Jesus Blancornelas, a prize-winning newspaper editor who has crusaded against narcotics traffickers, was seriously wounded Thursday in Tijuana by gunmen who killed his bodyguard. One of the gunmen was also killed.
Men firing automatic rifles ambushed Blancornelas' vehicle as he drove to his newsroom, said Francisco Ortiz Franco, an editor at Blancornelas' muckraking weekly. Blancornelas' bodyguard, Luis Valero, opened fire on the attackers, killing one and losing his own life, Ortiz said.Blancornelas was struck in the trunk and hand by three bullets and underwent surgery Thursday afternoon, Ortiz said in a telephone interview from Tijuana. Doctors said that Blancornelas was stable.
"We're totally stunned and paralyzed," Ortiz said. "Our newsroom is in chaos."
The attack comes four months after gunmen in San Luis Rio Colorado, another border city overwhelmed by narcotics violence, killed Benjamin Flores Gonzalez, the founder of La Prensa, another weekly that had campaigned against drugs. Two other journalists were slain in Mexico this year, and at least 20 others have been kidnapped, tortured or beaten.
Earlier this month, Blancornelas joined several dozen Mexican and American journalists at a Mexico City conference to discuss strategies for defending reporters against attacks.
The mounting violence appears to reflect both the rising independence and assertiveness of Mexico's press, emerging from decades of government controls as the country moves toward democracy, and the increasingly brazen attitudes of the country's network of organized crime.