Bordering On Terrorism

By: Mark Fitzgerald Whoever wanted newspaper columnist Francisco Arratia Saldierna silenced didn't simply want him eliminated. They wanted him to suffer a painful death.

Arratia wasn't dead when he was thrown from a moving vehicle in front of a Red Cross office in Matamoras, a city across the U.S. border from Brownsville, Texas, on the afternoon of Aug. 31. But nothing the doctors could do could save him.

The Federation of Mexican Journalist Associations, known as Fapermex, reported that it was clear the columnist had been tortured. "His back and chest showed burn marks and his left lung was totally destroyed," the group said in an open letter. "His fingers were mangled to the point that some of their bones were separated." Other reports said Arratia's palms had been burned.

Local news reports and international free press associations say it isn't certain that Arratia, who was also a lawyer and ran a used-car sales lot, was killed because of his journalistic work. But they add that his death fits a horrifying pattern in the border towns where violence and intimidation meted out by drug traffickers and corrupt officials are now occupational hazards for reporters and editors.

The death toll is mounting along the border: In June, Francisco J. Ortiz, editor of Zeta, a paper that has long angered area drug gangs, was murdered in Tijuana. In March, Roberto Javier Mora Garcia, the editor of El Ma?ana in Nuevo Laredo, was murdered under murky circumstances. Colleagues were skeptical about the case against two gay men, which revolved around alleged jealousy by one of the men. A U.S. citizen who was charged in the murder, Mario Medina, was later killed in prison.

Arratia, 55, was best known for his column called "Portavoz," or "spokesman," that ran in four newspapers in the Tamaulipas state: El Imparcial and El Regional, in Matamoros, as well as Mercurio and El Cinco, in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital. "In his column, Arratia frequently wrote about political corruption, organized crime and education," the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported. Added Fapermex's letter: "His writings were must reading in the morning."

But now, the Mexican association added, "With his death, the state of Tamaulipas has the dishonor to be the primary place for the assassination of journalists."

International organizations from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in Miami to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Paris demanded a thorough investigation into the killing, preferably at the federal government level. "Every possibility must be considered," RSF said. "The US-Mexican border, where trafficking of all kinds takes place, is a dangerous area for journalists doing stories about sensitive matters."

In an open letter to President Vicente Fox, 215 journalists called for a change in Mexican law that would classify attacks on journalists to be classified as federal crimes, Reuters reported Sept. 7. "As long as the aggression against journalists continues and the killers of journalists are free," the letter said, "freedom of expression in Mexico is compromised."


PAN-AM HIGHWAY

An occasional diary of the working conditions faced by Latin American journalists


ARGENTINA

Judicial authorities investigating alleged tax evasion by the founder and owner of the Buenos Aires daily Cr?nica, H?ctor Ricardo Garc?a, searched the newspaper offices and his home on Aug. 27, the IAPA reported. Rafael Molina, chairman of the associations' Committee on Press Freedom, urged Argentinean authorities to "investigate the case with due process and celerity, so (the case) does not affect the operation of the newspaper or freedom of the press."

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

The nation's Supreme Court on Sept. 5 ordered the Dominican government to give back control of Listin Diario, the venerable daily newspaper seized more than a year ago from former owner Ramon Baez Figueroa in so-called Baninter banking scandal, The Associated Press reported. Justices upheld an April appeals court ruling that the paper should be returned to Baez's family because it was not related to the scandal. Baez has been in prison since May 2003 awaiting trial on charges of fraud and embezzling $2.2 billion -- the equivalent of 15% of the gross domestic product of the impoverished nation -- from Baninter, the second-largest Dominican bank before its collapse.

PANAMA

Little noticed amid the furor over former President Mireya Moscoso's pardoning of anti-Castro militants convicted of plotting violence was the fact that in her last days she also pardoned "several dozen" journalists accused of slander under the nation's criminal libel laws, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reported, citing local and Miami press reports.

PERU:

Maritza Roncal Rodr?guez, a correspondent for the daily La Republica, was severely injured when she and two other journalists were set upon by a mob as they reported on a Sept. 2 protest against a mining company in the Cajamarca region of northern Peru, the Lima-based Institute for Press and Society (IPYS) reported. The reporter lost consciousness but was later able to identify her attackers. Also hurt in the incident was Daniel Linayd Campos of the Cajamarca daily El Clar?n.

Apparent political dirty tricksters in the regional capital city of Tarapoto in northeastern Peru this summer have been circulating publications that look like local newspapers, but contain "degrading" attacks against their reporters and editors, IPYS reported. "The most recent example was an imitation of the biweekly L?nea Verde," IPYS said, "which appeared on the newsstands on 17 August. The publication contained an editorial supposedly written by the biweekly's director, journalist Javier Tuanama Valera. In the editorial, Tuanama reportedly confesses to having been a member of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement ( MRTA) and explains how he benefited financially from the guerrilla group's activities."

IPYS said no one has claimed responsibility for the parody publications, but all the targeted journalists have been critics of the city's mayor, Armando Gonz?les de Aguila, and the phony papers include "articles enthusiastically extolling the municipality's activities and projects."


VENEZUELA

Mauro Marcano, a 55-year-old host of a political talk show on a radio station in the eastern Venezuelan city of Matur?n, was murdered by two unidentified men who shot him in the head and right leg as he left his home the morning of Sept. 1, IPYS reported. The group, citing "unofficial sources," said Marcano had implicated several local businessmen while reporting on drug trafficking in the city. Marcano was also an official in opposition Acci?n Democr?tica political party.