Mexico continues to be the one of the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. Martín Méndez Pineda of Acapulco tried to get asylum in the US, but after being detained for 100 days in not-very-good conditions, he gave up and returned to Mexico. He is not safe there.
Patricia Mayorga of Chihuahua did better. She fled to an unidentified country.
The seven journalists murdered so far in 2017 include two high-profile ones, Miroslava Breach Velducea of Chihuahua and Javier Valdez Cárdenas of Culiacán. Breach was the Chihuahua correspondent for La Jornada, a major Mexico City newspaper; her beat was crime and politics. She was shot eight times as she was leaving her home. Valdez wrote several books about narcos, edited an award-winning weekly, and was a correspondent for La Jornada. He was dragged out of his pickup truck and shot several times.
The Federal Attorney General just offered a reward of 1.5 million pesos ($84,000) for information on the murders of these two and three others, and one attempted murder. However, during the 4 1/2 years that President Peña Nieto has been in office, 33 journalists have been murdered, and very few of the murderers have been caught and punished. The Committee to Protect Journalists has made the specific recommendation to the Attorney General that he use the full resources of his office to obtain successful prosecutions in the cases of José Moisés Sánchez Cerezo, Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz, and Marcos Hernández Bautista.
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