Monday, January 17, around 12:45 p.m., photojournalist Margarito Martinez Esquivel leaves his home in Tijuana, a border town between Mexico and the United States. He is walking quietly towards his car when he falls under several gunshots fired at the level of the head.
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This 29-year-old photographer, specializing in police affairs, worked for the local media: the Cadena Noticias website and the weekly Zeta. He was also a fixer for international media such as the BBC, the San Diego Union-Tribune and Los Angeles Times. The NGO YoSiSoyPeriodista (“I am a journalist”), very active in the country, indicated that Margarito Martinez had already been threatened in December 2021 by bloggers. According to the weekly Zeta, which cites witnesses, the photographer could have been killed by one of his neighbors because of a dispute over the ownership of land. Information impossible to verify: after shooting, suspect number one fled in an unknown direction.
The links between political elites and drug cartels
Margarito Martinez is the second journalist killed in Mexico since the beginning of this year. On January 10, at the other end of the country, José Luis Gamboa was found lying in a street in the Floresta district, south of the port of Veracruz. He succumbed to stab wounds, following an alleged robbery.
José Luis Gamboa, 49, founded a weekly news page in 2003 called Inforegio, in which he published political articles. Recently, he published his analyzes on social networks, where he denounced the supposed links between a local cartel, the CJNG (“Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion”), and the political elites of Veracruz. In his articles, the journalist insisted in particular on the role of Veracruz as a hub for fentanyl trafficking to the United States.
José Luis Gamboa was apparently aware of the danger he was running. In one of its publications, reports the Spanish daily The country, he deplored state pressure on journalists and institutional indifference to local drug trafficking: “As soon as the Mexican press points to or reports links between political actors and drug trafficking, the authorities should proceed with an investigation. But the state and its institutions prefer to attack journalists… if they don’t kill them first. »
A hundred journalists killed since 2000
Mexico is the deadliest country in the world for the press, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). At least seven journalists were killed in 2021, according to an AFP count, and around 100 since 2000, according to data from theUN Commission on Human Rights.
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During a recent mission to Mexico, the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) received assurances from the authorities concerning the safety of journalists, in particular the promise of an increase in the budget of the federal prosecutor’s office specializing in freedom of speech. Impunity for the perpetrators of crimes against journalists, underlines the NGO, is almost total in Mexico: “In 95% to 99% of journalist murder cases, the sponsor is never investigated. And in recent years, no cases of missing journalists have been solved. »
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