Forty-five Mexican journalists were murdered last year, and Mexico is among the world’s most dangerous nation for journalists. These murders have a long history. Several Mexican journalists, most of them my friends, were victims of drug mafias. This excerpt from my book recounts this horrible tragedy. The two journalists first mentioned were co-founders of Tijuana’s Zeta newspaper.
In Zeta, Jesús Blancornelas and Hector Félix, who wrote a weekly column signed El Gato, relentlessly reported on the spread of drug trafficking and drug-related activities. Félix alleged that Jorge Hank Rhon, son of a former Mexico City mayor and owner of the city’s racetrack, was a major money launderer. He con- fided in me that he’d received death threats. Laughing, Félix brandished a rifle and said he was ready.
On April 20, 1988, assassins killed Félix with several shotgun blasts as he sat in his car at a traffic stop in Tijuana. Jesús published a weekly notice accusing Hank as the man who ordered Félix’s murder: “Jorge Hank Rhon: Why did your body- guard Antonio Vera Palestina kill me?” Hank has denied any connection to the attack.
Sometime in early 1996, I ran into Jesús at a conference. We had not seen each other in a few years. A tall man accompanied Jesús. He was a bodyguard Jesús had hired after receiving many threats from drug gangsters. I knew that Jesús had to be living with a grave threat to his life.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1997, assassins working for the Tijuana Cartel struck. Jesús and his bodyguard, Luis Valero
Elizalde, were en route to the airport, when an SUV suddenly stopped at an intersection, blocking Jesús’s Ford Explorer. A man emerged from the SUV and fired a shotgun blast at the vehicle’s windshield. The bodyguard, began to speed in reverse, just as AK-47 automatic rifle fire began riddling the vehicle. Valero used his body to shield Jesús.
A freak accident saved Jesús. A bullet ricocheted, striking the shotgun-wielding killer in the eye, killing him instantly. The other assassins, apparently thinking they were under attack, fled. Valero was dead. He was hit seventeen times, and Jesús suffered four gunshot wounds, none were fatal. Following the attack, the government assigned a permanent military security squad to protect him and his family.
The last time we met was at a Mexico City restaurant in late 2003. A soldier patted me down and sat just two feet from me during the dinner. Jesús said he would keep writing about the drug gangsters but complained that security concerns kept him housebound most of the time. He was effectively a prisoner in his own home. Jesús died of stomach cancer on November 23, 2006. In the years leading up to the attack and afterward, Jesús received many journalistic awards. Upon his death, the Committee to Protect Journalists called him “the spiritual godfather of modern Mexican journalism.”
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 