Photo Effort Was Fatal, Mexicans Say

Investigators charged Monday that the two Mexican Indians accused of killing American reporter Philip True attacked him because they didn’t want their pictures taken.

Horacio Vega said that the suspects became angry at True’s alleged attempt to photograph them. Vega, homicide investigator with the Jalisco state attorney general’s office, charged that they strangled True and later stole his camera and belongings.

Juan Chivarras de la Cruz, 28, and Miguel Hernandez de la Cruz, 24, were charged with homicide and robbery.

True, 50, Mexico City correspondent for the San Antonio Express-News, disappeared while hiking alone through a remote region of the Sierra Madre in western Mexico, where he was pursuing a story on the Huichol Indian culture.

His body was found Dec. 16 in west-central Jalisco state. The suspects were arrested Saturday.

In a story proposal submitted earlier this year to his editors, True said the Huicholes, unlike other indigenous groups in Mexico, “have retained a certain joy in their life.”

“A day near a Huichol community is marked by the nearly constant sound of children laughing and playing,” True wrote. “This kind of joy gives them a certain integrity in their being that allows them to welcome in strangers.”

Fernando Benitez, a recognized authority on the Huichol Indians, has written that the group, which lives in Mexico’s remote western mountains, distrusts outsiders and tries to avoid contact with them.

Express-News Editor Robert Rivard said in a written statement, “the evidence surrounding their arrest, details they provided investigators in their statements, and the recovery of Philip’s personal property all suggest the right suspects are in custody.”