MEXICO CITY — Journalist Lourdes Maldonado López stood before the Mexican president at a televised news conference and pleaded for help.
"I fear for my life," she told President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that morning in Mexico City in 2019, explaining that she was locked in an acrimonious labor dispute with Jaime Bonilla Valdez, then a candidate for governor of Baja California state and the owner of a media company that Maldonado had worked for.
López Obrador said he would assign an aide to follow up with Maldonado, and then moved on. Maldonado returned to Tijuana, where she lived, and resumed her life as a journalist.
