CNI Releases Files on the Murders & Coverups of 10 Mexican Journalists During 'Dirty War' Period

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

From an El Pais Article by Rafael Cabrera

The National Intelligence Center (CNI) has opened, for the first time, the files it compiled on the murders of 10 Mexican journalists committed between 1979 and 1990. The period known as the Dirty War was characterized by the Mexican government's use of repression and disappearances as a control mechanism against dissidents and opponents. The files and documents, obtained through transparency, show that, as is the case today, organized crime and local authorities were behind the murders and that impunity in the investigations was the rule.

These documents are related to the murders of Mexican journalists and politicians that occurred during the last three decades of the 20th century.

The suspicion that Mexican intelligence eliminated or fragmented information on sensitive cases, which had been disseminated for decades among historians and journalists specializing in Mexican documentary heritage, has been confirmed by the intelligence institution itself by delivering a series of documents in compliance with various resolutions of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI).

Among the files revealed is that of Héctor Félix Miranda, "El Gato Félix," Co-Director of the weekly Zeta Tijuana, Baja California, riddled in April 1988 by two security elements of the racetrack owned by the politician and businessman Jorge Hank Rohn. And although both were sentenced and released in 2015, Hank Rohn never faced justice although Jesús Blancornelas, Director of the media, pointed to him as the alleged intellectual author of the crime that would have occurred in retaliation for the journalist's criticism.

The other cases are those of:

Alberto Rodriguez Torres, murdered in 1979 in Hidalgo

Javier Juarez Vazquez, in 1984 in Veracruz

Manuel Buendía, which occurred in 1984

Ernesto Flores Torrijos and Norma Alicia Moreno Figueroa, in Tamaulipas in 1986

Demetrio Ruiz Malerva, in Veracruz in 1986

Odilon Lopez Uriah, in Sinaloa in 1986

Hermelinda Bejarano Leon, in Chihuahua

Ronay Gonzalez Reyes, in Chiapas, in 1988

Elvira Marcelo Esquivel, in 1989 in Mexico City

Since February 2019, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published an agreement for his entire Administration, in particular the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) and the CNI, to send to the General Archive of the Nation (AGN) all documents on political and social repression , corruption, human rights violations or attacks against journalists that occurred between 1965 and 1990.

Officially, the Archive only received seven files from the CNI, including that of the murder of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, which occurred in 1984. The CNI is the name that the Mexican intelligence agency adopted in 2018, but which was previously called the Center for Intelligence and National Security (CISEN).

Since last year, the Historical Clarification Mechanism (MEH) of the Commission for Access to the Truth created by the Mexican government identified that several files of murdered journalists that were transferred to the AGN in 2002 and appeared listed in various catalogues were missing. The same occurred with files of some opposition politicians: they appeared in indexes but were not physically located.

Following the discovery, the Mechanism sent a series of requests for information to the CNI and appeals were filed with the National Institute for Access to Information (INAI) to obtain the files of said homicides. Although the CNI denied having them, it ended up delivering a series of files and documents that document the murders. The cases correspond to the presidencies of José López Portill o, Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Salinas de Gortari, all of them from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

"El Gato"

Hector "El Gato" Félix Miranda. 

Born on July 21, 1940 in Sinaloa.

He arrived in Tijuana in 1960.

He was killed on April 20, 1988 with a 12-gauge shotgun.

He was co-director of the newspaper Zeta.

 This is how the 13-page file on the journalist's murder, delivered by the CNI, begins.

“At approximately 09.50 hours today, the co-director of the newspaper ZETA was killed with a 12-caliber shotgun. He wrote in the section 'A little something', in which he was very notorious for his criticisms, sometimes with foul language, and even made comments and criticisms about the private lives of those he criticized,” the report says.

Intelligence agents echoed the words of Jesús Blancornelas, Director of Zeta, who considered that although the crime had the hallmarks of drug trafficking, this could have been used to divert attention from the real reason for the crime.

“Someone or some people may say that what happened was a consequence of his way of writing… The way he was killed indicates the characteristics of a drug mafia crime, but that would be as absurd as his murder being involved in this field. It could be that the classic system was used to divert the investigation and cover it up with the argument that it would be impossible to immediately and futurely clarify it, as has happened with other crimes of the same procedure,” said Blancornelas, who died in 2006.

Victoriano Medina Moreno, former head of security at the Caliente Racetrack, owned by Hank Rhon, was arrested as the perpetrator of the murder. “Although Medina Moreno claims to have committed the crime by his own decision, the judicial authorities do not believe this, so in a few hours they will have to search the Hipódromo facilities,” noted an agent of the agency.

Later, the intelligence center indicated that Medina Moreno's defense was paid by the politician and businessman and "he has launched himself fully to officially demonstrate that Eng. Jorge Hank Rhon is not the material author of the murder of Héctor Félix Miranda."

Over 166 Journalists Killed Since 2000

Between 2000 and 2024, the international organization Article 19 has documented the murders of 166 Mexican journalists, with Veracruz, Guerrero, Chihuahua and Oaxaca being the states with the highest number of cases. However, cases of attacks on the Mexican press have been recorded for decades.

File provided by the CNI related to case 002-033-062, on the murder of this journalist in the city of Tijuana in April 1988.


On December 13, 1979, the body of journalist Alberto Rodríguez Torres was found on the streets of Pachuca, Hidalgo. He had bruises on his skull. The directors of three local newspapers published a letter to the then president José López Portillo to clarify the crime and protect journalistic work. Rodríguez Torres's murder remains unpunished.


On May 31, 1984, journalist Javier Juárez Vázquez, who edited the independent magazine Primera Plana in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, was shot four times with a .45-caliber bullet, beaten, and tied up with cables. An intelligence agent wrote that the perpetrators and masterminds were a group of state police officers, the mayor of Coatzacoalcos, and a leader of the oil workers' union, who had threatened him for the criticism he made of them in their newspaper. 

Weeks later, two of the union leader's bodyguards who were suspected of the crime were found dead. In 1991, Cisen reported that a group of journalists commemorated the seventh anniversary of Juárez Vázquez's murder. The state prosecutor promised them that day that the crime would be solved. This is the last report on the case, which remains unpunished.

On July 17, 1986, Ernesto Flores Torrijos, director of the Matamoros, Tamaulipas, newspaper El Popular , and reporter Norma Alicia Moreno Figueroa were gunned down when they parked outside the newsroom. At the time, the Matamoros Journalists Association launched a petition for the government of President Miguel de la Madrid to resolve the case. 

But one year after the double homicide, in 1987, the local newspaper El Gráfico published: “If we then anticipated that it would go unpunished, unless there was political will from President Miguel de la Madrid, now we recognize that even with it justice could not be done, since his public order to the Secretary of the Interior, Manuel Bartlett Díaz, to clarify the murders of journalists committed during this administration has not had a satisfactory response.”

On October 7, 1986, journalist Odilón López Urías was traveling by car through Culiacán, Sinaloa, with his wife and daughter when they were stopped by a group of eight armed men. They were abandoned on the road; he was kidnapped. His body was found two days later in a vacant lot in Guamúchil, Sinaloa. He had two gunshot wounds to the chest. 

Months earlier, in March of the same year, Odilón's eldest son was murdered and a month later, in April, the lawyer representing the family in the case was kidnapped, allegedly by judicial police in Sinaloa. The murders of the reporter and his son have not been clarified.

On July 14, 1988, two men arrived at the offices of the newspaper El Mundo in Comitán, Chiapas, asking for its director, journalist Ronay González Reyes. When the assistant took them to the press area, where the director was, the men opened fire and killed him.

In the early hours of December 23, 1989, Elvira Marcelo Esquivel, a reporter for the newspaper El Día , was walking with two colleagues down the street in Mexico City after celebrating a posada. They were going home when a group of five local police officers, presumably intoxicated, approached them and tried to rob them. 

There were blows and struggles. 

One officer pulled out a gun and fired. Elvira, 25, fell wounded. She died on Christmas Eve in a hospital. The murder, which occurred in the country's capital, reached the Chamber of Deputies and some of the officers responsible were arrested and imprisoned. 

It is one of the few cases in which there was justice. As in a game of mirrors, impunity is repeated in crimes against Mexican journalists of the past and present.

Source El Pais