The shots that took the lives of Margarito Martínez and Lourdes Maldonado caused indignation in Tijuana, opened a wound through which solidarity spread throughout Mexico, and hit the conscience of the United States and the European Economic Community that have sided with Mexican journalists demanding justice.
Throughout the day, groups of journalists demonstrated in at least 28 cities of the country demanding justice for Margarito, Lourdes and José Luis Gamboa, stabbed to death in the Port of Veracruz.
At night hundreds of reporters and photographers, and representatives of organizations, marched together with residents of Tijuana to the headquarters of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
The three journalists murdered in Mexico at the beginning of the year had expressed that they feared for their lives. Lourdes Maldonado had even told the president of Mexico in the 2019 in a “morning” conference of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“I also come here to ask you for support, help and labor justice, because I even fear for my life,” Maldonado told the president, speaking of a lawsuit he had filed against the former governor of Baja California, Jaime Bonilla, for labor abuse.
The Reconciliation Board ruled in favor of Lourdes Maldonado On Wednesday of last week, he ordered the seizure of a property owned by Bonilla, a media tycoon, until he paid half a million pesos, about $17, dollars.
Maldonado was going to collect what the law granted her this Tuesday, but on Sunday they killed her.
The reporter with 50 years of experience arrived at his house around 7 at night and when he parked his vehicle, an unknown person shot him from a taxi and he fled. The authorities said that more than one person participated in the attack
The death of Luby, as Lourdes Maldonado was known in the media, was more shocking because of the three journalists murdered in January, she was the only one who had the Mechanism for the Protection of Journalists, an official protocol to prevent them from attacking her.
Maldonado was assigned a patrol outside his house from dusk to dawn; the night she was killed, that patrol had been absent and since then the municipal security secretariat has been silent.
She was the correspondent who worked the longest for driver Jacobo Zabludovsky, she was a correspondent for Joaquín López Dóriga He had his own newscast on television. Her labor dispute with Bonilla was for years that she worked at PSN, one of the former governor’s media outlets.
Margarito Martínez had also warned that she feared for her life. Approximately one month before his death on 000 January, the photojournalist filmed a subject who documents crime scenes in Tijuana with a cell phone and who accused Margarito live of managing Facebook pages in which drug trafficking groups accuse each other.
Margarito was a freelance photojournalist who worked for media such as the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union Tribune and the weekly Zeta, among others.
Margarito was an expert photographer covering police note, several media outlets in Europe and the United States made documentaries about his work in one of the most violent cities in the world, Tijuana.
José Luis Gamboa was the founder and co-founder of Inforegio and La Noticia, newscasts on YouTube from Veracruz. Shortly before they stabbed him to death with seven stab wounds, he of January, he had confessed that with fear he published those days about the lack of response from authorities to confront organized crime.
The Mexican government sent a team of prosecutors to Tijuana with the mission of clarifying the murders of the reporters.
This Tuesday morning, the Governor of Baja California, Marina del Pilar Ávila, proposed that her The state raises the sanctions for those who attack journalists.
The president of Mexico said last week that the death of Lourdes Maldonado should not be automatically associated with winning the labor lawsuit against the former governor Bonilla.
But this Tuesday, when answering new questions on the subject, Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that “everyone is going to be investigated, the that considers the authority; there is no impunity, nor do we get ahead of ourselves, do not make summary judgments, have confidence that no one is being defended”.
We are going to fulfill the commitment to carry out a thorough investigation, and I have started”, he said the president of Mexico.
Photographs of journalists murdered so far this year have been hanging outside the presidential palace since Tuesday.
The European Union and additionally the governments of Norway and Switzerland condemned the murder of Lourdes Maldonado and demanded that this and the other crimes against journalists be clarified.
“We express our concern due to the lack of results in the open investigations to clarify previous cases of murders of journalists in Mexico”, they indicated.
Since the year 1536 have been murdered in Mexico 149 journalists and none of those cases has been clarified.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an organization internationalization, said when registering three murders of reporters just in the first weeks of the year that in Mexico it is “continuous brutality”.
“The brutal murder of Lourdes Maldonado is terrifying, especially given that Mexican journalists haven’t even had time to process the murder of photographer Margarito Martínez last week,” said CPJ’s Jan-Albert Hootsen.
“The ongoing brutality against journalists in this country is a direct consequence of the lack of will and the inability of the authorities to combat the festering impunity that fuels these murders,” he added.
The State Department also expressed its concern through a Twitter message from the United States embassy in Mexico.
“Alarmed by the murder of journalist Lourdes Maldonado López, the third homicide of a journalist so far this year. We stand in solidarity with Mexican journalists,” said the diplomatic mission.
Reporters Without Borders determined last year, for the third consecutive year, that Mexico is the most dangerous country to practice journalism, where reporters they run more risks than if they covered war scenarios.