Mexico's Deadliest Stretch for Journalists in a Decade — and Almost No Accountability

Key Takeaways

• Six journalists have been killed in Mexico so far in 2026, five of them in just over two months — marking one of the deadliest spikes CPJ has documented in over a decade.
• President Claudia Sheinbaum has not publicly commented on the killings as a whole, and no specific federal action has been announced. State-level responses have been equally inadequate.
• CPJ is calling on the Mexican Federal Attorney General's office to federalize all cases, citing state prosecutors' poor track record and alleged involvement of local public officials in at least two murders.
• Approximately 80% of requests to be incorporated into the federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists are currently being rejected — a significant rise in rejections at precisely the moment the violence is spiking.

Six journalists have been murdered in Mexico so far in 2026, five of them in just over two months, marking one of the deadliest spikes in violence against journalists that the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented in over a decade, according to the CPJ's August 10th report. 

Despite organized calls for justice from local journalists and press freedom groups, government authorities at both the federal and state levels have largely failed to respond.

President Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's first female president, has not commented on the string of killings as a whole. Her government has not announced any specific actions in response. At the state level, the governor of Veracruz — where three of this year's killings took place — denied during a June press conference that her state has a press violence problem. The governor of Oaxaca condemned one killing in his state while simultaneously facing criticism for his own verbal attacks on critical reporting.

The six journalists killed this year are Carlos Castro, shot dead in Veracruz in January while eating at a restaurant; Roxana Guzmán, whose remains were found in Veracruz in July after she was abducted in June; Luis Ángel López, shot dead in Veracruz in June; Alex Serna, an environmental journalist and activist whose body was found in Guerrero in June showing signs of torture; Josué Martínez, shot dead in Puebla in July — in front of his 13-year-old son; and Alejandro Leyva Aguilar, shot dead in Oaxaca in July while eating at a food stand near his home. He had been fiercely critical of Oaxaca's governor and wrote about organized crime and corruption.

Why Federalizing Cases Is the Demand — and Why It Matters

CPJ has called on Mexico's Federal Attorney General's office to federalize all cases of killed journalists, increase coordination between federal and state authorities, and strengthen protective measures under the federal journalist protection mechanism. 

The reasoning is practical, not symbolic: federal authorities have a better track record. In several high-profile cases, including the 2017 murders of Miroslava Breach Velducea and Javier Valdez Cárdenas, federal prosecutors were able to secure convictions that state prosecutors would likely not have obtained.

The underlying problem is impunity. CPJ has classified 97 of 166 journalist killings in Mexico since 1992 as "unconfirmed" — meaning it couldn't determine whether the deaths were linked to their journalistic work, because investigations stalled or never provided meaningful insight into motive. In the cases where motive can be inferred, the pattern is consistent: reporters covering crime, corruption, and organized violence are targeted by the same networks they report on, often with the involvement of local public officials and police. 

Mexico has ranked among the top ten countries in CPJ's Global Impunity Index for years, sitting just below active war zones. Not a single case of a murdered or disappeared journalist in Mexico this century has led to arrests and convictions of both those who ordered and those who carried out the attack.

The Protection Mechanism Is Failing at the Worst Possible Moment

The federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists — the government body whose explicit function is to protect people in exactly this situation — is currently rejecting approximately 80% of all applications for incorporation into its protection program. 

That figure, cited by a member of the mechanism's own advisory council, represents a significant increase in rejections compared to prior years. The mechanism has not published any public figures for 2025 or 2026.

This is the combination that creates a crisis: violence spiking, state authorities denying the problem or failing to investigate, federal protection mechanisms rejecting the journalists who need protection, and no public accountability from the highest level of government.

CPJ's Mexico representative Jan-Albert Hootsen put the stakes plainly: "President Sheinbaum and her administration can choose to break the cycle of violence and impunity that defined her predecessors' relationship with the press, or she can become the next in a long line of Mexican presidents who stood by as the country cemented its abysmal status as the deadliest for journalists in the Americas."

Press freedom is an internet freedom issue. These journalists were covering crime, corruption, and organized violence — the exact stories that require the ability to communicate, publish, and source without surveillance or interference. When journalists are killed for what they report, the chilling effect on everyone who covers similar topics is immediate and lasting. 

What's happening in Mexico right now is a case study in how the right to a free press dies not in one dramatic moment but through accumulated violence, accumulated impunity, and accumulated silence from the people with the authority to act.