Mexico : Photojournalist killed in Ciudad Juarez

Photojournalist killed in Ciudad Juarez

Agents try to stop flow of drug money into Mexico

Stashing cash in spare tires, engine transmissions and truckloads of baby diapers, couriers for Mexican drug cartels are moving tens of billions of dollars south across the border each year. U.S. border and customs agents at crossings such as this one in Laredo, Tex., inspect vehicles for drug money in an effort to catch the bulk cash before it makes it into Mexico.

By William Booth

Friday, September 17, 2010

The dead photographer was Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco, 21. The two men had attended a workshop at the newspaper in the morning and were getting lunch when they were attacked, according to local journalists. The mall, just down the block from the newspaper, was crowded with shoppers and cars on Mexico's independence day.

Santiago is the second journalist with El Diario to be killed in the past two years. In November 2008, the paper's lead crime reporter, Armando "El Choco" Rodriguez, was killed in front of his house as he was getting his young daughter off to school. That slaying has not been solved.

Reporters in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities in the world, continue to chronicle the carnage that has left more than 2,150 people dead there this year.

Across Mexico, journalists have been kidnapped, their publishers have been threatened and at least 22 reporters have been killed since President Felipe Calderon began his U.S.-backed, military-led fight against the cartels in December 2006, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.