Newly aggresive Mexican media find selves targeted

By: Philip True , ExpressNews Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY With five attacks on reporters in this capital in less
than a month, Mexico rapidly is adding to its reputation as the
secondmost violent country in the hemisphere for working
journalists.

Already this year, the deaths of at least two journalists have been
linked to stories they were working on in the country's provinces.
Now, with a string of kidnappings and beatings of newspaper writers
and television reporters working on drug and policecorruption
stories since Aug. 28, the violence has come to the big city.

President Ernesto Zedillo condemned the attacks Thursday and ordered
city authorities to investigate and to punish those responsible.
``As a citizen, as a resident of the Federal District and as
president of the republic, I sharply condemn these aggressions
against those who exercise a civic labor of great importance,''
Zedillo said.

No arrests have been made, but reporters and editors say they fear
retribution from city and federal police.

Two reporters from the Mexico City daily Reforma were kidnapped
while investigating stories tying police to drug trafficking.
Two other incidents involved reporters working a series of city
police raids in which three suspects allegedly were executed and
three others disappeared while in police custody.

The attacks are taken so seriously that key personnel at Television
Azteca, the country's second largest television station, have been
assigned body guards and armored cars.

And it appears that the violence is far from over.
Reporter Silvia Otero was cornered, beaten and kicked last week by
three men whose parting warning to her was, ``Tell the others
(reporters) that it's going to go bad for them.''
Otero works for the daily newspaper El Universal, covering the
attorney general's office here.

Two weeks ago to two Television Azteca reporters were kidnapped
separately, driven around the city for hours and beaten and
threatened with pistols.

Their abductors told them evening news anchorman Javier Alatorre was
on their list, said Eloy Aguilar, Mexico director for the Associated
Press and president of the Foreign Correspondents' Association of
Mexico.

The president of the governmental National Commission on Human
Rights said in reports published Friday that at least 31 reporters
have filed complaints in the past four months.
Although admittedly frightened, the Mexico City press corps says it
must continue its work.

``I think that this is a case that can only be resolved by
continuing to publish the truth,'' said Rene Delgado, an editor at
the newspaper Reforma. ``That is what they are trying to suppress.''
Ernesto Madrid said he was on his way home from work at Television
Azteca about 11:30 p.m. two weeks ago when two city cops pulled him
over.

``I identified myself and asked them what I had done wrong,'' Madrid
said in an interview. ``Suddenly, four men dressed in plainclothes
rushed up, forced their way into the car and threw me in the back
seat.''

Madrid said that as he and his kidnappers cruised the city streets
for the next seven hours three of the men threatened him with
pistols, beat him and tied a plastic bag over his head.
``I thought they were going to kill me,'' Madrid recalled. ``They
kept the bag over my head, and I couldn't breathe.''
He said the men told him that ``reporters were the worst kind of
people and did bad work.''

Madrid said a colleague, Rene Solorio, was grabbed and had a bag
tied over his head while he was driven around. Madrid added that
pistols were put to Solorio's neck and in his mouth while other
pistols were fired close to his head during the incident.
Sergio Sarmiento, vice president for news at Television Azteca,
takes the threats seriously.

``We have provided bodyguards and armored cars to some of our
people,'' Sarmiento said. ``But we have 600 people working in our
news department, and we can't do that for all of them.''

Madrid, Solorio and station camera crews have followed closely a
series of police raids in the impoverished Colonia Buenos Aires, a
reputed center for the dismantling and sale of stolen automobiles.
On one raid early this month six youths were taken into custody by
an elite police unit officially called the Special Group for
Dissuasion but known on the street by its code name, Jaguars.

Three of the youths later were found dead, killed executionstyle
with 9mm bullets. That is the same caliber as guns carried by the
Jaguars. The other three youths have yet to be found.
Police spokesman Heriberto Sazuete said the department is
investigating the incident.

In yet another incident, last month a taxi carrying Reforma reporter
David Vicente~o was forced to pull over by two men in another car.
He was taken from the taxi and shoved face down onto the rear
floorboard of the other car.

As Vicente~o was driven about, the men asked him about his
investigation of Jorge Francisco Palacios Hernandez, a capital
judicial police officer with the street name ``El Chiquilin'' who is
a reputed lookalike of Mexican cocaine capo Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

Palacios reportedly worked offduty guarding Mexico City properties
of Carrillo Fuentes, and he disappeared just days before the drug
lord died during cosmetic surgery here in July. Daniel Lizarraga,
also from Reforma, was similarly kidnapped Sept. 5 while researching
an incident in which 19 pilots working for a federal law enforcement
agency allegedly transported more than 30 pounds of Colombian cocaine
from the Guatemalan border to a Mexico City airport in a government
plane. City police spokesman Sazuete said that until reporters file
formal complaints his agency cannot begin an investigation into the
assaults. Mexico City's police chief, Gen. Enrique Salgado Cordero,
told Television Azteca ``that our office was at their disposal for
the reporters to look through our files and see if they could
identify any of the policeman allegedly involved,'' Sazuete said.

``He made it clear that the full facilities of the force were ready
to help them clear this matter up,'' Sazuete said of the chief. The
spokesman pointed out that a complaint against the Jaguars has been
filed by the mother of one of the murdered suspects, leading to an
investigation of the incident. While minor complaints of abuse of
authority have been filed against the Jaguars in the past, this is
the first time they have been accused of murder, he said. Part of
Mexico's transition to democracy is the freeing of its formerly
docile press corps, said Aguilar, of the correspondents' association.

As reporters more openly investigate police abuses they used to
overlook, it is inevitable that the targets of their investigations
strike back, he said. ``This was bound to happen,'' Aguilar said.
``The most serious aspect of this is that the police can apparently
just get away with it.''

(c) 1997, San Antonio ExpressNews