Photo: Facebook/Escenario Calentano / Courtesy
For: The opinion Updated Jan 11, 2023, 2:43 pm EST
Reporting has become a risky and even deadly activity in Mexico, since those who dedicate themselves to journalism risk their lives doing their work. The most recent incident occurred in the state of Guerrero, where three journalists disappeared last Decemberbut it was not until January that anything was known about two of them, since a video was released in which they are seen chained and barefoot while referring to the armed group they spoke of: The Michoacan Family.
Local and independent media have gained notorious importance in several regions of the country, it is precisely one of them where two of the disappeared journalists and those who appear in the video worked. Is about Alan García Aguilar and Fernando Moreno Villegas, who practiced their profession in the Calentano Stage environment. The other missing communication professional is Jesus Happy Painterwho worked as a correspondent for La Jornada Guerrero.
They were last seen in the Tierra Caliente region, an area devastated by organized crime, especially by La Familia Michoacana, and it was their informative work and denunciation against criminal groups that caused them to be deprived of liberty, as this was He said in the video that it was uploaded to the journalists’ own portal and later circulated on social networks.
In the recording, Fernando Moreno Villegas begins to speak, gives his name, next to him is Alan García, who also gives his name. Both are seated, chained by the hands and feet and without shoes. the first to speak says that they are there paying the consequences of the publications that were made against “these people from the region of Tierra Caliente, Michoacán, the State of Mexico and Guerrero.”
WARRIOR: In this video uploaded to social networks by members of the La Familia Michoacana Cartel, two journalists appear chained: Fernando Moreno Villegas and Alan García Aguilar, both from the portal “Espectro Caléntano”, whose disappearance was reported a few days ago. pic.twitter.com/BV4mXHxv8t
— Vladimir Galeana Solórzano (@VladimirGalean4) January 10, 2023
After saying that, he turned to see his partner, who pointed out: “Escenario Calentano was created five years ago, I was the one who created the page five years ago”, and at that moment the recording ends.
Although they do not say names of the people they refer to, from the publications in their media it is intuited that they belong to La Familia Michoacana, because after the San Miguel Totolapan massacre, in which 22 people were murderedincluding the mayor Conrado Mendoza, spoke of the group responsible for having dyed the municipality red.
In several of their publications they attacked the criminal group that has spread terror, death and pain in the Tierra Caliente region.
The last publication of the digital media Escenario Calentano was made on December 13, 2022, 14 days before his disappearance, where they asked José Alfredo Hurtado Olascoaga, alias “El Fresa” -one of the leaders of the Nueva Familia Michoacana-, to leave the people of Guerrero “in peace”. “Out with organized crime,” the site stated.
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