28 Oct 2011 | Americas, Mexico
New reports indicate the murder of two female journalists in Mexico City in September was carried out by a group of Santeria followers, the voodoo-influenced religion.
Online magazine Reporte Indigo, which had access to the investigation, claims Marcela Yarce, 45, and Rocio Gonzalez, 48, were strangled to death after they sought to exchange pesos for dollars with Óscar Jair Quiñonez Emmert, alias “Ogún”, who worked in a parking establishment in downtown Mexico City, near the offices of the magazine Contralinea, where Yarce worked.
The men are reported to have beaten and killed the two women in order to steal one million pesos (5,700 GBP), which the pair wanted to exchange for US dollars. Exchange rates have been fluctuating in Mexico, and according to police reports, the two women wanted a better rate. Both bodies were found nude and there was evidence of sexual assault.
Contralinea replied angrily to the release of the police report, charging that it did double damage to the memory of the two murdered journalists because it implied they had engaged in illegal activities.
According to the magazine report Emmert confessed to the murder. He told the Public Ministry of the Attorney General of the Federal Distritct how he contacted a group of Santeria followers to help him round up the women. The group included his “godfather” or padrino, Lázaro Hernández, known in the world of Santeria as “El Padrino Laza” and his 16-year-old son. The crime was committed on 31 August, when the women contacted Emmert to complete the financial transaction. After the murders, the group of men had a spiritual bath with herbs to get rid of negative vibrations, according to the court records. The men divided the loot and spent it on cars, a sound system, mobile phones and a family vacation in the resort town of Mazatlan.
Santeria is on the rise in Mexico, in the last decade it has begun to overtake traditional shamanism that dates from ancient Mexico. While the rites appeal to Mexicans of all walks of life, many of its followers are youths from a low-income background who wear santeria beads as a necklace or a bracelet.
26 Sep 2011 | Americas, Mexico
Mexican organised drug cartels have again threatened social network users using a mutilated body. In the second incident this month, the decapitated and tortured body of a woman was found dumped in a public park in Nuevo Laredo, Taumalipas, a city on the US-Mexico border.
The body was discovered in the early morning hours of Saturday, September 24, with a hand scribbled cardboard sign left next to it. It said “Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites, I’m The Laredo Girl, and I’m here because of my reports, and yours. For those who don’t want to believe, this happened to me because of my actions, for believing in the army and the navy. Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl…ZZZZ.””
The victim was identified by Morelos Canseco, the interior secretary of northern Tamaulipas, as Marisol Macias Castaneda, a newsroom manager for the Nuevo Laredo local daily newspaper Primera Hora. The newspaper has not confirmed her title, but it is believed Macias Castaneda was targeted for her contribution to social networking sites.
Apparently Macias Castro contributed reports on drug violence to the blog, Nuevo Laredo EnVivo using the handle “Laredo Girl”. ZZZZ is the signature of Mexico’s most dangerous organised crime group. The Zetas started in Taumalipas as bodyguards for the Cartel del Golfo, an organised crime group from this area. The initials, Zetas, referred to a paramilitary group that initiated its activities in the northern state of Taumalipas, first as an enforcement group for the traditional drug cartel, Cartel Del Golfo, and then toppled the leadership for the Cartel Del Golfo, and is now moving its group that can work in Mexico, the United States and Central America.
Two weeks ago, two Twitter users were also attacked and killed for using the internet to report on drug related violence.
15 Sep 2011 | Americas, Mexico
The butchered bodies of a young man and a woman were found on Tuesday hanging from freeway overpass in Nuevo Laredo, Taumalipas on the US-Mexico border. Two hand-scribbled cardboard placards were left beside the bodies as a warning for Twitter and Facebook users reporting violent incidents online and through social media networks. The women’s body had been disembowelled and the ears and fingers were symbolically mutilated.
“This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the internet,” one sign said. “You better (expletive) pay attention. I’m about to get you.” The placards listed two specific sites which track drug crime Al Rojo Vivo and Blog del Narco and according to a spokesman from the state attorney’s office, the signs accused the unidentified victims of denouncing drug-related violence. The note was signed with the letter Z, suggesting the murders were the work of the Zetas, the organised crime syndicate which controls large parts of Taumalipas.
Maria Elena Meneses, social media expert at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, said that this new attack underscored the importance that social media has in Mexican regions with drug related violence. “People tweet and use Facebook in these areas because they feel abandoned by local government officials who cannot provide them with security, and the local news media which cannot inform,” she said. “To tweet is to mitigate uncertainty.”
A 2010 study on media and violence by the Fundacion de Periodismo de Investigacion (MEPI) found that the news media in the city of Nuevo Laredo exercised 100 per cent self censorship. In one incident, on the day that a mass grave was found with the bodies of 72 migrant workers, the Taumalipas daily El Mañana chose to run a front page story about a woman beating her young daughter instead. As drug cartels silence the press, locals have turned to social media to hear and share the news, an option it its clear that organised crime is now keen to shut-down.
6 Sep 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The Cuban government this weekend revoked the press credentials of journalist Mauricio Vicent, correspondent for Spanish newspaper El País. Cuban authorities said that Vicent, who has been a reporter on the island for twenty years, had portrayed a “biased and negative image” of Cuba. Since 2007, the Cuban government has prohibited reporting by foreign correspondents from the Chicago Tribune, the BBC and Mexico’s El Universal.
