Mexico
Newspaper employee becomes latest casualty of the drug warPosted Feb 9 2011
Maribel Hernandez, who distributed newspapers in the Mexican border city of Juarez, was murdered by a street gang on Jan. 31 because she was seen as a threat to the gang’s street vendors.
Hernandez, a distributor for Diario de Juarez and PM newspapers and according to federal investigators, was thought to have had influence over which vendors were able to sell the newspapers.
The La Linea gang, which is allied with the Juarez drug cartel, thought she was discriminating against vendors who paid the cartel money for protection.
Federal police currently have a suspect in custody who told investigators that he was paid 3,000 pesos ($250 dollars) to murder Hernandez.
Hernandez is the fourth non-journalist media worker killed in the line of duty in Mexico since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. She was 31 years old and had five children.