Pablo Pineda Gaucín

Pablo Pineda Gaucín
Born	c. 1961
Disappeared	Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Died	9 April 2000 (aged 39)
Cause of death	Gunshot wound
Body discovered	Los Indios, Texas, U.S.

Pablo Pineda Gaucín (c. 1961 – 9 April 2000) was a Mexican crime reporter and photographer of La Opinión, a newspaper from the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Early life and career

Pineda Gaucín (aged 39) was born in Torreón, Coahuila, got a Bachelor's degree in Accounting, and worked in the local government of Matamoros before becoming a journalist. He worked as a reporter and photographer for La Opinión, an editorial from the Mexican city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas. He usually covered incidents involving car accidents, suicide, rapists, drug trafficking, and political corruption. Pineda Gaucín was locally recognized for his direct style in reporting.

During his tenure as a journalist, Hugo Baldomero Medina Garza was the top drug baron of the Gulf Cartel in Matamoros along with Juan Nepomuceno Guerra. For his coverage on drug trafficking and political corruption, Pineda Gaucín was subject to intimidation from crooked authorities and drug traffickers.

Organized crime accusations

Although his criminal record was clean and did not hold any charges, Pineda Gaucín was suspected by other journalists to have links with organized crime. One reporter from a local newspaper in Matamoros said that the way Pineda Gaucín was killed was unusual, and concluded that he was killed "...like drug traffickers kill each other." Others argue that he reportedly received large sums of money from politicians to avoid writing about certain people.

However, Committee to Protect Journalists and the authorities in Mexico and the United States believe the accusations are false and have no criminal records of Pineda Gaucín, and stated that they were probably created by drug traffickers to discredit him.

Attacks

Assassination attempts

In 1996, Pineda Gaucín was attacked outside the Lozano funeral parlor in Matamoros by several unidentified men with sticks. He repeatedly received threats on the phone, too. His wife Rosi Solís recalls that "Whenever [they] went out on the street, people would tell him, 'Watch out, Pineda!' ..."

On December 1999, the journalist Pineda Gaucín survived an attack at his home in Valle Alto neighborhood in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. According to police reports, a man opened fire at him nine times but missed every single shot, hitting the wall of his house and the automobile. Pineda Gaucín claimed that he reportedly knew who the shooter was, and said he was convinced that the drug lord Roberto Torres Torres, known as "El Muertero", had ordered the failed assassination attempt. He believed this because he had covered the drug lord's arrest extensively in one of the newspaper columns.

After the attack, a colleague of Pineda Gaucín recalls that he reportedly went to the hospital where Torres Torres was being treated and threatened him. Two days later, Héctor Fernando Torres de la Garza, the man who attempted against Pineda Gaucín, was found dead outside a shopping center in Matamoros. There were many rumors that the journalist had ordered the death of the assailant. However, he was never interrogated and three other men were arrested for the crime. After the attack, his wife recalls that he was had changed a lot, would no longer get in fights with her, and even made funeral arrangements.

Assassination

One of the last persons to see Pineda Gaucín alive was Martín Castillo, another crime reporter who said his colleague had left work after receiving a phone call the night of 8 April 2000. Pineda Gaucín said to Castillo that he would return soon because he had to finish editing some photographs for his newspaper column, and departed in his Grand Marquis 92. Someone else saw him that same night covering a police disarmament in the rural community of Estación Ramírez. But on his way back to the city, the authorities believe he was possibly ambushed.

On 9 April 2000 in the town of Los Indios, Texas, just across the U.S-Mexico border, the corpse of Pineda Gaucín was found at around 2:45 a.m. by U.S. Border Patrol officers. His body was found with his hands wrapped behind his back and with a plastic bag on the head. He also bore a bullet wound from a 9mm pistol and had signs of being tortured before he was executed. The agents said that they saw two automobiles parked near the Rio Grande River at 2:30 a.m. and noticed three people carrying something over their shoulders. They decided to wait and not intervene immediately because they thought the men were carrying narcotics across the border. The bag with Pineda Gaucín was dumped at the river bank and was later discovered by the authorities.

The motives behind Pineda Gaucín assassination are still unsolved and the case is still opened, but "the killing bore all the hallmarks of the drug traffickers."

Funeral

After the body of Pineda Gaucín was discovered on the riverbank of the Rio Grande in Texas, his body was turned to Mexico on 10 April 2000. His family held a wake at the Lozano funeral home and later buried him in the Jardín cemetery in the city of Matamoros.

Investigation

Since the U.S. authorities confirmed that Pineda Gaucín was killed in Mexico before his body made it to the shore bordering Texas, they concluded that the Mexican authorities were responsible for carrying out the investigation. When Pineda Gaucín was abducted, there were no eye-witnesses, and the authorities in Mexico only managed to recover the Grand Marquis he was driving. On the other hand, his family did not fail a formal complaint for his death; under Mexican law, investigating a homicide does not require a formal complaint, but the Matamoros police claimed that the investigation "[had] gone as far as it can." Prior to his death, Pineda Gaucín told his wife that if he was killed in the future, that she should not consult the police or file a report, stating:

"If anything happens to me, don't go to the police, because they'll never pay any attention to you ... I have upset a lot of people. Just rely on God and divine justice and don't do anything at the prosecutor’s office ... I don't hold any grudge against the murderers. I just hope that God has mercy on them."

— Pineda Gaucín

See also

• Mexican Drug War
• List of journalists killed in the Mexican Drug War