Norma Alicia Moreno Figueroa (June 24, 1962-July 17, 1986) was a Mexican journalist. She is notable for being the first Mexican woman journalist to die violently because of her work as a journalist covering the Mexican Drug War.[1]
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She was born in Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the daughter of Mr. Laurentino Moreno and Margarita Figueroa. She studied in her hometown. She was noted as an excellent speaker and participated in local and state contests. In 1974 she won the 1st and 2nd place in contests open to primary school students and in 1978 won the speech contest open to students at her level. She belonged to the "Rodriguez Brayra" literary circle, where she presented multiple works of her poetry. She was permanent member of the House of Fine Arts in Matamoros. She was one of the first students in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Matamoros and was President of the Society of Students from the 1983-84 graduating class.
She was a member of the National Action Party, PAN, and actively participating in conferences local, state and national. At the age of sixteen she joined the newspaper El Bravo de Matamoros, in the section covering social events, from which she gradually was promoted into a position as a reporter and columnist. In what was to be her final position, with the Matamoros newspaper El Popular, she wrote the column "Finding Paths" and also served as managing editor. In addition, she was notorious for her role as a reporter for XEEW, a radio station of Mr. Jorge Cardenas Gonzalez that serves the Matamoros and Brownsville, Texas areas.
In 1986 her journalistic work received a recognition from UNESCO, heading to the City of Quito in Ecuador.
Her style courageously exposed corruption of political officials, drug trafficking and she fiercely defended of freedom of expression, public problems entailed her with politicians and especially the continuing threat of organized crime.
She died on July 17, 1986 at the age of 24, the victim of an attack by unknown gunmen with automatic weapons at the entrance of the publishing house where she used to work. The day prior to her death, she had written a column in El Popular that attacked Matamoros Mayor Jesús Roberto Guerra Velasco, a relative of Gulf Cartel founder Juan Nepomuceno Guerra.[1] With her death she became the first woman to losing her life in Mexico in response to a journalist.
After her death she was recognized by newspapers and international agencies as well as the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.