Last year I wrote about how Mexico has taken centre stage as a hotbed for kidnapping in the Western Hemisphere. The country started out the new decade with a bang – literally – as 69 persons around Mexico were murdered in the first day of the year. And kidnapping, particularly by drug cartels, continues unabated, but now there is a rising category of victims – journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported last week that two journalists, José Luis Romero and María Esther Aguilar Cansimbe, had been targets of abduction in the last two months. Nine reporters have been kidnapped since 2005. That number rose to 10 late last week when another journalist, Valentín Valdés Espinosa, was abducted and later killed in Saltillo. CPJ’s research reveals what a precarious profession journalism is in Mexico, with dozens of journalists murdered in the last two decades. Sadly, many more journalists remain on the “missing” list after being abducted and feared dead.
