Mexican

IN A WATERSHED YEAR FOR MEXICAN DEMOCRACY, the dissolution of ties between much of the media and the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) helped foster a more professional and competitive press in 2000. The election of National Action Party (PAN) candidate Vicente Fox to the presidency on July 2 ended the PRI’s 71-year hold on…

New York, March 12, 2001—In a recent letter to Arturo González Rascón, Attorney General of the State of Chihuahua, CPJ expressed its concern about the murder of José Luis Ortega Mata, the editor of the weekly Semanario de Ojinaga, based in Ojinaga, Chihuahua State. Ortega Mata, 37, was shot twice in the head at close…

Your Excellency, We are writing to express our deep concern about the attack against the offices of the Guatemala City daily elPeriódico, which apparently resulted from the newspaper’s coverage of high-level corruption in your government.

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in MEXICO New York, October 2, 2000 — CPJ has written to the attorney general of Chihuahua State to inquire about the prosecution of journalists Jesús Antonio Pinedo Cornejo and Luis Villagrana on criminal-defamation charges. Pinedo Cornejo edits the weekly Semanario, based in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua…

New York, August 7, 2000 –To protest the repression of writers in Serbia, Homero Aridjis, the President of International PEN, is refusing the “Smederevo Golden Key” literary prize at the Smederevo Fall Poetry Festival (Belgrade, October 2000). Mr. Aridjis, internationally acclaimed Mexican poet and a columnist for the daily Reforma, was invited to come to…

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gratified that Mexican journalists have generally been able to cover the current election campaign without government interference. However, we would like to express our concern about a number of recent incidents.

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in MEXICO New York, June 23, 2000 — According to local and international news reports,, unidentified gunmen attacked Lilly Téllez, news host at Mexico’s second-largest TV network, in Mexico City yesterday. Téllez, host of the “Hechos del Siete” (Channel Seven News) program on TV Azteca in…

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in MEXICO. New York, May 1, 2000 — The body of radio reporter José Ramírez Puente, the host of a popular news program in the Mexican town of Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, was found in his car late Saturday evening. Ramírez,…

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in MEXICO. New York, April 13, 2000 — CPJ is investigating the recent killing of Pablo Pineda, a reporter and photographer with the Mexican newspaper La Opinión in the border city of Matamoros. On April 9 at approximately 2:45 a.m., agents from the U.S. Border Patrol…

While the Mexican press started covering local politics with greater confidence and independence, the drug trade was still an extremely dangerous assignment. As in past years, the government made little progress investigating attacks when they did occur. 1999 saw the first-ever primary election within the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has dominated Mexican politics since…