Wresting a sad distinction from war-torn Colombia, northern Mexico is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist in the Western Hemisphere, media watchdog groups say. Attacks in the past week alone have left one editor dead, one reporter missing and another barely alive after she was shot nine times.
Iraq, where 19 journalists were killed last year, and the Philippines, where six reporters were killed last year and two so far this year, are considered the most dangerous countries for reporters.
But while Colombia seems to be improving -- only one reporter has been killed so far this year -- northern Mexico "has been worse than Colombia" in terms of the danger for journalists this year, said Lucie Morillon, a spokeswoman for the Washington office of the French watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders.
Carlos Lauria of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists went so far as to say that in the past year, northern Mexico, including the US border areas, "has become one of the worst places in all of Latin America to be a journalist."
"Some of the media outlets here have hired guards," said Roberto Galves, news director of the FM radio station XHNOE, whose crime reporter Guadalupe Garcia Escamilla, 39, is recovering from wounds to the chest, abdomen, legs and arms after an April 5 attack in the tough border city of Nuevo Laredo.
The federal government announced on Thursday it was taking over the cases of Garcia Escamilla and Raul Gibb Guerrero, a newspaper editor gunned down just three days later, and pledged to use "all its force ... to punish anyone who thinks about taking the life of a journalist." Murder is normally investigated by state police in Mexico.
There is one overriding reason for the danger: Mexico's drug cartels. They are numerous, deadly -- and they hate attention from the news media.
"When someone dares to denounce them, the threats come immediately. The violence comes immediately," said Mexico's top organized crime prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos.
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