Nuevo Laredo: Murder Capital of Texas Border Towns

You may or may not have heard of the many journalists and others murdered just across the border from Texas in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Between bribes, governmental blind eyes, and the pressure from drug cartels, people are being killed in an effort to use the conduit of Laredo, Texas as a primary point of entry into the the United States. Unlike American journalists, these Mexican papers and reporters are risking their lives and their offices to get the word out, in the face of lip service from both sides of the border. It is failing miserably. Below is an extended excerpt from IPS on the matter. I recommend you keep a closer eye on the situation, as an example of the Mexican government's nonchalant approach to the smuggling of drugs and arms into our own country:

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MEXICO:
Reporters Targeted by Drug-Related Violence
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 7 (IPS) - The most dangerous place in Latin America to work as a journalist is northern Mexico, along the U.S. border, where drug traffickers threaten, kidnap and even murder reporters with impunity, according to the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

The latest incident occurred Monday evening, when several masked gunmen stormed the offices of the El Mañana newspaper in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, firing assault rifles and tossing a grenade. One reporter, Jaime Orozco, was seriously injured and is in critical condition.

"What happened in El Mañana went beyond the pale and it is clear that the government is unable or unwilling, or does not know how, to confront this wave of violence against reporters and freedom of the press," Eréndira Cruz, director of the non-governmental National Centre for Social Communication, told IPS.

In its Tuesday edition, the newspaper, whose editorial director was murdered in 2004, stated in an editorial that Monday's attack was "one more page in the violence that reaches the level of terrorism." It added that "the drug trafficking problem has gotten completely out of the hands of the authorities."

The attack on El Mañana occurred in the midst of a turf war between drug trafficking gangs that has left more than 100 dead so far this year and claimed around 1,500 victims in 2005.

Twenty reporters have been murdered in Mexico since 2000, when President Vicente Fox took office, according to the Federation of Associations of Mexican Journalists and the Federation of Latin American Journalists. Nineteen journalists were killed during the term of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), and 57 under the administration of Carlos Salinas (1988-1994).

Copyright 2006, IPS - Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

Full text: Reporters Targeted by Drug-Related Violence

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