After decades of poking around crime scenes, digging into conspiracies and hanging out with cops and politicians, columnist Miguel Ángel López Velasco had earned his stripes as journalistic alpha dog of the crime and corruption beat in this steamy Gulf of Mexico port.
But even Lopez might have found it hard to imagine the
speed with which hit men would take his life and those of his wife and son.
It was 6 a.m. on a June day when two vehicles arrived at
the journalist's custard-yellow two-story home. Hit men with assault
weapons poured out. One punched through the lock on the front door.
The squad rushed in and opened fire on the columnist –
who was descending the stairs in his nightclothes – then climbed to the second
floor to kill the others. Each victim was given a coup de grace in the
forehead.
In a nation where attacks on journalists are rampant, the
killings were unprecedented. Gangsters in modern times had never targeted a
reporter's family. And the killing wasn't over. Five weeks later, they kidnapped
and decapitated a co-worker of Lopez's, also a crime reporter.
Every journalist in Veracruz felt the one-two punch.
Within a day or so, nine fellow reporters had fled the city.
The chill that such killings put on reporting about
the crime syndicates is familiar throughout much of Mexico, where
many newspapers no longer try to investigate the rampant violence that has
killed as many as 40,000 people in the past five years.
But scratch below the surface, and the narrative about
journalists struggling to inform their readers while under siege from gangsters
morphs into a different story, one in which the lines between journalists,
police, politicians and crime bosses grow blurry. Many seem to be for sale. Few
are held in high esteem.
Mexico's largest and oldest port, Veracruz is a
metropolis of more than half a million people that lies in a state of the same
name that's a key corridor for drug and migrant smugglers. For the better part
of a decade, drug gangs, particularly the brutal syndicate known as
Los Zetas, have been active here, gaining an ever-larger hold.
"It's kind of like the Hamptons for the narcos;
enormous ranches and rest areas," said Ricardo Gonzalez of the Mexico
chapter of Article 19, a London-based group that pushes for freedom of
information.
Residents of Veracruz can select from a handful of
newspapers. The best selling is Notiver, distinctive for its picaresque tone,
political gossip and focus on crime.
Among the newspaper's peculiarities is that it depends
entirely on sales from street vendors for its income. It also has no set press
time. If a hot story breaks, the newspaper comes out late. Rumor and news mix
easily in its pages. About half the headlines end with exclamation points.
Miguel Ángel López Velasco joined Notiver more than two
decades ago, writing under the pen name Milo Vela. Nervous but persistent and
gifted at putting a bite in stories, Lopez was promoted after years on the
crime beat to columnist on security matters and deputy editor in charge of
crime reporters.
He operated in an environment in which corruption
pervaded politics, law enforcement and even newsrooms. The previous
governor of Veracruz state, Fidel Herrera, plied newspapers with generous
advertising contracts to win favorable treatment. Even low-level journalists
felt the governor's largess.
"He'd give them computers, cars, trips and
scholarships," said Hermann Ortega, the former Veracruz state chief of the
National Action Party.
Many journalists readily accepted. Everybody else had an
angle, and their consistently poor working conditions gave them an easy
justification.
The cruelty of the execution-style slaying of Lopez, his
wife and their 21-year-old son just before dawn on June 20 sent ripples of
concern through Mexican newsrooms.
But anxiety wouldn't really spike until July 26, when the
body of Yolanda Ordaz, a top crime reporter who worked for Lopez, was found
dumped behind the offices of a competing newspaper. Ordaz, a single mother in
her early 40s, had been beheaded.
Within hours, the state prosecutor said Ordaz's
decapitation was a settling of scores between crime gangs, an assessment
shocking both for its conclusion and its speed from an office with a poor track
record of solving crimes.
But questions lingered over a number of circumstances,
including accusatory videos posted on YouTube and a sign found near Ordaz's
body.
It read: "Friends also betray. Sincerely,
Carranza." Authorities say it was from the suspected killer, former
transit police officer Juan Carlos Carranza, a fugitive criminal linked to Los
Zetas.
One video posted to YouTube in mid-June contained what
was said to be an audio recording of a conversation between Ordaz and an
unnamed crime figure, arranging to publicize criticism of alleged army abuses.
Another video affirmed that Los Zetas referred to the Notiver newsroom as
"Base 40."
A fellow journalist, Cesar Augusto Vazquez Chavez,
published a column that accused Ordaz of acting as media coordinator for Los
Zetas in Veracruz. It described a meeting between a group of police reporters
and a Zetas boss in a restaurant. The column said Ordaz was the go-between.
The accusations have been met with tense silence.
Notiver's founder and publisher, Alfonso Salces, didn't respond to requests for
comment.
Press freedom advocates acknowledge that while many
Mexican journalists ply their trade with integrity, some are on the take from
crime bosses.
"I've seen reporters in Sinaloa who drive Hummers on
a salary of 5,000 pesos ($420) a month," said Gonzalez, of Article 19.
He said gangsters sometimes pressured reporters directly,
calling them on their cell phones or intercepting them on the street. In some
newsrooms, powerful crime groups maintain designated envoys to give a
last-minute thumbs up or down on news reports, he added.
Journalists who ignore cartel edicts face real threats in
Mexico. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says 68 journalists were
murdered in Mexico from 2000 to March of this year.
Colleagues who spoke only on the condition of anonymity
offered up other theories of the murders, saying that Lopez and Ordaz may have
been passing information to military intelligence and were killed by crime
gangs in vengeance.
José Luis Cerdán Díaz, a professor at the University of
Veracruz, who has taught journalism classes to hundreds of students over the
years, said that only one conclusion was beyond a doubt.
"These executions and the decapitation of (Ordaz)
are unequivocal signs of cruelty and malice to send a message that someone is
in charge," he said.
Whoever that may be lingers murkily in the air.