Arrests, abuse of authority, judicial harassment, and physical and furtive attacks are some of the attacks journalists in Campeche report having suffered since the start of the administration of Morena governor Layda Sansores San Román.
Another challenge facing the state’s press is the closure of media outlets after authorities deny them official advertising allocations—paid for with public funds—for not adhering to the government’s narrative.
The most recent case is that of Jorge Luis González Valdez, a 72-year-old journalist and former editor of the newspaper Tribuna de Campeche, who is facing charges of slander and hate speech allegedly committed against the governor.
Control Judge Guadalupe Martínez Taboada ordered precautionary measures that Jorge be banned from practicing journalism for two years and that the newspaper Tribuna must shut down its website.
But the state’s persecution of Jorge is not the only one.
“Under Layda Sansores’ administration, practicing journalism in Campeche is much more dangerous. I was the first to be reported for political gender-based violence. I have five lawsuits filed by the state of Campeche, that is, by the governor, Layda Sansores, by Marcela Muñoz Martínez, and by the former president of the State Congress, Alejandro Gómez Casarín,” journalist Abraham Alberto Martínez Caamal stated in an interview with Proceso.
Both the governor and the head of Public Security accused him of hate speech and political gender-based violence.
He is currently incorporated into the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists. In April 2024, he was driving his car on Gobernadores Avenue in Campeche when officers attempted to unjustifiably arrest him and his family.
Furthermore, by then, he was already receiving death threats via text messages and from people on the street.
The police, Marcela Muñoz’s people, have threatened to kill me. I hold Layda Sansores and her responsible if anything happens to me. I now live in fear.
Since the beginning of Governor Layda Sansores’s administration, media outlets such as Novedades, Expreso, Crónica, El Sur, and now the Tribuna website have been forced to close, the latter by court order.
Like Jorge González, journalist Abraham Martínez, who runs the Crime Reporter, was also mentioned on the program “Martes del Jaguar,” Layda Sansores’s communications strategy. She has a segment called “Ratinus” (emulating Latinus), in which she discredits the journalistic work of Campeche media outlets.
On the program, the governor has referred to some of these journalists and media outlets as the “misogynist cartel.”
Attacks Escalate
On February 7, 2023, a Molotov cocktail was thrown and the car of journalist Luis Armando Mendoza Leciano, who has been working for 46 years, was set on fire. Mendoza claims he has been critical of the Sansores administration.
Luis is also under the protection of the Mechanism. After the attack—related to his journalistic work—he continues to pursue the same stance he described as critical, but he does not rule out the possibility of being prosecuted, as happened to Jorge Luis González.
One cannot help but worry because we are seeing this government determined to attract criticism, and we have already seen that it is capable of using the judicial system for its objectives. I maintain my critical stance, but I do not rule out the possibility that a lawsuit could also be filed against me for inciting hatred.
The journalistic organization Article 19 has been in contact with Jorge Luis González Valdez since early May. They knew that he had not had an employment relationship with Tribuna since 2017, so it seemed unlikely that he would be charged for the publication of some articles from 2022 and 2023, since he had proven that he was retired.
One of the anomalies in this case is that Campeche’s legal counsel, Juan Alcudia, was aware of the outcome of the hearing, which he discussed at the Martes del Jaguar conference on June 10.
“It’s very clear that the legal counsel announced that Jorge would be charged and the media outlet would be sanctioned; in other words, he was already anticipating and giving the scoop on what the outcome of Friday’s hearing would be,” explained Rubén D. Silva, a lawyer for the protection and defense program at the Article 19 office for Mexico and Central America.
The former director of Tribuna can appeal the precautionary measures.
Enrique Pastor Cruz Carranza has a 40-year career in journalism and won the National Prize for Critical Analysis in 2008. For the past 10 years, he and his wife have been part of the Protection Mechanism.
During the administration of former Governor Fernando Ortega Bernés, he was accused of money laundering and being a hawk for the Zetas.
Now, under the administration of Governor Layda Sansores, he faces a new ban, in addition to having been the victim of at least three attacks against him and his family.
“Two years ago, in May, while returning from a report on Champotón, a four-kilogram rock was thrown at my windshield at night. My wife and I have been in the Mechanism for 10 years; my house feels like a prison,” he said.
The physical attacks against him and his family intensified in 2020, after he attended then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s morning press conference and questioned the governor’s work:
The governor returned 879 million pesos for underspending because, according to sources, there was nowhere to spend them in Campeche, and declared that in her first year, she couldn’t complete a project because it was a diagnostic year. I told the president that I can’t believe there was a diagnostic when she was a four-time gubernatorial candidate, a two-time senator, and a two-time federal deputy.
For Leopoldo Maldonado, Regional Director of Article 19, the precautionary measures against journalist Jorge Luis González Valdés reflect not only a crisis of critical checks and balances, but also a crisis of a judiciary subservient to the state.
“Given all this, where are the checks and balances? Where are the institutional means of defending freedoms? In that sense, the outlook is even more bleak. We have a captured judiciary, incapable of overturning these norms. Public human rights commissions, including the CNDH, are subservient to power,” Maldonado wrote in an article on the subject.
The Campeche journalists’ union is organizing and held a protest in solidarity with Jorge on June 17. However, those interviewed for this article agreed that participation was low because of fear of persecution by the Layda Sansores government.
Source: proceso
