By Yeruti Salcedo
Sitting in the editorial office of the newspaper El Debate in Culiacán, Sinaloa, editing materials that should be published in today’s edition, with slow steps and a sorrowful face, Andrea Miranda, general editor of the largest newspaper in this entire state, approaches in the Northwest of Mexico. She standing in front of me she just says “They murdered our main columnist, Luis Enríque Ramírez”.
Mexico is a country accustomed to burying people murdered by all kinds of violence without giving rise to goosebumps. A country and a territory where the life of journalists is worth less and less and death lurks in every corner of a newsroom.
The body of the journalist was located yesterday to the south of the city; For security reasons, he was out of Sinaloa for a while. His body was found on the side of Mexico 15 highway, which crosses Sinaloa, wrapped in plastic.
Gustavo Lizárraga, a journalist from the digital area of El Debate, and probably more specialized in security issues, talking to me very emotionally with tears in his eyes and a broken voice, said “The death of Luis Enrique causes fear, one learns to work with fear, When journalists go out to cover the news, they go out scared, but one gets around that and tries to get ahead despite everything, not to be paralyzed, fear becomes a way of life”.
When asked how he found out about the death of his colleague and friend, he only managed to say, “we didn’t know how to react, it’s a person you knew, with whom you lived, you laughed with him and out of nowhere he’s gone, you learn to lose friends, it’s sad. We are journalists but we are also human beings and this house becomes like a family, today we lost a brother”
The pattern repeats itself: local journalists who risk their lives reporting on corruption and the huge imbalances in political and economic power are often forced to remain silent and not tell stories. The death of Luis Enrique, whom I imagine writing his last column El Ancla, two meters from where I write this text that I would never want to write, is added to the list of 34 journalists assassinated in the six-year term of the president of Mexico López Obrador. Now I’m still closing the newspaper, tomorrow’s edition with his photo on the cover.
