Photo: ELIZABETH RUIZ/AFP/Getty Images
For: The opinion Posted Jan 27, 2023, 10:26 am EST
Mexico closed 2022 as the most dangerous Latin American region to practice journalism, and the start of 2023 has been no different, with several attacks against communicators.
The most recent of them was the attack against the reporter Rubén Darío Cruz in the tourist destination of Cancun, Quintana Roo, an attack in which the victim managed to survive after hiding in the city prison.
According to local media, Dario, who has escorts from the Mechanism for the Protection of Journalists and Human Rights Defenderswas attacked by a group of men aboard a black vehicle, who managed to flee.
The criminals stopped and one of them got out of the vehicle with a firearm to shoot at the car where the journalist was traveling. “The bodyguards repelled the aggression near the Social Reintegration Center where they finally took refuge,” reported the newspaper Por Esto!, where the reporter works.
The journalist, who had already suffered other attacks against him, revealed to the Efe news agency that when leaving the newspaper’s premises where the police source covers, a young man approached the front door to tell him about a suspicious black vehicle, for so the escorts chose to take the reporter home by alternate routes.
“We rushed out and found the black car following us and it turned towards where we were going, we thought we had lost it, but it came our way again, ”said the communicator.
“We gave the car some distance and turned onto another street and suddenly we had it in front of us and the guys were already under the car, one of them was approaching us with a gun in hand,” he added. After the attack, the escorts sought refuge in the Cancun jailwhich is located a few streets away and where several patrols are stationed.
Cruz has been in the Federal Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists for more than two years after threats and an attempted kidnapping in the state of Veracruz.
Together with his family he moved to Cancun, but shortly after arriving they shot into the air in front of his house. “I was so happy that I was going to be able to walk alone with my wife on the street, I wanted to get rid of this now, this is not life, being like this honestly is not life“Exposed the reporter.
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