Today, Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism. Most of the murders in the country go unpunished and many have to do with reporters who investigated drug trafficking, the government and links with corrupt authorities.
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, SONORA, MEXICO (AFP) – Santiago Barroso became the third journalist killed in Mexico so far this year after being shot in his home in Sonora, a border state with the United States with a strong presence of drug trafficking, adding one more to the list of unpunished murders of reporters. “I regret the cowardly attack where journalist Santiago Barroso lost his life,” Santos González, mayor of San Luis Río Colorado, the municipality of Sonora where Barroso lived, wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
The 47-year-old reporter was the victim of an attack on his own home, according to a press release by “Contraseña” an online weekly publication, for which Barroso collaborated, two men arrived in a vehicle at the reporter’s home, knocked on the door, and when Santiago opened the door they shot him at point-blank range, hitting him three times, twice in the stomach and one above the left nipple.
Journalist Santiago Barroso (RIP)
According to local media, Barroso, university professor, was the director of the news portal Red 653 and broadcaster of the San Luis Hoy program on 91.1 FM Río Digital, ha had been investigating the presence of drug trafficking in San Luis Río Colorado.
Photo: Tercero Díaz/cuartooscuro.com
It is not known if Barroso had filed complaints about threats, but his municipality is in a violent area of Sonora where cartels dispute routes to traffic drugs and people to the neighboring United States.
“So far in 2019, the rate of murders of reporters is one per month, which is a serious, bad precedent. Not only for the beginning of a year, but for the beginning of a new administration such as that of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador,” said Balbina Flores, Reporters Without Borders’ representative in Mexico. This case adds to the blacklist of more than 100 communicators murdered in Mexico since the year 2000.
The Yucatan Times
Newsroom
