Mexican newspaper crusader gunned down in border city

Associated Press

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico A newspaper publisher who crusaded
against drug trafficking and political corruption in this border city
was shot dead outside his office.

Benjamin Flores Gonzalez, 29, was hit at least 17 times in the back and
three times in the head Tuesday as he returned to the offices of La
Prensa, a daily newspaper in this city just south of Yuma,
Ariz., said Francisco Pacheco Gomez, an agent with the Sonora state
prosecutor's office.

``Benjamin had many enemies,'' said Maria Del Carmen Velazquez, the
newspaper's editor.

``There were always death threats against him,'' she said. ``Here, La
Prensa is very strong and we take on very combative issues.''

Witnesses told authorities that four men pulled up in a car and one of
them shot Flores with an AK47 assault rifle. One man got out of the car
and shot him in the head with a .22caliber pistol,
authorities said.

No one had been arrested as of Wednesday morning, Pacheco said.

Flores, a member of the National Action Party, or PAN, used his column,
Not Confirmed, to expose alleged drug traffickers and attack the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The PAN succeeded July 6 in winning the municipal election for the
second consecutive term and only the third time in the city's history.

Flores based his allegations on information he received from private
sources. Some of the allegations turned out to be true, others did not.

The former administrator of the city's water department filed a lawsuit
after Flores accused him of robbing the government of $3 million. Flores
also accused the city's former mayor Jesus Bustamante Salcido of being
connected to drug traffickers and ordering the construction of landing
strips for them.

La Prensa has a daily circulation of about 250,000. In Tuesday's column,
Flores identified a city resident known as ``El Pony'' as the local
contact of Sinaloan drug trafficker Hector Luis Palma Salazar. Salazar
is in a maximum security prison near Mexico City.

Flores started the newspaper five years ago as a weekly and recently
began publishing daily. Prior to starting La Prensa, he worked as a
Tijuana correspondent for La Jornada of Mexico City. He covered the
campaign of Gov. Ernesto Ruffo, the nation's first opposition party
governor. In 1989, he worked as Ruffo's representative.

Posted at 7:06 p.m. PDT Wednesday, July 16, 1997