Hundreds of parishioners filled the Tijuana cathedral this Sunday to listen to a mass that Archbishop Francisco Moreno Barrón called to show solidarity with the church for the murdered journalists.
“It is a small gesture of the archdiocese, from the church of Tijuana with all the reporters” said the archbishop in conversation with some journalists.
The parishioners arranged a small altar to the left side of the cathedral. They placed the photos of Lourdes “Luby” Maldonado López and Margarito “4-4” Martínez, and brought her microphone and a camera to her, among flower arrangements.
In the parabolic way in which the archbishop expresses himself, he called on the journalists “not to give in”, “to tell the truth”, and emphasized that the church, “the archdiocese of Tijuana solidarity with this cause”.
He asked the journalists “to have the freedom to communicate the truth to the people, to society”.
“Live their professionalism , fearing no one, following the voice of his conscience, appreciating this difficult but beautiful job “that is journalism,” said the Catholic leader south of the California border.
Then the archbishop spoke a little more friendly with the journalists and said that the murdered colleagues “are aware that they are not dead, that is very important, notice how today they are more alive than ever, they have never been talked about so much, never they had been kept in mind like now”.
“That way they will continue to live for their family, for the social community and especially for those who are dedicated to journalism”, said Moreno.
Moments later, at the beginning of the Sunday mass in the cathedral, the priest said that the mass was “in memory of all the people who have been murdered in Tijuana lately, mothers. Women, children, men, but especially in memory of our fellow journalists Lourdes Maldonado and Margarito Martínez”.
Meanwhile, the authorities assure that progress has been made in the investigations into the two murders of journalists on 13 and 23 last January.
“It is expected that in a very short time the first arrest warrants can be generated” in relation to the two homicides, declared the Undersecretary of Federal Public Security, Ricardo García Berdejo.
” We can tell you that in both cases there have been very important advances, both in the modus operandi, both in the mechanics of the facts, and evidence has been recovered and all the necessary technical and legal inquiries have been made to be able to prosecute these cases,” he explained. the federal official.
But locally the municipal police of Tijuana still do not clarify what happened.
Luby Maldonado is was integrated into the “protection mechanism”, an official security protocol for journalists who have been threatened.
Unlike other journalists, who have full-time security and even an armed driver, Maldonado chose that a patrol with an agent remained outside his house from sunset to sunrise.
However, that patrol had withdrawn without giving reason that night on 23 January, when someone shot him from a short distance from inside a taxi.
Regarding the murder of Margarito Martínez, the police of Tijuana, the Municipal Public Security Secretariat, released in just a moment, a statement in which it said that the photojournalist was murdered, “apparently due to a confrontation between neighbors.”
That version also aroused suspicion because the comment was reported unsubstantiated and, contrary to police custom, preempted any investigation to present an alleged motive.
Since these events, the police continue not to provide interviews to reporters who request them and without their senior officers appearing in public places where journalists could ask them .
The archbishop said this Sunday that it is the responsibility of the authorities to provide peace to the community, but in his comments he preferred to talk about the experiences of reporters who have been murdered.
“All of us are called to follow Jesus, but not only him, but through him to serve those around us, and the exercise of journalism is a wonderful opportunity to serve his people; I think it is a privileged vocation in that sense”, said Archbishop Moreno.
At the end of the mass, however, it was learned that a new homicide, not of a journalist, but of the son of a journalist in Mexicali, who was gunned down.
The young man murdered was Marco Ernesto Islas, son of journalist Marco Antonio Parra Islands.
In an environment in which the deaths of journalists continue in Mexico, some media came forward to publish that they had killed another reporter.
And it is that Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world to practice journalism, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
This organization classified Mexico as the most dangerous country in the 2019, 2020 and 2021, and in the 2022 The death rate of reporters in Mexico is even worse, compared to previous years at this time.
RSF says that in Mexico more journalists are killed than ue even in countries where wars are currently taking place.