TIJUANA, Mexico — Journalists, academics and law enforcement officials in Mexico are not convinced that the Arellano-Félix cartel was behind the January slayings of two prominent Tijuana journalists, as the government claims.
Mexico’s undersecretary of security, Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, on April 27 said the same criminal cell, composed of remnants of the Arellano-Félix Cartel (CAF), is responsible for the murders of Margarito Martínez Esquivel and Lourdes Maldonado López.
Martínez, a freelance photographer, was shot and killed on Jan. 17 outside his residence in Tijuana, in the northern Mexican border state of Baja California. Days later, Maldonado, a veteran broadcast journalist, was shot dead in her car on Jan. 23 in the Santa Fe neighborhood of the same border city.
