The war has claimed more than 28,000 lives and has become one of the most dangerous stories in the world. Some journalists have taken the ultimate step: fleeing to the United States to seek political asylum.
... 52-year-old journalist Jorge Luis Aguirre has been granted political asylum.
Aguirre edits the hard-hitting, irreverent website LaPolaka.com that covers Juarez, Mexico. He fled his city nearly two years ago when he received a death threat, he believes, for writing critically about powerful Chihuahua state officials.
From his exile in El Paso, Texas, Aguirre went to Washington, D.C., last year to testify before the U.S. Senate about his nightmare.
Mexican journalists constitute a threatened group. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists reports more than 30 reporters have been killed or have disappeared since December 2006.
Ricardo Chavez Aldana, a Juarez radio reporter, says he was threatened and his two nephews were killed for his on-air criticism of the state government. "I can't return to Mexico," he says, "either the cartels or the police will get me."
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