Armed men attacked three buses in northern Veracruz Thursday, killing at least eleven passengers. According to the state government, five assailants were killed when the military arrived at the scene of an attack. Some early reports cited a regional mayor estimating a death toll as high as forty victims.

The US Consulate in Matamoros has issued a warning to US citizens to use caution when travelling in Veracruz and recommends only traveling during the day. The same bulletin reiterated long-standing advice that U.S. citizens “defer non-essential travel to the state of Tamaulipas”.

Highways in the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and San Luis Potosi have become notoriously dangerous, with criminals taking advantage of the cover of night to hold up passenger buses and private vehicles.

The main highways in northern Veracruz are connected to the port city of Tampico, just across the state line in Tamaulipas. The most dangerous roads in Tamaulipas lead to the border bridges with South Texas.

The bodies of ten murder victims were dumped in the Veracruz town of Tampico Alto this morning. Like the multi-homicide targeting the buses, the specific motive for the violence is unclear, but the perpetrators are assumed to be associated with organized crime operating in the region.

As has been the case with Tamaulipas, much of the violence in Veracruz is occurring under a mantle of fear-induced silence. The press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders this week named Veracruz one of the ten deadliest regions in the world for journalists.

Also this week, 900 police officers in the port city of Veracruz and its nearby suburb of Boca del Rio were dismissed and replaced by soldiers in what authorities describe as an anti-corruption measure.

Marcela Yarce and Rocío González (credit: Contralinea)

Certain elements of the most recent crime against journalists stand out from other murders in the hemisphere’s deadliest country for press workers. First, it was a double homicide involving two women; Marcela Yarce and Rocío González. Second, it occurred in Mexico City – which has been spared much of the physical violence suffered by press workers in other parts of the country. Third, the two journalists were close friends. The two had gone to a cafe together on Wednesday night.

Marcela Yarce co-founded the critical investigative news magazine “Contralinea” which has been the target of lawsuits, harrassment, and office break-ins. She went from actively reporting to becoming a key figure in the magazine’s administrative functions. Noteably, she secured advertising revenue for the publication which receives no government-sponsored advertising. Official ads are the financial life blood of many commercial news outlets in Mexico.

Rocío González spent 15 years as a reporter at the Televisa network. She worked as as freelance journalist and owned a currency exchange booth in Mexico City’s international airport. Mexico City authorities have indicated they are investigating robbery as a possible motive, citing a large cash withdrawal from the business coffers before the women dissappeared.

Another publicly-disclosed line of investigation is that of femicide; a murder that specifically targets women and usually involves both physical torture and sexual assault. Femicide victims are usually in their teens or early 20s. Both of the murdered women were 48 years old.

Press freedom organizations have called on Mexico City investigators not to rule out the possibility that the murders were related to the journalism work of the women.

The bodies of Marcela Yarce and Rocío González were found dumped in a park Thursday in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district. They were stripped naked, hands and feet bound, mouths gagged, with a cord around their necks. Asfixiation is noted as the cause of death in both cases although their bodies bore gunshot wounds.

Their deaths came one week after the kidnapping and murder of veteran reporter Humberto Millán Salazar in the state capital of Sinaloa. Press freedom organizations say eight press workers have been killed in Mexico so far this year – half of them in the state of Veracruz.

An editor in the Mexican city of Veracruz has become the latest in a long list of journalists murdered in this hemisphere’s most dangerous country for media workers.

Armed men broke into the home of columnist and editor Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco early Monday morning and killed him along with his wife and 21 year old son, Misael, who had recently started performing photography work. Another son, named Miguel like his father, is a staff photographer at the same newspaper but lives in a separate residence.

While more reporters die violent deaths in Mexico than in any other country in the Americas, it’s not common that they are killed inside their homes with other family members. According to Notiver, the newspaper he co-edited, Miguel Angel Lopez Velsco lived two blocks from a police station.

Two other Mexican reporters have been murdered in recent weeks. Pablo Ruelas Barraza was shot dead June 13th while resisting an apparent kidnapping attempt in the state of Sonora. Some regional coverage of the crime indicated that Ruelas Barraza had spent some time in prison and stated he was  unemployed at the time of his murder.

Noel López Olguín was found in a shallow grave in the state of Veracruz. He had been kidnapped in March.

Another newspaper reporter, Marco Antonio López Ortíz, has been missing since unidentified men kidnapped him earlier this month in the state of Guerrero.

Most major national news outlets in Mexico have signed onto a 10 point plan that lays out ground rules for reporting on the Drug War.

Some hail it as a necessary code of ethics in an media environment that often sensationalizes violent news stories. Others condemn it for further restricting a press that already practices a significant amount of self-censorship.

Among the rules are the requirements that reporters take a position against violence perpetrated by organized crime, not allow themselves to become “involuntary spokespersons” for the cartels, and “not interfere in the combat against crime” by publishing information that could put an investigation or operation at risk.

Only four major national media outlets have not signed onto the pact; 2 newspapers (La Jornada and Reforma), the weekly investigative news magazine Proceso, and the MVS broadcasting company. Another notable exception is the Diario de Juárez, the leading newspaper in the city known as ground zero for the militarized offensive against organized crime. But even those outlets may face pressure to conform to the new guidelines.

Mexican senators have indicated they’ll move a proposal as early as next week to make the voluntary reporting guidelines law.

More than 35,000 Mexicans have been killed since President Felipe Calderón launched a militarized offensive in areas with a strong drug cartel presence. More than 15,000 of those deaths occurred in 2010.

It’s gotten to the point that massacres have become near daily events in Mexico…and behind each of those massacres are the stories of the people who died and their families. These back stories are what investigative reporter Marcela Turati has documented in her new book, “Fuego Cruzado” – or “Crossfire” in English.

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Turati sat down with South Notes recently to discuss these stories that go uncovered in a media landscape that can barely keep up with registering the daily death toll. The audio is in Spanish.