Two More Mexican Journalists Killed in a Single Week

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Pulse News Mexico One comment

Photo: Bermix Studio/Unsplash

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

Two more Mexican journalists covering the country’s drug cartels and political corruption — photojournalist Margarito Martínez Esquivel and reporter José Luis Gamboa — were killed in the space of just one week for doing their jobs, adding to a total of at least 145 murdered reporters in the country in the last two decades and 29 since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took office in December 2018.

Photojournalist Martínez Esquivel — who had worked for numerous international media houses, including the BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post — was shot outside his Tijuana, Baja California, home, on Monday, Jan. 17, in plain daylight.

Gamboa, head of the Inforegio news website, was stabbed to death exactly one week earlier in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz.

The two killings follow the murders of nine journalists in Mexico last year.

According to the international watchdog agency Freedom House, Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists outside war zones.

Less than 10 percent of cases of attacks on journalists are ever prosecuted in Mexico, and of those that are, less than 5 percent of the alleged perpetrators are found guilty.