http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_4911348
Mexican journalists caught in the crossfire of city's drug-cartel wars
Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun
Article Launched:12/28/2006 12:00:00 AM PST

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - A bulletproof barrier covers the front entrance of El Manana, one of the largest newspapers in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico.
El Manana employees put up the barrier after three masked gunmen with grenades and assault rifles burst into the newspaper's reception area Feb. 6 and started shooting. As they fired, they shouted angrily against the paper's investigations into the growing violence and drug wars in Nuevo Laredo.

The day before, the newspaper had published the photo of a Federal Preventive Police agent injured in a gunbattle a few days earlier. The paper linked the federal agent to the Sinaloa Cartel, the main rival of the Gulf Cartel. The Gulf Cartel controls narcotics traffic along the U.S.-Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo.

Because the attack happened late in the evening, only a handful of employees were in the office. One of them was the paper's veteran crime reporter, Jaime Orozco Tey, 41.

According to sources close to the incident, Orozco Tey was dedicated to his job and fought hard to expose the growing violence in the city.

He had written numerous articles on the cartels and walked a thin line even inside his own paper, where some editors and journalists are believed to work as spies for the Gulf Cartel's military arm, Los Zetas.

The gunmen shot Orozco Tey several times in the back and abdomen. He was paralyzed. Another employee was killed.

The assassins disappeared as quickly as they came. After tossing a grenade into the building, the men jumped into waiting SUVs and sped away.

The message was clear, said employees of the paper: Don't investigate or report on the narco-wars anymore.

"If anyone knew I was talking to a reporter, they'd kill me," said an El Manana employee several months after the attack.

The employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to two men standing by the barrier outside the front door, smoking and chatting. "They spy on everyone inside the newspaper, and almost everyone knows they get money from Los Zetas to do it," the worker said.

More than 400 journalists have been killed in Latin America over the past four decades. Since 1992, 13 journalists have been murdered in Mexico in connection with narcotics reporting, according to the U.S.-based nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, which offers detailed accounts of journalists killed around the globe.

"Journalists are front-line victims of the social crisis in Latin America, where official corruption, drug trafficking, unrestrained criminality, social violence and a background of political instability has made an impact in many countries," stated Gregorio Salazar, Latin American regional coordinator for the International Federation of Journalists.

Because of the growing violence in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican federal government sent soldiers and federal and state police into the city in March 2005. In June 2005, President Vicente Fox's administration began Operation Safe Mexico, which targeted the cartels. But it couldn't stop the growing violence and ultimately was a failure, said residents interviewed by The Sun's sister newspaper, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario. A little more than a month after arriving, the federal soldiers were gone.

The government announced a new operation - Northern Border - in mid-March 2006. Under the program, 600 to 800 Federal Protective Police officers were deployed to Nuevo Laredo, according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

In a July interview, a Mexican police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many of the agents under the Northern Border initiative have either left the city or are working for the cartels.

Shortly after the new initiative, assassins gunned down four federal agents working for the intelligence unit of the Federal Protective Police. The agents had been conducting surveillance of an office building where Federal Investigative agents, similar to FBI agents, were stationed. Residents said municipal police passed through the area just minutes before a group of gunmen in SUVs opened fire on the agents.

"I don't like to remember that day," said a witness who works on Guerrero Street, where the killings occurred. "Children were still in school down the street, and the gunfire seemed to go on forever. In the end, the men were dead and the killers were gone."

Orozco Tey couldn't write that story.

He is paralyzed after suffering spinal-cord damage in the February attack. His location and that of his family are well guarded from those who still may want revenge, said a source close to the family.

"He should've died that evening," the source said. "He is a great journalist, father and husband. He was courageous and searched for the truth. But no one has ever been brought to justice - and I don't think anyone ever will."

Other Nuevo Laredo journalists who became casualties of the drug war include:

On March 10, Ramiro Tellez Contreras, a local radio reporter and police station switchboard operator, was murdered as he was leaving his home on the north side of the city. He was shot by gunmen in the early morning. Tellez worked for radio station Exa 95.7 FM. According to those who knew him, he had recently received threats.

In April 2005, radio journalist Guadalupe Garcia Escamilla was shot at least nine times outside her office and died a week later.

According to several sources inside the city, the cartels have blackmailed, threatened, killed and forced reporters to slant stories to the benefit of the drug kingpins.

"What people don't realize was that Guadalupe was under the control of the cartels as well," said a source with ties to El Manana. "She was spouting propaganda for the rival cartel. It was a planned attack to shut her up. They had already warned her with death threats in the past."

On March 14, 2004, Roberto Javier Mora Garcia, El Manana's editorial director, was stabbed more than 25 times in front of his home. Residents found him lying dead next to his car early that morning.

"I feel sick when I think about what has happened to my colleagues," said one source. "You never know if you're going to come home alive."