Daughter of murdered journalist dies in Tamaulipas

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The daughter of a reporter slain earlier this week in the northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas died on Friday, July 1st, of wounds suffered in the attack that killed her father.

On Wednesday, Antonio de la Cruz became the 12th journalist killed so far this year in Mexico when a man on a motorcycle fired at him in his car outside his home. His daughter Cinthya de la Cruz Martínez, 23, was with him in the vehicle and was also shot.

On Friday, the newspaper De la Cruz worked for, Expreso, reported that the daughter had died of her injuries at a hospital in Ciudad Victoria, where the attack occurred. She had suffered a bullet wound to the head, according to the newspaper.

Also on Friday, the governor of the western state of Jalisco said the director of a university radio station in the coastal city of Puerto Vallarta had been stabbed in what he described as an attempted robbery.

Gov. Enrique Alfaro said Susanna Carreño was in stable condition after undergoing surgery.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday that federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation of the killing of de la Cruz as a crime against freedom of expression.

One of the reporter’s colleagues said De la Cruz had once been asked, apparently by state authorities, to remove some of his tweets.

“On Twitter, Antonio criticized the state government a lot and criticized the government,” said fellow reporter Carlos Manuel Juárez. “He even told me at one point that they had asked him to take down some critical tweets that he put up.”

De la Cruz, 47, was a reporter for the local newspaper Expreso for almost three decades.

“This is clearly an attack on freedom of expression,” said Expreso’s director, Miguel Domínguez.

Almost all of Tamaulipas’ recent governors have faced accusations of corruption, ranging from money laundering to aiding drug cartels.

Expreso has been targeted over the years. In 2012, one of the worst years of drug cartel violence, a car bomb exploded in front of the newspaper’s building. In 2018, a cooler with a human head inside was left in front of the newspaper, with a warning not to report on violence in the city.

Source: El Mexicano

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