JOURNALIST CONTINUES WRITING AFTER ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican journalist Jesus Blancornelas has returned
to writing about drug traffickers less than two months after an
assassination attempt as he was on his way to work.

But Blancornelas doesn't go to the office anymore -- he telecommutes.

And his home in this neighborhood of modest one-story homes is now
surrounded by a brick wall and a small army of Mexican police and soldiers
carrying shotguns and automatic rifles.

Blancornelas, 61, was shot four times on his way to work on Nov. 27. His
bodyguard, Luis Lauro Valero, was killed in the ambush. One of the gunmen,
David Barron Corona, also was killed in the attack just blocks from
Blancornelas' office. Barron was believed to be a top gunman for the
Arellano Felix brothers drug cartel, which has been targeted by
Blancornelas in the weekly newspaper Zeta.

In his first interview with an American newspaper since the attack, the
award-winning journalist told The San Diego Union-Tribune that details of
the shooting are still vivid, including the face and hairdo of one of the
assassins.

"I remember everything," says the editor, who walks with a cane.

His driver and bodyguard, Luis Lauro Valero, tensed as he spotted three men
sitting in a green car parked along their route, two in front, one in the
rear. Then gunfire erupted as their Ford Explorer pulled alongside the
parked vehicle.

From nearly point-blank range, Blancornelas looked into the face of one of
his would-be killers.

"His hair was combed back, greasy. He was wearing black lenses, round 'fly'
glasses. A goatee," he told the Union-Tribune.

Valero pushed him to the floor of the car and immediately drove in reverse
as the first volley of shots struck the bodyguard. The 34-year-old Valero
never had a chance to return fire. He died in the car.

Bullets kept flying as Blancornelas was on the floor of the car, crouched
as if kneeling in prayer.

"I felt something enter my back and my neck. I began to have trouble
breathing," Blancornelas recalled.

One the gunmen hit one of their own, mortally wounding David Barron Corona,
his shotgun still clutched in his gloved hands.

Blancornelas was rushed to Hospital Del Prado a short distance away.

"I did not know for another 15 days that Luis was dead," Blancornelas says.

A month before the attack, the Baja California State Judicial Police had
withdrawn the two bodyguards it had assigned to Blancornelas. State
officials had warned the bodyguard to distance himself from Blancornelas
because "something serious was going to happen to me," the journalist said.

Valero told his employer of the warning, but stayed with him.

The investigation into the shooting is continuing.

Some speculated that Blancornelas had gone too far in his newspaper's
reporting on the Arellano cartel, whose reputation for violence is
well-known on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Blancornelas believes it was the Arellanos who broke the unwritten,
unspoken rules between journalists and one of Mexico's most powerful
organized crime rings.

"I wasn't pursuing them," he says. "My view was, they were doing their work
and I was doing mine."

The attack hasn't hampered his determination to report on drug dealers.

"I'm not going to change. I have no reason to change. We're going to
continue to do what we can."