Jesús Pintor Alegre and Fernando Moreno Villegas, two of the three communicators kidnapped since December 27, 2022 in Tierra Caliente, have finally been released near the Curio River, in Coyuca de Catalán, a small town that borders Michoacán, but is located in the same Mexican state of Guerrero where they disappeared. Pintor Alegre would have been deprived of liberty because the assailants confused him with a member of the Facebook page called ‘Escenario Calentano’, created just five years ago, due to his profession as a journalist.
As a result of this confusion, Jesus was taken against his will by his captors, who were traveling in an SUV, when he was going one morning to buy a nearby pastry shop. He remained blindfolded and handcuffed every minute of his captivity to prevent him from escaping, seeing the kidnappers or the place where he was while he received “rabid” treatment, according to his latest statements.
After his release, the journalist confessed that “he is charged with emotions” and that what affected him the most was “the emotional aggression.” He has not hesitated to address a “strong claim” to the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO): “That he rectify his path since the slogan of ‘hugs and not bullets’ -the tactic implemented by the politician from Tabasco to deal with drug trafficking- does not work.” After finishing his dissertation on the president, he concluded his vision of how a journalistic profession in the sister nation between sobs: «Citizens are unprotected. We live in barbarism, simply and simply. Mexico is the deadliest country for the press in the world with 125 journalists murdered since 2003.
The another kidnapped, Moreno, He denies being a journalist and being part of this small news platform that was dedicated to disseminating his own complaints that fell on alleged members of organized crime and their bridges with corrupt municipal authorities. Moreno claims to be a biologist chemist by profession and denies having had anything to do with any publication on the news page.
The released man appeared in the famous video, broadcast by the media itself on January 7, in which he was seen dressed in red together with the journalist alan garcia. Both were shackled hand and foot, barefoot and forced by the kidnappers to express that “they were paying the consequences” for having dared to speak ill of the organized gangs in the area in a clear message threatening the press that dared to get into that area.
Nothing is known about Alan Garcia that he appeared in the images together with Moreno, and that in this case he would be the founder of the modest news website, although he is actually a lawyer, not a journalist. The journalists from Guerrero can’t take it anymore and they demonstrated two days after the dissemination of the images, sending a letter to the Guerrero State Attorney General’s Office to investigate the whereabouts of the kidnapped.
The fear of insecurity is such in the area of Hot Earth (to which Guerrero, Michoacán and the State of Mexico belong) that did not even report the tragic disappearance ten later. The news ended up jumping to the media due to the dissemination of the famous video and the chats of journalists who began to wonder about the whereabouts of their colleagues.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism