His disappearance did not bode well in a country where the profession of journalist is particularly dangerous. Luis Martin Sanchez Iniguez, newspaper correspondent The day in the state of Nayarit (northwestern Mexico), he was found dead on Saturday 8 July.
“The body was found with signs of violence and on it were two small papers with an inscription (…) his relatives had identified him as Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez”the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the death occurred between 24 and 48 hours before the journalist was found on Saturday morning in a rural area near Tepic, the capital of Nayarit. According to local media, the journalist’s body was handcuffed and wrapped in plastic bags. And the messages found about him would come from criminal groups.
The newspaper The day, citing reports from local authoritiessaid the journalist’s wife, Cecilia López, told the prosecutor’s office that she did not know where he had been since Wednesday evening, when he was in another city to visit relatives.
Mr. Sanchez, the first working journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2023, was at home Wednesday night and spoke to his wife on the phone. According to the newspaper, she said she found at home the clothes her husband was wearing on the last day she saw him and in her wallet all her personal documents, except her correspondent’s card from The day. The family also reported it “He misses his computer, cell phone, hard drive and sandals”adds the newspaper.
Crimes rarely punished
This is the third correspondent of The day killed in recent years after the murders of Miroslava Breach in Chihuahua in March 2017 (north) and Javier Valdez in Sinaloa (northwest) in May of the same year. The latter journalist was an employee of Agence France-Presse.
The state of Nayarit, located on the Pacific coast, borders the states of Sinaloa (northwest) and Jalisco (west), where the country’s two largest drug cartels operate. Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism, according to Reporters Without Borders. Since 2000, more than 150 journalists have been killed in this country, estimates the organization.
According to the government, thirteen murders of journalists were recorded in 2022 alone and the authorities are investigating whether these events were linked to the victims’ profession. Most crimes against journalists go unpunished.
