Antonio de la Cruz, 47, was shot Wednesday as he was leaving his home with his 23-year-old daughter, who was seriously injured, according to prosecutors and his newspaper. De la Cruz, a 47-year-old reporter for the local newspaper Expreso for nearly three decades, was shot at the door of his home in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the state of Tamaulipas on the border with the United States. The area is mired in violence linked to organized crime. Expreso covers all kinds of news in the city, including security issues. De la Cruz spoke on agricultural and social issues such as water scarcity. He also covered the Civic Movement political party and its local MP, Gustavo Cardenas Gutierrez, who condemned the killing. De la Cruz was “very aware of the reality of Tamaulipas, very brave,” Miguel Dominguez, the newspaper’s director, said in an interview with Milenio television. “He never expressed any concern,” Domínguez said. Expreso has been targeted all these years. In 2012, one of the worst years of drug cartel violence, a trapped car exploded in front of the newspaper building. In 2018, a cooler with a human head inside was left in the newspaper, warning not to report violence in the city. The governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, promised an investigation into the murder on Wednesday, so that “this cowardly crime does not go unpunished.” The prosecutor’s office said it had informed the specialized unit for investigating crimes against freedom of expression. The federal prosecutor’s office has announced that it is launching an investigation. Attacks on the press have increased by 85% in the three years since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018, with each Mexican state witnessing such incidents for the first time in 2021. Seven journalists were killed in 2021, compared to 12 so far this year.
