International roundup

By Agencies
[email protected]

A journalist has been killed the northern Mexico border city of Tijuana — the second in the city in a week and the third in Mexico this month.

Mexico President Andrés Manuel Obrador called Monday for a full investigation and cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the motive for the murder of Lourdes Maldonado López, a Tijuana journalist who once sought his help.

Maldonado was found fatally shot inside a car Sunday, according to a statement from the Baja California state prosecutor’s office. 

Authorities received a 911 call around 7 p.m. and found Maldonado dead.

In 2019, Maldonado went to López Obrador’s daily morning news conference and asked for his help “because I fear for my life.”

Sunday’s attack was not the first on Maldonado. 

In April 2021, her car was sprayed with gunfire, after which authorities offered her municipal police protection and a panic button for emergencies, said Leopoldo Maldonado, a lawyer for the press organization Artículo 19 who is not related to the journalist.

Lourdes Maldonado had been locked in a years-long labor dispute with Jaime Bonilla, who was elected governor of Baja California later that year as a candidate from López Obrador’s Morena party. He left office late last year.

Maldonado had recently announced that she won her dispute with a media company Bonilla owned after nine years of litigation.

“You can’t automatically tie a labor lawsuit to a crime. It’s not responsible to rush to judgement, you have to wait,” the Lopez Obrador said.

He added that after she came to his news conference in 2019, he helped her, but he did not specify how. 

In an interview last July, Maldonado said that after she complained to the president judges started taking her case seriously.

The press organization Article 19 said via Twitter that Maldonado had covered corruption and politics in Tijuana and faced aggression previously because of her work. She was enrolled in the state’s protection system for journalists who have been threatened, but the group did not detail the security measures.

López Obrador said an investigation was needed to know “if there is a tie with the labor complaint and see who is responsible.”

“She was in a lot of danger,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, representative in Mexico for the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

“We don’t know where that danger came from, we don’t know who could have been the mastermind or the perpetrator, but obviously it tells us that the situation is very serious in Tijuana and all of the country.”

Maldonado had collaborated with many outlets, but recently was doing an internet, radio and television show, “Brebaje,” focused on local news.

Another Tijuana journalist, photographer Margarito Martínez, was gunned down outside his home on Jan. 17. 

He was well known for covering the crime scene in the violence-plagued city. He worked for the local news outlet Cadena Noticias, as well as for other national and international media outlets.

GUATEMALA

A court in Guatemala sentenced five fomer members of a pro-government “civilian patrol” to 30 years in prison Monday in connection with the rape of Indigenous women during the Central American country’s civil war.

The patrols functioned as pro-government militias to help the army fight leftist guerrillas, and like the army they faced widespread accusations of committing atrocities.

Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war pitted the army and police against leftist rebels, and resulted in more than 200,000 deaths.

The five ex-patrol members were directly accused of raping five women of the Achí group in the village of Rabinal in 1982.

An additional 29 women said patrol members had participated in killings or kidnappings, but did not directly identify the five defendants as the perpetrators.

Judge Gelvi Sical said the victims “have waited years to break the silence, be heard and demand justice.”

EL SALVADOR

 The Roman Catholic Church beatified two priests and two lay people Saturday, all victims of right-wing death squads during El Salvador’s civil war.

The Rev. Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest killed alongside friends Manuel Solorzano and teenager Nelson Lemus on March 12, 1977, was known for his ministry to the poor and was an inspiration to St. Óscar Romero, the then-archbishop of El Salvador who himself was murdered three years later.

Franciscan priest Cosme Spessotto, an Italian who arrived in El Salvador in 1950, was shot dead while praying at the altar of his parish by Salvadoran soldiers on June 14, 1980. He was known for his work in one of the poorest parts of El Salvador and his unwillingness to leave even in the face of death threats.

Pope Francis’ envoy, Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez, called the four models and an example to all.

Crowds of the faithful gathered around yellow and white Vatican banners and portraits of the four.

“Rutilio, Manuel, Nelson and Cosme, those are the names of the innocent victims sacrificed on the altars of power, pleasure and money,” Rosa Chávez said. “The blood shed by our martyrs, associated with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, is the seed of reconciliation and peace.”

Pope Francis has long spoken of his admiration for Grande and Romero, who he declared a saint in 2018. Francis is the first Latin American pontiff and first Jesuit pope.

Beatification means a deceased person has performed at least one miracle; a second can lead to sainthood.

Between 1977 and 1989, death squads and soldiers killed 13 priests in El Salvador.

Grande was 49 years old when he was killed as he drove with Solorzano and Lemus along a rural highway in Aguilares, north of the capital.