New America Media, News Report, Jose Luis Sierra, Posted: Sep 28, 2011

NUEVO LAREDO, TAMAULIPAS, Mexico -- The execution happened some time between Friday night and early Saturday morning, but it wasn’t until Monday that the death became public—“news.”

The police found the decapitated body of Maria Elizabeth Macías, an editor of Primera Hora, a local newspaper in Nuevo Laredo, several days after she had been killed.

Most Mexican newspapers took notice, but discreetly. Most national TV newscasts barely mentioned it: A Mexican journalist had been murdered—the fourth this month and the eleventh this year, not counting the two Twitter bloggers executed two weeks ago in this very same city. (The bloggers died for the “crime” of alerting followers of the cartel’s movements.)

It was left to some international journalism organizations to raise an alarm. The S.I.P. [Society of Inter-American Journalists] blamed Mexican President Felipe Calderon “for not having the political will’’ to stop the violence against the press. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders joined the protest.

In recent months, three other woman journalists were killed. Rocio González Trápage, a TV reporter with Televisa and Ana Maria Marcela Yarce Viveros, editor of the weekly Contralinea were killed on the 31st of August. Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz of the regional daily, Notiver, was slain in the eastern state of Veracruz on July 26.

Officials with the organization, Reporters without Borders, believe that in all there have been at least 80 journalists killed in Mexico during the past decade.

“The country is immersed in an all-out war, and just writing the word ‘narcos’ or ‘trafficking’ can cost you your life,’’ stated the formal complaint from Reporters without Borders.

The complaint also stated that such attacks pose an obvious and serious danger to the principle of freedom of the press in a democracy. Regardless of the new political regime that will be brought to power with the presidential elections next year, the persecution of journalists in Mexico is another proof of the criminal impunity that seems to be growing every day all over the country.

“What will be left of freedom of information while the barbarity continues?’’ Reporters Without Borders asks rhetorically.

According to some news reports, Macia made use of online networks to report organized criminal activities in Tamaulipas, and she blogged under the pseudonym, “La Nena de Nuevo Laredo.” The Tamaulipas state attorney general’s office said two computer keys, a music player, and several cables were found near her body. There was also this printed message:

“OK Nuevo Laredo live on the social networks, I am La Nena de Laredo and I am here because of my reports and yours … for those who don’t want to believe it, this has happened to me because of my actions, because I trusted SEDENA and MARINA… Thank you for your attention. Att: La Nena de Laredo… zzz”

Two tortured bodies were hanged on September 13 from a bridge in this same city, with an open warning to bloggers and users of Twitter and local websites “Al rojo vivo” and “Blog del Narco.”

“We do not know what to do. It is very clear that the [Mexican] government is incapable of providing public safety to its citizens, much less to us,” said a journalist from Tamaulipas, who agreed to be interviewed under the strict condition of anonymity.

“Everybody (in town) knows who is employed as a journalist. We are high profile targets, easy to find,” the journalist said.

Once a profession coveted by individuals looking to play a role in the civic life, journalism is turning slowly into an underground activity.

“I am becoming afraid to even show up at press conferences. Just walking from my car to the building has turned dangerous. We are kind of getting in a state of constant paranoia,’’ said a fellow woman reporter (with her face covered) at a protest in front of the state’s Prosecution building of Juarez, Chihuahua, demanding protection for journalists and the constitutionally mandated freedom of expression. Additionally the disguised journalists have demanded an on-going investigation of the journalist murders.

A downward trend

Aside from the dangers Mexican journalists are currently facing, the cost to society is even larger and difficult to quantify. Many newspapers in the country are choosing to play it “safe,’’ for fear of putting their employees in danger.

Many Mexican journalists have even resorted to petitioning for political exile in the United States — a process that, in about 90 percent of cases, is fruitless.

There are reports that the Mexican government itself is harassing journalists. Authorities routinely decline to give interviews -- especially to foreign journalists. Three journalists, Jorge Flores of W Radio, Juan Carlos Alarcón of MVS Noticias, and Arturo Moreno of the news agency Notimex, claimed they were detained at gunpoint, allegedly by members of the Veracruz Investigative Agency, and forced to delete the photos they had taken.