Reporter for major Mexican newspaper found slain

MEXICO CITY: A regional correspondent for leading Mexican newspaper La Jornada was found slain late on Saturday, shortly after he went missing in the western state of Nayarit, prosecutors said.

Luis Martin Sanchez Iniguez is one of three active or former journalists to have been abducted in the state in recent days, the prosecutors´ office said in a statement, adding to Mexico´s surging attacks on the press that are often linked to the country´s powerful drug cartels.

His body turned up in a village near the state capital Tepic “with signs of violence” and two cardboard messages pinned to his chest, the office added.

The statement did not indicate the content of the scrawled cardboard messages left on Sanchez´s body by his abductors, a common tactic used by organized crime in Mexico to sow terror.

On Friday, armed and hooded men also broke into the home of teacher Osiris Maldonado de la Paz, who had previously worked for digital media, in the town of Xalisco and he remains missing, prosecutors said.

A third missing journalist was later found alive.

In all three cases, attacks were “related to their journalistic work,” prosecutors said.

Sanchez, 59, is the first active journalist to be killed in 2023 in Mexico, one of the most dangerous nations in the world for members of the news media.