Sanjuana Martínez Montemayor is a Mexican journalist born on 1963 in Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. She received Mexico's National Journalism Award in 2006 and the Ortega y Gasset Award in 2008. Since 2019 she has been the director of Mexico's official news agency, Notimex.
Sanjuana Martínez Montemayor
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| Born | 1963
Monterrey, Nuevo León, México
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| Occupation | Journalist |
| Website | websanjuanamartinez |
Martínez studied at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in Nuevo León, Mexico. and did graduate studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has investigated issues related to human rights, gender violence, terrorist activity, and organized crime in Mexico, in the United States, and in Europe. She has worked for Diario de Monterrey, Canal 2 de Monterrey, Proceso magazine. She worked for Proceso magazine as a correspondent to Madrid for 18 years.
Martínez has studied and reported on the migratory phenomena of Europe and North Africa. She toured the Mexico–United States border to report on the details of the daily toils of Mexican migrants. As a correspondent she covered the various crises of the Catholic Church and delved into pedophile crimes committed by the clergy. She investigated the case of priest Nicolás Aguilar Rivera, who was accused of abusing several children in Mexico and in the United States.[1]
For her work Martínez has won several awards including the Mexican National Journalism Award in 2006 and the Ortega y Gasset Award in 2008.[2]
In 2006, Martínez received death threats after publishing her book El manto púrpura which focuses on a boy who was allegedly sexually abused by Mexican priest Nicolás Aguilar.[3] On July 5, 2012, she was arrested and detained for 24 hours due to a civil custody dispute.[4] The Committee to Protect Journalists denounced the arrest saying that "the judge who ordered the detention was the subject of critical reporting by Martínez in 2008."[5] Reporters Without Borders described the arrest as abuse of authority because she was detained by armed police, which is unusual in a civil case.[6]
On March 21, 2019, she was named director of the Mexican news agency, Notimex.[7] During the first year of her tenure as director, Martínez has been accused of wrongful termination, nepotism, and harassment.[8] In August 2020, the BBC World program, BBC Trending, dedicated an episode to analyze Martinez' handling of Notimex. Presenter Reha Kansara interviewed former and current employees about systematic attacks against them, apparently ordered from upper management and designed to discredit and humiliate those who did not obey Sanjuana Martinez.[9]
On March 30, 2021, the United States Department of State published its annual human rights report, which mentions the concerted efforts by Notimex to discredit journalists and former employees. The report uses information from Article 19, Signa Lab, and Aristegui Noticias showing that Sanjuana Martínez directed attacks against these journalists in a WhatsApp chat group called "Avengers". Manuel Ortiz, former Notimex news director, said that Martínez ordered him to attack journalists that criticized her. Signa Lab also analyzed coordinated Twitter accounts attacks on journalists who questioned Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador in his daily press conferences.[10] The president gave his backing to Martínez, decrying the Department of State comments and accusing Article 19 of being part of a conservative movement.[11]
