[R-G] Armando Rodriguez, fifth reporter murdered in Mexico this year

[Steven L. Robinson]

Armando Rodriguez, fifth reporter murdered in Mexico

By Brenda Norrell
Narcosphere
November 15, 2008

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico -- News reporter Armando Rodriguez was the fifth
reporter murdered in Mexico this year, and the 20th news reporter murdered
in Mexico since 2000, when he was gunned down as he took his child to school
on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008. These numbers increase when the number of
independent journalists murdered are added to the list of media assassinated
in Mexico.

Rodriguez, a reporter for El Diario, the largest privately-owned daily in
Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, was shot dead outside
his home.

Reporters without Borders said, "Rodriguez, aged 40, became the latest
victim in a bloody war between the country's major drug cartels which is
centered on Ciudad Juarez, in Chihuahua State, with more than 1,300
casualties since the start of the year."

Rodriguez, a crime specialist for the past 14 years, was leaving his home to
drive his eight year old daughter to school when an unidentified gunman
ambushed and shot him dead at point blank range before running to a nearby
vehicle where accomplices were waiting, Reporters without Borders said.

Editor of El Diario, Pedro Torres, told Reporters Without Borders that
Rodriguez had received a threatening message on his mobile phone in February
2008 telling him to "tone it down." As a result, he was transferred to El
Paso for two months for his safety but on his return he had insisted on
resuming work without any special protection.

"First of all we want to voice our solidarity with Armando Rodriguez's
family in their grief for this vile crime that plunges Mexico yet further
into the terror of the war of the cartels," the organization said. "This
crime specialist was in the front line of this savage conflict, which has
made Mexico one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists".

"We welcome the authorities' decision to take on this case through the
federal prosecutor's office. We hope that the inquiry will swiftly identify
the killers and those who sent them, thus showing the government's
determination to effectively fight the impunity that sadly so often prevails
in Mexico", it concluded.

Carlos Huerta Munoz, a reporter on the local daily El Norte, pointed out
that Rodriguez had on the previous day reported on the killing of two local
police officers. A severed head had also been found on November 6, on a
monument in the Journalist's Square in the center of Ciudad Juarez, which
the city's media took to be a direct threat against them.

There were at least three homicides on Thursday in El Paso, including the
murder of police inspector Miguel Carlos Herrera Gonzalez. He was fatally
shot soon after his shift ended in the morning. Herrera is the fourth
law-enforcement officer killed the same week. The Mexican attorney general's
office said the case has been handed over to a federal task force
investigating crimes against journalists, according to the El Paso Times.

Among those carrying out the murders are the Zetas. The death squads of the
Zetas, trained at the US School of the Americas, are carrying out the
executions for Mexican drug cartels and are hired as killers in Iraq.

The number of reporters murdered this year is even higher than reports show,
because of those murdered in the independent media.

In April, two Indigenous Triqui women who worked at the community radio
station La Voz que Rompe el Silencio, "The Voice that Breaks the Silence,"
in the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala of the Mixteca region,
were murdered on their way to Oaxaca city to participate in the State Forum
for the Defense of the Rights of the Peoples of Oaxaca. Three other people
were injured. Teresa Bautista Merino, 24, and Felícitas Martínez Sánchez,
20, were shot and killed.

The women had departed from the radio station, which is part of the Network
of Indigenous Community Radio Stations of the Southeast (Red de Radios
Comunitarias Indígenas del Sureste), around 1:00 PM. They were travelling in
a truck on their way to Oaxaca city, and were ambushed on the outskirts of
the community Llano Juarez, according to independent media reports.

Two journalists were murdered in Oaxaca during a major wave of protests
against state governor Ulíses Ruiz Ortíz in 2006. Indymedia reporter and
U.S. citizen Bradley Will, and Raúl Marcial Pérez, an Indigenous community
leader and columnist for the regional daily El Gráfico, were murdered.

Less than a month ago, in Oaxaca, Reporters without Borders, reported the
abduction and torture of reporter Pedro Matías Arrazola of the local daily
Noticias de Oaxaca and the national weekly Processo. Matias was beaten and
psychologically tortured for about 12 hours on the night of 25 October in
the southern city of Oaxaca before being dumped outside the city.

In October, Reporters without Borders, reported the abduction and murder of
Miguel Angel Villa Gómez Valle, the editor of Noticias de Michoacán, a daily
newspaper based in Lázaro Cárdenas, in the southwestern state of Michoacán.
Villa Gómez's bullet-riddled body was found Oct. 10 in a refuse dump, less
than 12 hours after he went missing.

"The list of kidnappings and execution-style killings of journalists
continues to grow longer in areas of Mexico where organised crime is
well-established," Reporters Without Borders said. "Our thoughts go out to
the victim's family and colleagues, whose grief will only be compounded if
this murder goes unpunished."

The police found Villa Gómez's body in a road-side refuse dump about 50 km
outside Lázaro Cárdenas. He had been shot twice in the stomach and once in
the head. Relatives told Agence France-Presse that he left his office at
about 10 p.m. on Oct. 9 with the intention of going home. He had not
mentioned getting any threats. His newspaper is a regional tabloid that
often carries stories linked to corruption, organised crime and drug
trafficking.

On September 23, a radio show host was gunned down by a person driving a
tuck with Texas license plates in Tabasco. Alejandro Xenón Fonseca Estrada,
a program host for a local radio station, EXA FM in Villahermosa, the
capitol of the southeastern state of Tabasco, was murdered.

Authorities did not contact the radio station immediately after the murder.
Fonseca, 33, hosted a morning show on EXA FM called "El Padrino" (The
Godfather) and he was widely known by the nickname of "Padrino Fonseca." He
was also an activist who campaigned against organised crime and headed an
NGO.

"On the evening of his murder, he was on the streets with a loudspeaker and,
together with several colleagues, was putting up stickers criticizing
abductions," Reporters without Borders said. He was at the intersection of
two avenues at about 9 p.m. when a pickup with a Texan licence plate pulled
up alongside him. "The passengers in the cabin asked him what he was doing
with his stickers. Then they opened fire and then drove off. Hit in the
chest, Fonseca died after being rushed to the city's Los Angeles hospital."

The staff of EXA FM said they were unaware of any prior threats against
Fonseca, who started his program in 2001 on Radio Tabasco before moving with
it to EXA FM. He also participated in a local TV programme. His colleagues
said "El Padrino," which was about social issues and had many listeners,
might not survive his death as he was its "soul."

Abductions, disappearances and murders of journalists are common in this
part of Mexico. Mauricio Estrada Zamora of the regional daily La Opinión de
Apatzingán has been missing since February 12. Gerardo Israel García
Pimentel of the daily La Opinión de Michoacán was gunned down on December 8,
2007 in Uruapan.

During the past two years, José Antonio García Apac, the editor of the
weekly Ecos de la Cuenca, was among the disappeared.  He was last seen on 20
November 2006 near Tepalcatepec, as he was about to set off for his home in
Morelia, the capital of Michoacán. The police investigation into his
disappearance drew a blank. Freelance photographer Jaime Arturo Olvera
Bravo, a former employee of La Voz de Michoacán, was killed on March 9, 2006
in La Piedad.

Michel Marizco, reporting from Mexico in the Border Reporter, said, "Five
journalists have now been murdered in Mexico this year and one has gone
missing, says Carlos Lauria with the The New York-based, Committee to
Protect Journalists."

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riguez-fifth-reporter-murdered-mexico

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