MCALLEN, Texas — Despite the Mexican government’s claims of improving security over the weekend two gunmen burst into a radio station and gunned down a community activist in the middle of a radio show.
The murder took place Saturday in the Mexican Resort town of Mazatlán Sinaloa where Ataliano Roman Tirado had a radio show in the Fiesta Mexicana station, Sinaloa’s Attorney General’s Office said in a prepared statement.
For the murder two gunmen walked into the building which also houses the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlán and asked for Tirado with one of the gunmen going into the studio and shooting the activist in mid-broadcast with a 9mm handgun.
Tirado was a community activist who had created a group of 800 farmers who had been displaced by the construction of a dam called Picachos that flooded their lands.
Sinaloa is one of the main drug producing states in Mexico and is the area where most of the famous capos got their start.
In recent years the dangers of reporting in Mexico have increased dramatically particularly with the drug war and the cartels efforts to silence the media. According to the international organization Reporters Without Borders, Mexico continues to be one of the most dangerous countries for free journalists with 80 reporters killed in the past decade and 17 who have disappeared.
“Impunity continues to prevail in almost all murders and disappearances of journalists. The police and judicial investigations into these murders are often closed quickly or are paralyzed by cumbersome bureaucratic procedures. The impunity is also due to collusion between organized crime and the political and administrative authorities, which have been corrupted or even infiltrated by the cartels at all levels,” the organization stated in their Mexico report.
Follow Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter @ildefonsoortiz
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