(CN) – A bludgeoned corpse found this week in Mexico perpetuated the country’s plague of press killings, yet the stories of two men who fled to the United States after receiving death threats show how hard it is for Mexican reporters to win asylum.
The prosecutor’s office of the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas said Hector Gonzalez Antonio’s body was found Tuesday morning on a dirt road in the state capital of Ciudad Victoria.
Gonzalez, the sixth Mexican journalist killed this year, covered crime for the Mexican national newspaper Excelsior. The paper’s editorial director called him a “magnificent person” and urged authorities to track down his killers, a Hail Mary in a country where experts say less than 10 percent of murders are even investigated.
Gonzalez is the 17th Mexican journalist slain since 2017, an epidemic that has sunk the country to No. 147 out of the 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ 2018 World Press Freedom Index.
José Luis Benavides, a journalism professor at California State University, Northridge, was a reporter in Mexico in the 1980s. He founded the school’s student newspaper El Nuevo Sol in 2007.
Benavides said Mexico’s media system seems illogical through the lens of the U.S. press due to the many constraints Mexican reporters have on their coverage.
Media owners often have connections with organized crime, or corrupt government officials, he said, and newsrooms are often infiltrated by moles.
“Then perhaps the most difficult of all the constraints they have is if a journalist, either by will or by accident, portrays a link between organized crime and the state, the government, that is a pretty risky place to be,” he said. “That’s where probably many journalists have lost their life.”
The third Mexican journalist killed this year was Leobardo Vázquez, who covered crime and police in the Gulf state Veracruz on his online publication Enlace Informative Regional. Gunmen shot him on March 21 at the taco stand he ran next to his house.
Experts say it’s common for Mexican journalists to have side jobs and take bribes from government agencies in return for favorable coverage because they are not paid well.
“Once you receive the money then you are obligated to not say anything really negative about the people who are giving you money,” Benavides said.
Molly Molloy, a research librarian at New Mexico State University and Latin America specialist, tracks murders in Mexico.
She said Vazquez’s was one of 10,395 homicides from January through April this year, an average of 87 people per day, citing statistics provided by the Mexican government.
Molloy said Mexico’s murder rate jumped from 8,000 in 2006 to 27,000 in 2011. Last year it eclipsed 29,000.
She suspects much of the violence wracking Mexico this year—besides journalists, numerous candidates for public office have been murdered—is tied to the federal, state and local offices up for grabs in this presidential election year.
“The criminal organizations are trying to get influence,” she said. “They are trying to make sure the people they want get elected … So when that’s all in flux a lot of people are getting killed because the cartels themselves are jockeying for power. They try to eliminate the people they think are their enemies.”