A price has been put on their lives, by gangs who want to find out the names of Mexican Internet activists have used the anonymity granted by social networks to denounce organised crime.
From the Facebook page Valor por Tamaulipas (Courage for Tamaulipas), which was created a year ago, and the Twitter account @ValorTamaulipas, activists who will not specify their ages or even genders, as they take on the interests of those in the violent north-eastern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas who now want to kill them.
“For us, this has become a race against the clock that we know we will not win. Something would have to happen, a miracle, for organised crime not to have the power it has, and there is neither the national nor the international will to end this cancer,” the activists told dpa in an interview done by Facebook.
A few days earlier, flyers emerged in Ciudad Victoria that offered 600,000 pesos (48,000 dollars) for the identities of the activists “or direct relatives, be they parents, siblings, children or wife.
“Good money to shut the gob of fucking busybodies like these jerks who think they’re heroes,” the flyers read, along with a phone number to which any information was to be reported.
This is not the first time the Internet activists have been the object of threats. In the past, someone allegedly belonging to the Gulf Cartel created a page called Antivalor por Tamaulipas to attack them.
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