Por Redacción
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A Mexican journalist who covered one of the country’s most dangerous crime beats was killed by gunmen last Sunday, and two of his government-assigned bodyguards were wounded, authorities said.
The web news page operated by reporter Alejandro Martínez confirmed his death.
The page covered community news and crime in Celaya, the most dangerous city for police officers in Mexico.
The Celaya Police Department said Martínez was shot to death by assailants travelling in another vehicle and that the two bodyguards were being treated for their wounds, but did not say what their condition was.
The journalist had been assigned police protection after he reported receiving threats.
Prosecutors in the north-central state of Guanajuato said they were investigating the killing.
Martínez covered a fatal car accident on a dangerous stretch of highway just hours before he was attacked.
His wounded bodyguards drove him to a hospital, where he died.
Guanajuato has the highest number of homicides of any of Mexico’s 32 states, largely due to a years-long turf war between the Jalisco drug cartel and the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang.
A total of 18 Celaya police officers have been shot to death so far this year in the city of a half million inhabitants. Drug gangs are suspected in most of those killings.
Media workers are regularly targeted in Mexico, often in direct reprisal for their work covering topics like corruption and the country’s notoriously violent drug traffickers.
Since 2000, 141 Mexican journalists and other media workers have been slain, at least 61 of them in apparent retaliation for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists says.
All but a handful of the killings and abductions remain unsolved.
COLOMBIA
Souvenirs depicting the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar could be banned in Colombia if legislators approve a bill introduced this week in the nation’s congress.
The proposal is criticized by vendors who sell his merchandise to tourists from around the world, but backed by those who believe the country should shed its image of mafia bosses.
The bill proposes fines of up to $170 for vendors who sell merchandise that depicts Escobar and other convicted criminals, and would also enable police to fine those who wear t-shirts, hats and other garments that “exalt” the infamous drug lord.
“These items are revictimizing people who were victims of murderers. We must protect the right of the victims to recover…and find other symbols for our country,” said Cristian Avendaño, a representative from Colombia’s Green Party who drafted the bill.
The proposal has been widely covered by newspapers in Colombia, where Escobar is seen as a murderous figure, linked to one of the most violent periods in the nation’s history.
At the same time, the drug trafficker’s image is also heavily commercialized by locals who are eager to cash in on the growing fascination with the drug lord, among some tourists from North America, Europe and other Latin American countries.
Souvenir vendors in Bogota’s historic La Candelaria neighborhood said they were opposed to the initiative, which has been criticized for attempting to limit freedom of speech.
“I think it’s a dumb law,” said Rafael Nieto, a street vendor who sells magnets, and t-shirts with Pablo Escobar’s face on them, as well as more traditional souvenirs.
Nieto said he would stop selling Escobar merchandise if the bill is approved, to “avoid problems” with police.
But he added that members of Colombia’s Congress should instead focus their energies on lowering the city’s crime rate, and let him carry on with his business.
“Many people make a living from this” Nieto said pointing at a t-shirt that shows a copy of Pablo Escobar’s Colombian ID card.
“It’s not a trend that I came up with” Nieto added. “The Mexicans, the Costa Ricans, the Americans, are always asking me for Escobar” merchandise.
Another street vendor, who asked to be identified only as Lorena, said that she has also stocked up on items that depict the drug dealer, such as shot glasses, and magnets, because it is what international tourists are demanding, along with souvenirs depicting coca leaves.
“When you work as a vendor, you try to sell what is most popular,” Lorena said. “Everyone has their own personality, and if there are people who like a murderer, or a drug trafficker, well, that’s their choice.”
Escobar ordered the murders of an estimated 4000 people in the 1980s and early 1990s, as he established the powerful Medellin cartel and amassed a $3 billion fortune that made him one of the world’s richest people at the time.
The drug lord was gunned down in 1993 on a rooftop in Medellin, as he tried to escape from the search block, a unit of more than 300 police officers backed by DEA agents that was dedicated exclusively to capture him.
Escobar’s exploits and his crimes are well known in Colombia. But in recent years, his global fame has resurfaced thanks to a Colombian soap opera and a Netflix series that depicts the drug lord as a ruthless, but shrewd mafioso, who defies corrupt American and Colombian authorities trying to close in on him.
Merchandise bearing the drug dealer’s face, his ID Card, or famous slogans that are attributed to Escobar sells frequently at souvenir stands across the country, while in his hometown of Medellin, agencies lead visitors on historical tours that stop at sites related to Escobar’s life.
Representative Avendaño, said it was time for Colombia to shed its image as a country of mafia bosses.
“We cannot continue to praise these people, and act as if their crimes were acceptable,” Avandaño said. “There are other ways for businesses to grow and other ways to sell Colombia to the world.”
Avendaño’s said that his bill will call on the Colombian government to investigate how many people make a living from selling Escobar merchandise, and how much the market is worth.
VENEZUELA
The statement that upended Venezuela came 24 hours after polls closed in the presidential election.
With the reassuring tone of someone who has consistently been considered an underdog, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado announced that her coalition had gathered more than two-thirds of vote tally sheets from polling centers nationwide, and that they show President Nicolás Maduro had lost his reelection bid.
The tally sheets known as actas — printouts measuring several feet that resemble shopping receipts — have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. Opposition members knew they had to obtain as many of them as possible to refute the unfavorable election outcome they expected electoral authorities to announce.
Months of preparations and thousands of volunteers participated in the herculean task.
Their effort earned Maduro and his loyal National Electoral Council global condemnation, including from close regional allies, and fueled the anger of Venezuelans fed up with their nation’s cascading economy. In response, the government called for opposition leaders to be arrested, capping an election season marked by repression and irregularities.
This account of the opposition’s effort is based on public statements, as well as interviews with party representatives, volunteers and others involved, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retribution.
Tens of thousands of volunteers participated in training workshops nationwide in recent months. They learned that under the law they could be inside polling centers on Election Day, stationed near voting machines, from before polls opened until the results had been electronically transmitted to the National Electoral Council in the capital, Caracas.
Organizational discipline was key to their success because the ruling party wields tight control over the voting system. Polling places are guarded by soldiers, civilian militia, police and loyalists of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
