Every Brave Journalist Mourns a Dead Brave Journalist In Mexico Patrick Timmons - NACLA
go to original September 20, 2016

Noé Zavaleta holds up photographs of his murdered colleague, photojournalist Rubén Espinosa, in Xalapa, on July 31, 2016. (Patrick Timmons)

Noé Zavaleta is a brave Mexican journalist. He works - or used to work - in Veracruz. In the last six years, seventeen journalists have been murdered and five have gone missing in the mountainous coastal state that rings a sizable chunk of the Gulf of Mexico, according to Articulo 19. Its eight million inhabitants have access to at least 66 newspapers in print, with many more online sources, television, and radio. But the risks faced by its news gatherers mark Veracruz as notorious: it is the most dangerous place in the Americas to work as a journalist. It’s this risk that has forced Zavaleta to take a break from reporting from Veracruz. The risks he faces recently worsened.

At 35, the broad-smiled Zavaleta is jovial, even jocular, though he’s a veteran of reporting from a de facto warzone. The war between organized criminal groups has quickened of late, particularly in the state’s south and center. The Zetas – formed in the 1990s out of deserters from the Mexican Army’s special forces – are no longer dominant but are still powerful, dueling with their adversaries, the Matazetas (Zeta killers), also known as the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), who are rumored to be backed by the Veracruz government’s own security forces. The body count indicates a dreadful dynamic: from 2015 to 2016, homicides in Veracruz increased 120 percent, from 219 homicides to 537 homicides. In July 2016, the count stood at 132 homicides, making it the state’s bloodiest month since 1997.

Zavaleta is spooked by recent threats made against him for his first book published in June 2016, Javier Duarte’s Hell (published in Spanish as El Infierno de Javier Duarte). Duarte, 43, is the controversial, scandal-plagued governor of Veracruz, Mexico’s third largest state. In his book, Zavaleta paints a graphic picture of what corruption, impunity and government incompetence have looked like between 2010 and 2016, the sexenio (or six years) of Duarte’s government. His term of office ends on November 30, 2016.

Read the rest at NACLA

Related: Journalist Assassinated in Puebla, Second Within a Week in Mexico (IFEX)

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