Mexico City, August 6, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the killing of Mexican crime reporter Alejandro Martínez Noguez, who was shot while in a car with his bodyguards in the central state of Guanajuato on Sunday.
“Mexican authorities must act immediately to find and arrest the killers of Alejandro Martínez Noguez, whose death underscores the dangers journalists face in the city of Celaya and its environs,” said CPJ Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen. “His shooting while under police protection is a shocking example of the dangers facing journalists trying to keep the Mexican public informed about what is happening in their country.”
Martínez, who went by the nickname “El Hijo del Llanero Solitito” (The Son of the Lone Ranger) and ran a popular Facebook page covering crime in Celaya – an area known for violent turf wars between drug gangs and where several reporters have been killed in the past five years – had been assigned police guards after a previous attempt on his life.
Mexico has long been one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists and, as a joint report by CPJ and Amnesty International showed earlier this year, consistently fails in its efforts to provide state-sanctioned protection to members of the press.