NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico, SEPT. 28, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The lay Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo are mourning the death of María Elizabeth Macías Castro, 39, an editor of a Mexican newspaper who was killed last week by drug traffickers.
Macías is the fourth woman journalist to have been killed in Mexico’s drug war this year.
She was kidnapped and killed Sept. 22, and her decapitated body was left with a note suggesting her death was reprisal for her social networking reports on organized crime. She was editor-in-chief of the paper Primera Hora.
A communiqué sent to Fides by religious Francisco Pellizzari, spiritual adviser of the North American region of the missionary group, asked for prayer “for our friend (…) who with great affection and loyalty worked in the House of the Migrant in Nuevo Laredo and was in daily contact with many of us in the movement.”
Reporters Without Borders recalled the previous three women victims: former Televisa reporter Rocio González Trápaga and Ana María Marcela Yarce Viveros, the editor of the weekly magazine Contralínea, who were killed together in the capital on Aug. 31, and columnist Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz of the regional daily Notiver, who was slain in the eastern state of Veracruz on July 26.
Eighty media professionals have lost their lives since 2000 in Mexico, according to Reporters Without Borders.
