Nuevo Laredo, Mexico – The owner of Nuevo Laredo’s El Mañana newspaper said he will almost completely stop covering drug gangs after the company offices were attacked by assailants who sprayed the reception area with bullets and lobbed a grenade at the building.
“Zero investigations into the narco,” Ramon Cantu said Tuesday, while more than 50 state and federal police guarded his offices. Under the policy, El Mañana will report only the basic facts of drug-related killings and will avoid mentioning names or doing any follow-up reporting.
Reporter Jaime Orozco Tey was shot five times during Monday night’s attack and remained in serious condition Tuesday.
President Vicente Fox called the incident “despicable” and said federal agents would take over the case as it had the hallmarks of an organized-crime job.
“I say again to organized crime: You will not make the Mexican people yield,” Fox said.
Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, said the embassy “condemns the attack … and very much sympathizes with the wounded reporter and the families.”
So far this year, almost one person every day has been murdered in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 300,000 across the river from Laredo, Texas. Investigators say most of the killings are related to a bloody battle between Mexico’s top drug cartels fighting for control of its billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States.
Fortunately for the paper, Monday was a holiday and fewer reporters were on duty.
