Woman decapitated for social network postings

Mexican authorities found a woman’s decapitated body in Nuevo Laredoa, a Mexican city that borders the United States. Alongside the body, a handwritten sign saying she had been killed as retaliation for her postings on a local social networking site.

A website dedicated to covering Mexico’s drug conflict which it calls “the neglected war”, believes the killing to be the third instance of an emerging trend of people being murdered for talking about the conflict on social networks.

According to the Associated Press (AP), a Mexican government official identified the victim as Marisol Macias Castaneda, a newsroom manager for a local newspaper.

Journalists have been repeatedly targeted by Mexican drug cartels in a conflict which began some five years ago.

In this case, however, with officials from the newspaper not confirming Castaneda’s was a newsroom manager and a reporter from the newspaper saying that she held an administrative position, it is beginning to seem more and more likely that her posts on Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, in accordance with the sign found next her body, are what lay behind her murder.

Journalists have been so terrorised that they no longer report on their actions of the drug cartels. This has led to Mexican citizens taking to social networks as a means of spreading and gaining information. According to the AP report, Nuevo Laredo en Vivo “features tip hotlines for the Mexican army, navy and police, and includes a section for reporting the location of drug gang lookouts and drug sales points”.

The sign, using her nickname on the site reportedly said:

Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites, I’m The Laredo Girl, and I’m here because of my reports, and yours. For those who don’t want to believe, this happened to me because of my actions, for believing in the army and the navy. Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl…ZZZZ.

The “ZZZZ” is a moniker to denote which drug cartel had killed Castaneda.

Two other individuals had previously been found hanging from a bridge with a similar sign, also warning that “this is what will happen” to those who post on the internet.

An estimated 40 000 people have been killed in the five years that the conflict has been running.

Image: Kara Newhouse (Flickr)