He is thin, of fair complexion and with dark hair. He moves nervously, with a tight-lipped smile and a cold stare. He is very young, he has been reporting for barely three years on security and justice topics, it might seem like a short time but it isn’t if you work in the firing line, in northern Mexico, where to work as a journalist is a highly risky thing.

Some time ago he received a threat, he also was mortified by the death of a fellow reporter and the fear left in the wake of a murder that has gone unpunished. He continues to work day in and day out, increasingly not himself but someone else. In a way fear is changing him little, but profoundly.

Long conversations with reporters that every day have to cover and report on the acts of violence that occur in various towns in Coahuila state, places that are no longer tranquil but now find themselves hijacked by the absence of the government, the nightmarish presence of organized crime and the increased power of political bosses.

Fear has no face. It is deaf. Fear is felt on empty streets, in businesses that shut down early, those that now belong to the mafia because it has kicked out their owners, or in those that will not open any more because payment of extortion money has wiped them out, in the hurried steps of some people, in the guys with binoculars watching the streets taken over by the criminal organizations, in the wailing of sirens or the rumors of crimes and threats that are sprinkled around.

Four years ago they were quite different places. Investment, work, tranquility, a future and plans. The drug cartels were always there, in the background, a limited violence. In three years or less things changed. The weakness of government institutions and the land grabs where drugs and any other illegal product are trafficked have disrupted this not so distant past and the loss of territory now in the hands of the mafia are becoming a daily reality and that is why the people feel threatened.

Coahuila has some 2.5 million inhabitants spread throughout 38 municipalities, many of them located in remote areas difficult to access. In 2006 a journalist disappeared and another was killed and this year reporter Valentín Valdés was kidnapped and then murdered. In these three cases organized crime might well have been responsible.

“Are you scared in your daily work?” that nervous-looking reporter was asked. “Yes, I am. I just try to be more careful,” he replied dryly.

That is the same answer from all of the journalists in the area. The fact they enjoy their job is the only thing that explains why they remain in the profession, in which you have to learn how to report, when, where, how to write your story and how to get it published, so that a phrase, a badly-placed word or the name of some possible criminal does not become the motive for a new threat.

In those places you have to go in a group to cover acts of violence and not try to come up with an exclusive report with minute details or descriptions, just report on names of possible implicated criminals if the police give them in a statement or in some communiqué, do not mention abductions, murders or clashes that the authorities do not cite in official handouts.

The lack of guarantees and fear that exist in Coahuila, as in many other states, have diminished freedom to inform.