CNI Releases Files on the Murders & Coverups of 10 Mexican Journalists During 'Dirty War' Period

Since last year, the Historical Clarification Mechanism (MEH) of the Commission for Access to the Truth created by the Mexican government identified that several files of murdered journalists that were transferred to the AGN in 2002 and appeared listed in various catalogues were missing. The same occurred with files of some opposition politicians: they appeared in indexes but were not physically located.

“El Gato”

Hector “El Gato” Félix Miranda. 

“At approximately 09.50 hours today, the co-director of the newspaper ZETA was killed with a 12-caliber shotgun. He wrote in the section ‘A little something’, in which he was very notorious for his criticisms, sometimes with foul language, and even made comments and criticisms about the private lives of those he criticized,” the report says.

Intelligence agents echoed the words of Jesús Blancornelas, Director of Zeta, who considered that although the crime had the hallmarks of drug trafficking, this could have been used to divert attention from the real reason for the crime.

“Someone or some people may say that what happened was a consequence of his way of writing… The way he was killed indicates the characteristics of a drug mafia crime, but that would be as absurd as his murder being involved in this field. It could be that the classic system was used to divert the investigation and cover it up with the argument that it would be impossible to immediately and futurely clarify it, as has happened with other crimes of the same procedure,” said Blancornelas, who died in 2006.

Later, the intelligence center indicated that Medina Moreno’s defense was paid by the politician and businessman and “he has launched himself fully to officially demonstrate that Eng. Jorge Hank Rhon is not the material author of the murder of Héctor Félix Miranda.”

Over 166 Journalists Killed Since 2000

Between 2000 and 2024, the international organization Article 19 has documented the murders of 166 Mexican journalists, with Veracruz, Guerrero, Chihuahua and Oaxaca being the states with the highest number of cases. However, cases of attacks on the Mexican press have been recorded for decades.

On December 13, 1979, the body of journalist Alberto Rodríguez Torres was found on the streets of Pachuca, Hidalgo. He had bruises on his skull. The directors of three local newspapers published a letter to the then president José López Portillo to clarify the crime and protect journalistic work. Rodríguez Torres’s murder remains unpunished.

On May 31, 1984, journalist Javier Juárez Vázquez, who edited the independent magazine Primera Plana in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, was shot four times with a .45-caliber bullet, beaten, and tied up with cables. An intelligence agent wrote that the perpetrators and masterminds were a group of state police officers, the mayor of Coatzacoalcos, and a leader of the oil workers’ union, who had threatened him for the criticism he made of them in their newspaper. 

On July 17, 1986, Ernesto Flores Torrijos, director of the Matamoros, Tamaulipas, newspaper El Popular , and reporter Norma Alicia Moreno Figueroa were gunned down when they parked outside the newsroom. At the time, the Matamoros Journalists Association launched a petition for the government of President Miguel de la Madrid to resolve the case. 

On October 7, 1986, journalist Odilón López Urías was traveling by car through Culiacán, Sinaloa, with his wife and daughter when they were stopped by a group of eight armed men. They were abandoned on the road; he was kidnapped. His body was found two days later in a vacant lot in Guamúchil, Sinaloa. He had two gunshot wounds to the chest. 

On July 14, 1988, two men arrived at the offices of the newspaper El Mundo in Comitán, Chiapas, asking for its director, journalist Ronay González Reyes. When the assistant took them to the press area, where the director was, the men opened fire and killed him.

In the early hours of December 23, 1989, Elvira Marcelo Esquivel, a reporter for the newspaper El Día , was walking with two colleagues down the street in Mexico City after celebrating a posada. They were going home when a group of five local police officers, presumably intoxicated, approached them and tried to rob them.