Female politicians use meritless lawsuits to censor journalists in Mexico, lawyer says
Mexico City, May 29, 2025—Mexican journalist Héctor de Mauleón will be watching Sunday’s historic judicial elections with interest — not simply because June 1 marks the first time that Mexicans get to vote for their judges but also because one of the candidates has barred him from reporting critically about her.
On May 15, the Tamaulipas Electoral Institute (IETAM) ordered de Mauleón – one of Mexico’s most well-known investigative journalists – to take down his May 1 column, which mentioned corruption allegations against a relative of a candidate, Tania Contreras, in the northern state and to refrain from publishing articles linking her to criminal individuals or acts. Contreras sued de Mauleón and his newspaper El Universal on May 15 for slander and political violence based on gender. De Mauleón was found guilty, but the dates of the verdict and his sentencing were not made public.
Such vexatious lawsuits are an increasingly popular tool for Mexican politicians to censor critical journalism, and CPJ has documented their use since 2016, when a court in Mexico City eliminated the maximum compensation plaintiffs could sue for in moral damages suits. Over the past five years, at least 158 journalists faced libel suits, according to the Mexican office of Article 19, a London-based advocacy group and CPJ partner organization.
It’s a global trend. In Europe and the United States, Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation, commonly known as SLAPPs, are widely used as retaliatory measures to intimidate journalists and suppress public interest reporting.
Political violence based on gender
The crime of political violence based on gender, introduced in 2020, was designed to protect female candidates in a country where gender violence is among the highest in the world, including against women running for or holding public office, numerous studies found.
Reporter Arturo Ángel Arrellano Camarillo of Al Calor Político news site has been found guilty of the same crime in the eastern state of Veracruz. In January, he was ordered to pay an unspecified fine and reparations to Mara Chama, a woman he named in a 2021 article about politicians’ relatives running for office, according to the court ruling, reviewed by CPJ.
Arellano’s name will also be added to a register of Persons Sanctioned for Political Violence against Women held by the National Electoral Institute, which organizes Mexico’s federal elections.
“The rulings against journalists Héctor de Mauleón and Arturo Arellano are clear examples of judicial harassment, with politicians abusing the law to silence critical reporting — an increasingly common phenomenon in Mexico,” said CPJ Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen. “We call on Mexican politicians to stop bringing meritless cases to court to prevent the publication of news that is in the public interest.”
In both cases, lower courts rejected the charges, but their rulings were overturned.
The charges against the two journalists appear to be baseless, as there was no evidence of political violence or of the journalists singling out the women because of their gender, human rights lawyer Jorge Ruiz del Ángel told CPJ.
“There appears to be little merit in these cases,” he said. “In either one, the damage the articles would have caused is not clear, nor the specific component of gender.”
At risk
De Mauleón did not withdraw the article, despite the risk of arrest. He told CPJ that retracting it would create a dangerous precedent of self-censorship for journalists in Mexico.
He is used to being harassed over his work. For the last decade, De Mauleón been threatened multiple times for his reporting on organized crime, extortion, drug trafficking, and corrupt networks involving politicians and celebrities.
But this case concerned him because the court order was handed to him at his Mexico City home.
“I was told that my personal information was given to the IETAM, which I believe places me at risk,” De Mauleón told CPJ.
Mexico is the deadliest country in the Americas for journalists, according to CPJ research. Since 2020, 40 journalists and media workers were killed in work-related, or possibly work-related incidents. Mexico was eighth on CPJ’s 2024 Global Impunity Index, which ranks nations where journalists’ killers are most likely to go free.
CPJ made several attempts to reach Tania Contreras via calls to her campaign’s office in Tamaulipas and Mara Chama via the Teocelo municipal government in Veracruz for comment, but none were answered.