Mexico: Journalist At Risk
Alberto Amaro Jordán is a 35-year-old journalist from the town of Atexcatzingo, in the state of Tlaxcala, east of Mexico City. Since 2019, Amaro has been beaten, threatened and arrested by police officers, intimidated by alleged members of a drug cartel, suffered an attempted break-in, and had shots fired at his house, among other attacks. Police officers and other unidentified individuals have photographed him, and his wife and son, and aggressors have hacked his website and smeared his reputation in Facebook posts accusing him of being a criminal. Despite all this, in August 2023 the Mechanism determined that he was no longer in danger after four years enrolled in the Mechanism and told him it would be withdrawing his four bodyguards. Amaro won an injunction to suspend the removal of his bodyguards but is uncertain if the Mechanism will continue providing protection in the future. He has accused Mechanism officials of ignoring the dangers he and his family continue to face due to his work.
Attacks on journalist Alberto Amaro have not stopped in 2024. On 9 January 2024 around 8:45am he was chased by an unknown person in a vehicle with license plates from the State of Mexico who attempted to crash into Alberto’s vehicle, according to information published by La Prensa de Tlaxcala. The guard of the Protection Mechanism who was driving managed to avoid hitting the other vehicle, but the aggressor pulled in front of them and tried to block their path. Alberto’s driver eventually managed to evade the other vehicle and escape.
Mexico is the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country for journalists, according to extensive documentation by CPJ since 1992. Since the turn of the century, at least 153 journalists and other media workers have been killed, according to CPJ research; at least 64 of those killings were found to be directly related to their work. Impunity is the norm in crimes against the press; according to CPJ’s yearly Global Impunity Index, Mexico consistently ranks among the ten countries with the highest number of journalist murders that remain unsolved.