Clearly one of the most dangerous jobs in Mexico these days is that of journalist. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that some seven journalists have disappeared in Mexico, in the last three years, an ominous trend that harkens more towards Latin America's brutal, dictatorial past than recent history.
Unfortunately, some thugs are relying on more traditional methods of intimidation:
A veteran police reporter in the US-Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez - the current epicentre of drug cartel turf wars - was shot to death outside his home early yesterday, sparking new calls for the government to halt a series of attacks against journalists covering the drug war.
Crime reporter Armando Rodriguez was shot several times while sitting in his car outside his home by gunmen who apparently lay in wait and sped off following the fatal attack, according to the newspaper he worked for, El Diario.
He was preparing to drive one of his daughters to school, the newspaper said on its website.
It takes an exceptionally cold and cowardly person to shoot a man in front of his eight year old daughter. Reading about this makes my skin crawl.
Juarez is a brutally dangerous place. It has been in the news recently due to the largely unsolved murders of several hundred women whose bodies have been found in and around this border city since 1993. I was in the neighboring US border city of El Paso in October 1997, a few months after the death of Amado Carrillo, the head of the Juarez drug cartel. There was a violent turf war taking place at the time. My hotel was walking distance from the border, but I was advised to only go there with a tour group, as nine doctors with ties to the cartel had been murdered in a popular restaurant there the week before . I took their advice.
My deepest condolences to Armando Rodriguez's family, especially to his daughter who will live the rest of her life with the trauma of seeing her father killed before her eyes; solely because he worked to report on the crime and violence that is rending her nation in two.
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