Killing the Messengers

Ambrose Bierce

Brad Will was the latest victim in a continuum of U.S. reporters who have traveled to Mexico to document the struggle for justice here -- and perhaps assuage their personal demons -- and have wound up in a shallow grave or the receiving end of an assassin's bullet, under enigmatic circumstances.

One of the first was Ambrose Bierce, author of The Devil's Dictionary, who came to Mexico on assignment for the Hearst papers in 1913 to ride with Pancho Villa and cover his revolution. "The Old Gringo," as Carlos Fuentes dubbed him in the novel of the same name, disappeared at the Battle of Ojinaga, and his bones long ago blew to dust out there in the northern desert.

Will was also one of 26 souls to die on the barricades of Oaxaca from May 2006 to January 2007 and the ninth reporter working in Mexico to have been killed or disappeared during the last year, most under the guns of the narco gangs. Forty have been slain since 2000 and 63 in the past two decades, according to the Inter-American Press Association.

Reporters Without Borders list 81 confirmed killings of journalists around the world during 2006. That represents a 20% increase over 2005 (63) and is the highest since 1994, when revolutions were roaring in Sri Lanka and Algeria. Killing the messenger is becoming more and more popular.