A journalist in northern Mexico is currently fearing for her life after a feared drug lord announced that he was going to kill her because of her reporting. Despite the threat being public through a narco-banner, Mexico’s federal government, led by President Claudia Sheinbaum, refused to give the journalist protection, even though they have a program to safeguard news workers at risk.
The issue came to light last week, when gunmen working for Jose Rodolfo “El Rodo” Ramones Barba, 41, hung banners in the city of San Nicolas, Nuevo Leon. In those banners, El Rodo warned that his rivals had failed in killing him and that he was going to get them back. In that same banner, El Rodo threatened Valdez by name-calling her a cheap reporter and stating that he was going after her for reporting on his hideouts and activities.
Over the weekend, Valdez shared on social media that her requests for protection from Mexico’s journalist protection program had been denied. In their denial, officials with the program claimed they didn’t see a danger to her arising from her work. The denial comes as the administration of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has been harshly criticized for her refusal to stop, and even for protecting, drug cartels.
Breitbart Texas reported on El Rodo in 2020, when it published the first known image of his face. El Rodo is the current leader of an independent criminal organization known as Los Rodos, which has established control of certain municipalities in the Monterrey metropolitan area in the Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon. El Rodo was once a local lieutenant with the Gulf Cartel who broke away and, for a short time, allied himself with their rivals, the Cartel Del Noreste of Los Zetas, to take control of key areas.
Most recently, authorities with the Nuevo Leon State Investigations Agency arrested El Rodo earlier this month in Monterrey, where he was recovering from injuries that he sustained during an attack by rivals. On January 2, a group of gunmen had tried to kill El Rodo in a parking lot of a supermarket in Monterrey. El Rodo has a history of running his organization from behind bars.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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