The reporter, who was a correspondent in Central America and currently directed the Jovel magazine, was attacked at the door of his home, as confirmed by the Chiapas Prosecutor’s Office
Chiapas, (October 29, 2021) .- The black list of attacks on the press continues in Mexico. This Thursday the 28th, the journalist Fredy López Arévalo was shot dead in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. The attack took place around eight o’clock at night at the door of the reporter’s home, who was returning home accompanied by his wife and his children.
The State Prosecutor’s Office has confirmed the death of López Arévalo, who was a correspondent for El Financiero and El Universal in Central America and currently directed the magazine Jovel. With this crime, there are already nine journalists killed in Mexico this year.
López Arévalo and his family returned this Thursday from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the Chiapas capital, where they had celebrated the birthday of the journalist’s mother, as he had communicated on his social networks.
According to the Municipal Police, the journalist tried to enter his house, accompanied by his wife Gabriela “N” and his children, when the lone man approached and shot him with a weapon, and then fled.
Elements of the Prosecutor’s Office arrived at the scene to carry out the proceedings, while the Municipal and State Police have implemented an operation in search of the hit man who would have fled aboard a motorcycle. Experts and agents of the Public Ministry worked at the scene where the crime occurred, to later transfer the body to the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo).
“I strongly condemn the cowardly murder of journalist Fredy López Arévalo. No crime will go unpunished, investigations are ongoing. My solidarity with his family and his friends ”, the governor of Chiapas, Rutilio Escandón, wrote on his Twitter account.
With a long career behind him, the journalist was now the host of XERA-Radio Uno and directed the magazine Jovel, which was published in San Cristóbal de las Casas. He started journalism at the age of 21 and soon moved to Mexico City as a reporter for various media, although he never lost contact with information from his home state.
1989 was his first foray into a long line of coverage in Central America: he covered elections in Guatemala and Nicaragua, where he recounted the fall of the Sandinistas and the triumph of Violeta Chamorro. He lived for some years in San José, in Costa Rica, from where he served as regional coordinator for the Mexican public news agency, Notimex, and another period in Panama, for the magazine Panorama Internacional. In 1993 he was hired as a correspondent for the newspaper El Universal in Central America, with its official headquarters in Guatemala. Shortly after, he returned to Chiapas to cover the first moments of the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), in 1994. He came to interview Major Mario, who was in charge of the Zapatista troops in the municipality of Ocosingo.
Accustomed to traveling through Europe as a reporter, López Arévalo spent a long time on the other continent, although he always returned to Chiapas. From there he worked as a liaison for the Los Angeles Times to a delegate for Notimex and also founded the Maya Press news agency, with dispatches in Spanish, English, and French.
The reporter was writing a book that he started when he resided in the United States: Marcel, almost a novel. “The story of a French idealist who left his bohemian life in Paris behind to venture through Chiapas in search of the legendary Subcomandante Marcos, political and military leader of the EZLN,” defined the journalist himself, “is an unfinished, latent project.”
Great voices of journalism have lamented this afternoon the murder of the renowned reporter, and demand justice from the Prosecutor’s Office for his case. Mexico was named in 2020 as the most lethal country for the press, according to a report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) after the murder of eight journalists. So far this year, with the López Arévalo crime, there are already nine reporters murdered.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has stressed the lack of support for journalists by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “He promised to take concrete measures to end violence against the press and immunity for the murder of journalists.
However, this cycle continues unchanged, “the organization denounced in December, aware that in the vast majority of murder cases,” no accused has been convicted and the intellectual authors remain free. ” According to a report by the organization Article 19, every 13 hours there is an attack on a media worker in the country.
Source: El Pais / Mural Chiapas
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