Guerrero, deputy editor of Facebook-based news outlet "Global Mexico", regularly published news stories about crime, violence, and politics in México state.
This statement was originally published on cpj.org on 24 January 2025.
Unidentified attackers shot and killed reporter Calletano de Jesús Guerrero while he was in the parking lot of the San Antonio de Padua parish church in Teoloyucan, a town 25 miles north of Mexico City, on Friday, January 17. Guerrero, 57, had been under federal protection since 2014 because of threats relating to his journalism.
“The brutal killing of Calletano de Jesús Guerrero, despite being under the protection of the federal government, underscores the urgency of Mexican authorities’ strengthening its capacity to protect reporters at risk,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “If the state continues to fail in its duty to protect the press, there will be no one left to shine light in the dark and report the news. Impunity in these crimes must end, and authorities must hold the killers to account.”
Guerrero, deputy editor of Facebook-based news outlet Global Mexico, regularly published news stories about crime, violence, and politics in México state.
The Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, a government agency that provides protective measures to journalists, said in a January 18 statement on social media platform X that the most recent threat against Guerrero was on January 13, 2024, when unidentified men threatened him at his residence because of his reporting.
A mechanism official declined to speak via messaging app as they were not authorized to comment publicly on the case.
Police recovered two 9mm bullet casings at the scene of the crime, according to a report by news website Fuerza Informativa Azteca, which added that the police had begun an investigation. Several calls by CPJ to the Estado de México state prosecutor’s office to request comment were unanswered.
Mexico has long been one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists and ranked seventh on CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, which measures where murderers of journalists are most likely to go free. Mexico has been on the index every year since its inception.
A joint report by CPJ and Amnesty International showed in 2024 that the country consistently fails in its efforts to provide state-sanctioned protection to members of the press.
