Grim Story for Mexico Journalists: 27 Slain in 15 Years, No Convictions

The widow of the slain newspaper publisher raised her fist in the air and vowed: “This newspaper will continue to print the truth. No one can kill that.”

The writers and workers at the frontier tabloid, El Popular, looked on impassively. The same phrase had been uttered by the widow and others at the paper again and again since gunmen shot and killed the publisher, Ernesto Flores, and his star columnist, Norma Moreno, earlier this month.

Amelia Gil Flores, the widow, turned to a visitor and said quietly: “What if someone else is murdered? I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Defiance and resignation have mixed uneasily in the minds of journalists here and elsewhere in Mexico since the dual slayings at El Popular. Reporters and editors make brave speeches about press freedom and urge authorities to break the case. Privately, they wonder who might be next.

‘We Fear for Our Lives’

“As journalists, we fear for our lives these days,” said Domingo Salendrilla, president of the National Assn. of Journalists and Publishers.

Recent history suggests that the killers of Flores and Moreno will never be caught. Over the last 15 years, 27 journalists have been murdered in Mexico, and none of their killers has been brought to justice.

Two years ago, in perhaps the most notorious of the slayings, Manuel Buendia, a leading Mexico City columnist, was shot to death by a gunman in a parking lot. No arrests or leads have been reported in that case.

The Matamoros case is complicated by the general increase in lawlessness along the U.S.-Mexican border. Matamoros is a way station for the drug traffic into the United States, and gang-style slayings occur frequently and almost always go unpunished.

‘Police Can’t Keep Up’

“We can’t deny it,” Mayor Jesus Roberto Guerra said. “Crime is growing in frontier towns. Arms, drugs, all kinds of illicit activities. Our little police force can’t keep up.”

El Popular, founded by Flores three years ago, lashed out at corruption, drug trafficking and just about any other real or imagined ill afflicting Matamoros. The newspaper specialized in a kind of journalism common to most sensationalist dailies in Mexico: loose gossip and insult.

In her column, Moreno, 24, accused police officials of being everything from “horse-brained” to “paid killers.” Just days before her death, she referred to an associate of the mayor as “a pal of all kinds of vagrants, punks and women of the night.”

The paper’s style, known here as “attack journalism,” provoked some violent responses. Three months ago, three thugs beat up El Popular’s police reporter, Jose Angel Leal, in front of his home.

Death Threats Rumored

Rumors of death threats against publisher Flores, 46, began to circulate then. The mayor gave him police protection, but it was removed in May at Flores’ request.

In June, someone pasted insulting posters about columnist Moreno on walls in downtown Matamoros.

“This is Norma Moreno, the lesbian,” the posters said. “She takes out her psychopathic frustrations on honorable people in a rag called El Popular.”

Finally, on July 17, two gunmen in jogging gear shot Flores and Moreno with .22-caliber pistols as they emerged from a car across the street from El Popular’s offices. As a coup de grace, one of the killers fired a single .45-caliber bullet into Moreno’s neck and another into Flores’ head.

Hundreds of Suspects

The manner of the killing was similar to earlier narcotics-related slayings in Matamoros. Given the range of enemies reputedly made by Flores and Moreno, the number of suspects in the case could run into the hundreds.

Several of Moreno’s recent columns had reproached the administration of Mayor Guerra and some of the mayor’s relatives for contributing, at least, to the lawlessness that has gripped Matamoros in recent years.

“The newspaper attacked all kinds of people; it was trying to become prestigious,” said Guerra, who was characterized as a “crazy millionaire” in one of Moreno’s columns.

During a recent interview, Guerra randomly listed two other people Flores and Moreno might have angered: a man who was accused of committing a homosexual act in a hotel and a rival newspaper editor who was called a “prostitute.”

‘Plenty’ of Complaints

“Plenty of people had a complaint against him (Flores), not just the mayor’s office,” Guerra said.

Gil Flores, the publisher’s widow, doubts that the case will ever be resolved.

“I ask and the police just say: ‘No leads. No suspects,’ ” she complained.

Nonetheless, Gil Flores--who was the newspaper’s chief advertising salesperson before her husband’s death--divides her day between administering El Popular and trooping from the mayor’s office to police headquarters asking if the police have come up with any suspects.

Similar investigations elsewhere in Mexico have yielded little. In May, newspapers in Mexico City marked the second anniversary of columnist Buendia’s murder by pointing out that, despite an initial flurry of investigation and official pronouncements on the case, no suspects have been named or caught.

Mexico’s Top Columnist

Buendia was Mexico’s top columnist. He wrote on subjects ranging from corruption to the CIA, and his column was syndicated in 200 newspapers. He was killed by a lone gunman as he left his office near Mexico’s downtown Pink Zone shopping and entertainment district.

At first, Mexico City police reported all kinds of leads: The killer was a professional, he had been seen, he had fled to Veracruz in a light plane.

After a few months of such announcements, the supposed leads dried up, and nothing of the case was heard again.

Journalism in Mexico encompasses more than a fair share of intrigue. Many reporters rely on payoffs from officials for much of their living. It is a chore by itself to know which reporter “belongs” to which official entity and to keep up with the ever-shifting alliances among newspapers and politicians.

Only Peripherally Related

And for every killing of a Flores, a Moreno or a Buendia that appears clearly related to their journalistic work, there are killings of journalists that are dismissed as only peripherally related to journalism.

Unsolved murders are nothing new in Matamoros. At one time not long ago, 20 murders a month were being reported in the city, which has a population of 400,000. Under Mexican law, local police are barred from investigating homicides. A team of Tamaulipas state police has been brought in for the Flores-Moreno killings.

The city, like other border crossroads, has attracted a stepped-up drug trade. According to police in Brownsville, just across the Rio Grande in Texas, illegal traffic that once flowed through Florida from Latin America now makes its way to the United States through such places as Matamoros.

Hardly a day goes by without some evidence of drugs and violence on one side of the border or the other.