Former Gov. Javier Duarte is in jail, but the threats remain: corruption, organized crime and a justice system marred by impunity.
During the administration of former Gov. Javier Duarte, Veracruz became one of the deadliest places in the world to work as a journalist.
From 2010 to 2016, 18 journalists were killed in the coastal state, which sits along the Gulf of Mexico and is considered a key corridor for drug trafficking to the United States. Among the victims were reporters who had publicly expressed fears that the governor or his allies would have them killed.
In 2012, Regina Martínez, an investigative reporter for the newspaper La Jornada and the magazine Proceso who had documented ties between drug traffickers and public officials, was found strangled in her home. In 2015, photojournalist Rubén Espinosa, who had publicly criticized the flawed investigation into Martínez's murder, was found dead in an apartment in Mexico City.
The 2012 murder of investigative journalist Regina Martínez became an emblematic case of violence against the press in Veracruz. (Photo: Screenshot)
Although Duarte was sentenced to nine years in prison on corruption charges in 2018 — he was never convicted of human rights violations — Veracruz remains the deadliest state in one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists.
Since 2000, 33 of the 178 journalists killed in Mexico were killed in Veracruz, according to Article 19. Three of the country's four journalist killings this year have occurred there.
Leopoldo Maldonado, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said impunity is still a problem and justice for the victims, reparations and the truth remain elusive.
"The situation never improved precisely because there has been no accountability for past crimes," Maldonado told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). "That sends a very clear message both to the politicians involved in these crimes against the press and to the criminal groups themselves."
The emergence of new criminal organizations in recent years, along with the struggle for control of Veracruz because of its strategic location and extensive oil industry, has further fueled violence in the state, Maldonado said.
The criminalization of journalists who came under attack was also a hallmark of Duarte's administration that continues today.
In early June 2026, a video that went viral showed armed men breaking down the door of a home in the municipality of Nanchital and abducting Roxana Berenice Guzmán, director of the digital news outlet Pulso Informativo del Sureste.
A month later, authorities confirmed that the journalist had been killed.
According to case files cited in a column by journalist Héctor de Mauleón, a criminal group accused Guzmán of having ties to a rival organization.
Article 19, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists documented that authorities routinely dismissed journalists’ professional work as a possible motive and instead attributed attacks to robberies, personal disputes or alleged criminal ties.
"There were many cases involving fellow journalists where the same thing was said — that they were killed because they 'were involved in something,'" Fernanda de Luna Ferral, a Veracruz journalist and vice president of the National Network for the Memory and Fight for Journalists and Human Rights Defenders, told LJR. "Unfortunately, she [Guzmán] was found dead, and she can no longer defend herself."
Another recent case of criminalization occurred in December 2025, when Rafael León Segovia, a reporter in the city of Coatzacoalcos, was arrested for allegedly possessing audiovisual material related to criminal activity.
Prosecutors charged him with terrorism after Segovia frequently arrived at homicide scenes before authorities did, Quetzalli Vázquez, director of the news outlet QUE Noticia in the state capital of Xalapa, told LJR.
The terrorism charge was ultimately dropped, but the journalist remained under house arrest for nearly a month on charges of concealment and attacks against public security institutions.
"We were concerned that this would set a precedent where simply arriving first at a crime scene or having firsthand information — because sometimes we receive information before the prosecutor's office does — could be used by the prosecutor’s office to argue that a journalist was involved in the crime and should be sent to prison," Vázquez said.
Another complication is that organized crime appears to have infiltrated Veracruz's journalism community, Vázquez said, through individuals who report on criminal incidents using their cellphones. The sensationalist nature of their posts and the speed with which they publish have earned them large followings on social media, she added.
IMPORTANTE
La periodista Roxana Guzmán Ramírez fue privada de su libertad al filo de las 6am de este martes en Nanchital, Veracruz.
Entraron de forma violenta a su casa de la calle Balderas, de la colonia Primero de Mayo.
La comunicadora dirige el portal Pulso Informativo del… pic.twitter.com/1f0QJu7LS2— Sergio Valle Padrés (@sergiovallep) June 2, 2026
"It's very easy for them to create a Facebook page and call themselves reporters, and people accept them as such because they're the first to post information," she said. "Many of them work in collusion with organized crime and call themselves journalists, but they're not really journalists."
Claims that journalists have ties to organized crime should be treated with caution, Maldonado said, because they can reinforce stigmatizing narratives that divert attention from the possibility that journalists were targeted because of their work.
"Casting doubt on the integrity of victims — who, for obvious reasons, can no longer defend themselves — and trying to frame these deaths as moral failings has been part of the political narrative surrounding these cases," Maldonado said. "Veracruz was, in many ways, the testing ground for this type of political communication."
The involvement of local politicians in crimes against journalists is another factor that continues to plague Veracruz. During Duarte's administration, current and former public officials were the second most common perpetrators of journalist killings — behind only organized crime — according to an investigation by Article 19.
The murders of journalists Moisés Sánchez Cerezo in 2015 and María Elena Ferral in 2020 are among the cases in which politicians have been implicated.
"In Veracruz, we have to protect ourselves from the police, from organized crime and from politicians," Vázquez said. "Some politicians have troubling connections and resort to threats — from phone calls to messages left at your home saying, 'We're watching you,' all the way to disappearances and murders."
In some cases, journalists have been killed after losing state protection.
María Elena Ferral, director of the news outlet Quinto Poder and based in Papantla, in northern Veracruz, was known for exposing corruption networks and political power struggles in her region. After receiving a direct threat from a local politician in 2016, Veracruz's State Commission for the Care and Protection of Journalists (CEAPP) granted her protective measures, including bodyguards and a panic button.
However, in 2018, during the administration of Gov. Miguel Ángel Yunes, her security detail was withdrawn. In March 2020, Ferral was shot and killed in broad daylight.
"They never gave her bodyguards back, no matter how many times she requested them," Fernanda de Luna Ferral, the journalist's daughter and current director of Quinto Poder, said.
@SP_Veracruz retira medida de protección a Fernanda Ferral.
Fernanda es periodista independiente y activista en búsqueda de justicia tras el asesinato de su mamá, Maria Elena Ferral, asesinada en marzo de 2020:https://t.co/keWnNBjtJU pic.twitter.com/0e2CEm9ALF
— ARTICLE 19 México y Centroamérica (@article19mxca) February 24, 2026
Veracruz journalist Luis Ángel López Valdés was also under CEAPP protection when he was killed on June 11.
Maldonado attributed the commission's ineffectiveness to its dependence on the state government, insufficient funding and a degree of autonomy that has never translated into genuine independence. The fact that the commission was created during Duarte's administration also undermined its credibility, he said.
The CEAPP agreed to answer questions from LJR, but had not responded by the time this article was published.
Many journalists in Veracruz, Maldonado added, instead turn to the federal protection mechanism for journalists, which, although also imperfect, operates independently of the Veracruz state government.
CEAPP members "are appointed by the sitting governor [...]. Those of us who actually work in journalism have no say in the process," Vázquez said. "If it's a commission for the protection of journalists, then it should be made up of journalists."
Reporters agree there is a lack of coordination between protection mechanisms and Veracruz's public security institutions. De Luna Ferral, who has been under federal protection since surviving an attack following her mother's death, was notified in February that Veracruz's Department of Public Security would withdraw her security detail.
A court injunction restored the protection two weeks later, although only partially. De Luna Ferral said she continues to face a high level of risk after two of the suspects in her mother's killing were released in recent years.
"The Veracruz state government should have no authority over my protection measures," De Luna Ferral said. "The negligence of the local authorities began the moment I started demanding justice for my mother and for the other journalists who have been killed."
Translated with AI assistance and edited by Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera
