawyer Luis Angel Contreras, for example) do not even have Wikipedia profiles. Are they not uploaded, or are they being deleted by someone?

Despite the information gaps (some statements, publications, and press conference videos were already considered lost), some remained on social media or in local media. They are statements by prosecutors, spokespersons and security officials. The recovery of these words reveals that the Duarte-led government had at least three communication strategies regarding violence against journalists: stigmatization (2011-2012), evasion (2013-2014), and denial (2015-2016).

In 2011 and 2012, the authorities insisted from the outset on alleged links to criminal activity (as in the case of Yolanda Ordaz) and presented the murders as acts of revenge (i.e., the case of Víctor Báez Chino, the multiple murders of the Velasco family, and the multiple murder of Huge-Luna-Rodríguez-Becerra). These were times of intense violence, and the context served as a perfect mold to shape the narrative.

In 2013 and 2014, when the fewest cases occurred – two – the authorities created a special commission for the protection of journalists and tried to defuse the situation, mainly due to the pressure generated by a narrative that already included nine murders and one disappearance, as well as the attention the situation received from the international press. Nevertheless, they maintained the narrative that suggested criminal links to the murders and disappearances of journalists, although in a less explicit manner. The appointment of Luis Ángel Bravo Contreras as state prosecutor was fundamental, as it shifted from an evasive strategy to a much more elaborate denial (2014-2016).

The reason for the authorities’ denial was that if they could install the idea that journalists were not killed because of their profession, then there would be no violence against the press. The narrative strategy became more sophisticated, but also unsustainable, because it was undermined by the facts: between 2014 and 2016, they murdered 6 more journalists, or 7 in total if we include Octavio Rojas Hernández, who was found in Oaxaca, but a few kilometers from Veracruz, where he lived and worked as a journalist.

At times, the discourse of denial failed, generating strong criticism. As a result, the government quickly shifted to more condescending versions, relying on the image of impartial and speedy justice. This happened in the case of the murder of Pedro Tamayo Rosas. On July 22, 2016, two days after the crime, prosecutor Bravo Contreras said that they had already identified the possible perpetrators, without giving any details.

They said they were investigating, although no one knows exactly what or how. However, there are not many documents to support this investigation.
We expected to be able to review each of the 20 files when we began our investigation. But a year and a half later, we have only been able to access and review three: Moisés Sánchez, Rubén Espinosa Becerril, and Regina Martínez. In addition to some autopsies, death certificates, leaked documents, and others shared by the families, we also requested copies of the progress of the justice system, with more than 200 transparency requests. All responses were negative.

All the others, the majority of the families, go on for years without knowing whether the detained persons remain in custody, whether there are new suspects, or what investigations or expert opinions have been carried out. For example, Víctor Báez Chino was murdered in 2012, but it was not until a decade later that his widow and children received a copy of the case file. In addition, they spent all this time communicating with an official of the National Human Rights Commission who was supposed to be handling their case, but he did not provide any documented evidence or proven management in 7 years.

For journalists in Veracruz, things have not improved much either.

«I think the situation is still the same,» says journalist Roger López. «People have to work in three or four media just to have a drink or to survive. It is unfortunate that in Duarte’s time there was not much space for investigative journalism, and now there is even less. The situation seems to have stagnated. Mainly because of insecurity, lack of training, or precariousness. Because some media have disappeared and people have lost their jobs, we have to find other means to survive in this environment.