His name was Jorge Camero Zazueta and he was 28 years old.
He is the sixth journalist killed in Mexico this year.
He was in the gym when a gang of motorcycle gunmen shot him on Thursday.
Not even two weeks ago he had left his position as private secretary to Luis Fuentes Aguilar, mayor of Empalme, in the northern state of Sonora, and resumed his job at the news portal
El Informativo.
He is repeating one of the most common cocktails in the crime against reporters, the one that mixes politics, information and assassins.
The matter is worrying in Mexico, where this year the massacre is likely to reach unprecedented figures.
But it has also become a deep diplomatic controversy.
The United States has expressed in recent days dismayed by these crimes and has requested "responsibility and protection" for communication professionals.
The claim has not gone down well with the Mexican government, which has accused the "interference" of its northern neighbors in its sovereign affairs.
Now, every time one of these crimes has to be regretted, the Biden Administration is reminded that the guns with which they were perpetrated are of American origin.
Arms trafficking across Mexico's conflictive northern border is one of the burning issues on the political agenda of both countries.
The impunity in which the bloodiest crimes unfold is the great unfinished business in Mexico, where more than 95% of crimes end up without guilty parties or prison.
But this year, the murders of journalists have caused a lot of noise, due to the persistent trickle in the first two months of the year, and have forced the Government to take action on the matter.
The conflict, normally circumscribed to the prosecutor's offices and the governments of each state, was already threatening to explode in the face of the President of the Republic, who heard in one of his morning conferences the personal call for help from a journalist from Tijuana, Lourdes Maldonado.
The woman fell dead in front of her house on January 24 with a single bullet.
Journalists protest in Tijuana to demand justice for Lourdes Maldonado and Margarito Martínez. Gladys Serrano
The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, could no longer look the other way.
He commissioned specialized lawyers to investigate the case, and he did the same with the rest of the reporters killed in these weeks.
The investigations have begun to bear fruit, of which the Government has been giving timely information.
This same Friday, the head of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, announced the arrest of five people in connection with the murder of photojournalist Margarito Martínez, also from Tijuana, who was shot on January 17 in broad daylight.
He covered what is known in Mexico as a red note, that is, blood and assassins, uncomfortable news for power in any field.
“In Tijuana, Baja California, right now in the early morning, the arrest of five alleged perpetrators of this murder, with possession of weapons and drugs.
A .40 caliber pistol and an AR-15 rifle, caliber 2.23.
Dose of coke and glass.
These weapons are of North American origin”, said the Secretary of Defense.
The investigation, in which numerous security forces have participated, will determine, he added, "if these weapons participated in other crimes and if they were also the ones used in the death of journalist Margarito Martínez."
There is the tagline, which is also used in his tweets by the spokesman for the Presidency, Jesús Ramírez: weapons of American origin.
And with which the Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, defended himself on Wednesday of this week, in a letter sent to the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken: "Mexico and the United States," he reminded him, "cooperate in security matters to advance against the illicit trafficking of firearms that are used in most of the homicides committed in Mexico and that, presumably, were also used against journalists.”
The tares had been sown on February 18 by US Republican Senator Ted Cruz, always controversial in his statements, who said he was concerned about the climate of insecurity in Mexico and which, in his opinion, puts the United States at risk: “The current climate for politicians and journalists in Mexico is the deadliest it has ever been.
In 2020, more journalists were killed in Mexico than in any other country in the world,” he said.
He was still a politician without an organic position.
The barrage that most bothered the Government of López Obrador, came days later, on February 22, when it was the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who showed his concern about the same matter in an undiplomatic way: a tweet.
“The high number of journalists killed in Mexico and the continuing threats they face are worrying.
I join those who call for greater responsibility and protection for Mexican journalists.
My heart goes out to the loved ones of those who gave their lives for the truth,'' he wrote.
Journalists participate in an evening outside the Ministry of the Interior in Mexico City. Hector Guerrero
This time, President López Obrador was also in charge of giving him the reply: "Ask him, please, to be informed and not to act in an interfering manner because Mexico is not a colony of the United States nor is it a protectorate," he snapped at his conference. morning the next day.
The president has recalled in recent weeks that progress is being made in the investigations against these crimes and arrests.
And he reiterated his commitment that they do not go unpunished.
"In all cases, action is being taken, there is no impunity, they are not State crimes," he added.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry has shared these investigations and their results with the United States, by order of the president, always jealous of Mexican sovereignty to resolve their issues, especially when they understand that there is interference by the United States or Spain, two of their examples recurrent when defending domestic politics.
The president, however, inaugurated with his mandate, a tense relationship with the media, which he repeatedly accuses of being against him with their own tricks, he says, from past six-year terms, what he calls the neoliberal era, when the press and power maintained insane agreements watered with money.
He has also charged international organizations that record and document these crimes, financed, he charges, with US money.
Nothing has changed in recent weeks: López Obrador always takes advantage of his defense claims of the most vulnerable journalists to attack others of greater renown and resources.
He even dedicates part of the Wednesday morning conference to evidencing, with names and surnames, those reporters or media outlets that he considers enemies of his government.
Regarding the resolution of these crimes, it is not an easy matter in Mexico, because behind those who pull the trigger there are almost always high-ranking instigators, politicians, businessmen or the drug trafficker himself, and they are the ones who benefit from impunity while the assassins, sometimes paid with a ridiculous handful of pesos, are the ones who end up in jail.
The reporters' organizations denounce that this does not remove the origin of the conflict in which the country bleeds to death daily.
Journalists from Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) demonstrate against the murders of their colleagues in the country.
Nayeli Cruz
40% of the shadow authors of these crimes are public officials, that is, politicians, police or security chiefs, among others, according to Article 10, one of the organizations that carry out this count.
Since the beginning of the century, it has documented 147 murdered reporters, which gives Mexico the characteristics of a country at war when it comes to carrying out this job.
This year, with Jorge Camero, there are six fatalities, when in 2021 there were seven or nine, according to sources.
The López Obrador administration is now seeking to improve the inefficient protection provided to journalists who are threatened or who declare themselves to be at risk.
Nothing is easy in a country where bullets respond to intersecting interests between politics, justice and business, legal or illegal.
subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country