NUEVO LAREDO, Tamaulipas — Media outlets are being kept from covering the murder of a respected journalist killed over the weekend. The order to prohibit reporting and protests about the matter came from the criminal organization controlling this city.
Over the weekend unidentified assassins killed 77-year-old Carlos Dominguez Rodriguez, a respected journalist in Nuevo Laredo. Just days before his murder, the journalist wrote a column about the violence that had overtaken Mexico. Tamaulipas officials revealed the victim was killed with bladed weapons.
A witness who was traveling behind the slain journalist revealed that when the victim’s car reached Venezuela Street, two vehicles boxed him in. The unidentified assassins forced the reporter’s relatives out the vehicle and then attacked Dominguez Rodriguez.
Mexico’s Human Rights Commission issued a request to the Tamaulipas government for protection for the slain reporter’s family.
Despite a series of interviews by Breitbart Texas with various sources, the core motive remains unclear. Some journalists described Dominguez Rodriguez as well-respected and claimed that no one knew about him receiving any threats.
One day after the murder, print outlets and online news sites in Nuevo Laredo remained mum. Information obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed that the silence was due to a threat that cartel members made through a man known as the “link” or “enlace” who acts as a contact for local news outlets.
The order by the cartel to “not make noise” about the case quickly ended the plans to hold a protest and circulate a petition to state and federal officials. Journalists in other cities, by contrast, have managed speak out in protest without suppression and threats of violence.
News outlets in Nuevo Laredo are silenced by the Cartel Del Noreste, a faction of Los Zetas which is led by the relatives of Miguel Angel “Z40” Treviño Morales.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Dominguez Rodriguez’s murder is the second of its kind in 2018 and follows a deadly 2017 where more than a dozen journalists were killed. The escalating number of murdered journalists led to the International Press Institute labeling Mexico as the deadliest place for reporters.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.
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