Up Against Drug Cartels, Journo Javier Valdez Killed in Mexico

Javier Valdez was a Mexican journalist who specialised in covering drug trafficking and organised crime.

Javier Valdez poses for a photo in an unknown location in Mexico. Valdez, a veteran reporter who specialised in covering drug trafficking and organised crime, was slain Monday, 15 May 2017. (Photo: AP)

Javier Valdez was driving in broad daylight down a street he must have known well, just a block from his office, when he became the latest victim in a wave of journalist killings that has hit Mexico.

Masked gunmen forced Valdez from his red Toyota Camry, shot him dead, and left his body in the middle of the street on Monday, said Riodoce, the publication he helped start.

The car was found later in the afternoon on a sidewalk next to an elementary school, wedged between a utility pole and a wall with the motor still running and the gears engaged.

Valdez, an award-winning reporter who specialised in covering drug trafficking and organised crime, was slain in the northern state of Sinaloa, long a hotbed of drug cartel activity.

He is at least the sixth journalist murdered in Mexico since early March, an unusually high number even for one of the world's deadliest countries for media professionals.

Reporting on Valdez's killing, Mexican media posted images showing a body lying in the street covered by a blue blanket and surrounded by 12 yellow markers of the kind typically used to flag evidence such as bullet casings. Riodoce said Valdez's laptop and cellphone were missing.

Prosecutors announced they were investigating whether the killing may have been due to Valdez's work or a carjacking turned deadly. President Enrique Pena Nieto condemned what he called an "outrageous crime."

In a tweet, he reasserted Mexico’s commitment to freedom of expression and free press.

I reiterate our commitment to the freedom of expression and press, fundamental to our democracy.

Enrique Pena Nieta, President, Mexico

Valdez, also a correspondent for the national newspaper La Jornada, was an internationally recognised journalist who authored several books on the drug trade.

He was considered a rare source of independent, investigative journalism in Sinaloa, said Jan-Albert Hootson, the Mexico representative for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

"And for that same reason, he and his magazine and his co-workers were always under threat of violence," Hootson said.

Journalism Is to Walk on an Invisible Line Drawn by the Bad Guys: Valdez

Speaking on the threat to journalists in Mexico Esteban Illades, editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos told The Guardian:

The murder of Javier Valdez tells us that in Mexico, the life of a journalist is completely worthless to those in power.

After he received the CPJ International Press Freedom Award in 2011, in his acceptance speech, Valdez spoke of the threats of his profession, which is bent on exposing drug cartels and corruption. In Sinaloa, where drug-related violence has claimed several thousand lives, many journalists have censored their reportage out of fear.

Where I work, Culiacán, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, it is dangerous to be alive, and to do journalism is to walk on an invisible line drawn by the bad guys — who are in drug trafficking and in the government--in a field strewn with explosives. This is what most of the country is living through. One must protect oneself from everything and everyone, and there do not seem to be options or salvation, and often there is no one to turn to.

Jaivier Valdez in his acceptance speech

Sinaloa has long been a drug trafficking centre and is home to the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by notorious kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who is in a New York prison awaiting trial on multiple charges. Experts say Guzman's arrest last year and extradition in January have led to upheaval in the area as rival factions vie for control of the gang.

“Drug trafficking there is a way of life,” Valdez said in an October interview with Rompeviento TV. “You have to assume the task that falls to you as a journalist — either that or you play dumb. I don’t want to be asked, ‘What were you doing in the face of so much death ... why didn’t you say what was going on?’”

No State for Journalists

According to CPJ, in 2009 unknown attackers threw a grenade into the Riodoce offices days after it published an investigation on drug trafficking. No one was hurt.

By the group’s count, some 40 journalists have been killed in Mexico for reasons confirmed as related to their work since 1992. An additional 50 were slain during the same period under circumstances that have not been clarified.

Journalists targeted in Mexico are most often local reporters in places where the rule of law is tenuous, but there have also been killings of journalists with national profiles such as Valdez and Regina Martinez Perez, who was slain in 2012. The recent spate of slayings includes Miroslava Breach, correspondent for La Jornada in the northern state of Chihuahua, who was gunned down in March.

(With inputs from AP)