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Roberto Toledo is the fourth journalist murdered in Mexico so far this year
The assassins shot him numerous times and the reporter received two bullet wounds in the abdominal region, one in the chest, one in the arm and the other in the clavicle.
Journalist Roberto Toledo was shot to death on Monday in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. The fact shocks the journalistic world again, being the fourth journalist assassinated in less than a month.
The director of "Monitor Michoacán", Armando Linares, gave statements affirming compliance with the threats that Roberto Toledo had received. He stated that there would have been three individuals who opened fire outside his work.
The journalist was shot by three armed people in the parking lot of the building where “Monitor Michoacán” is located, in the municipality of Zitacuaro.
The Coordinator of Social Communication of the Presidency, Jesús Ramírez, a few hours after the events, posted on his Twitter account that he condemned the murder of Roberto Toledo, a journalist from “Monitor Michoacán”.
Ramírez indicated that they will work together with the regional and local government to get to the bottom of the case and promised that it would not go unpunished.
On the other hand, the Michoacán State Attorney General's Office has not ruled out any hypothesis of the journalist's murder.
case investigations
The prosecution reported that investigations are already being carried out to determine if Toledo's murder has to do with his journalistic work or his practice of law, since he also worked in a legal office that is located in the same building as " Monitor Michoacan”.
From the year 2000 to date, 148 social communicators have been assassinated, and only 28 have been during the administration of the current president López Obrador.
The coordinator of Social Communication of the Mexican government, posted in another Twitter message where he indicates that, according to the investigations, Toledo was working as a dispatch assistant and not as a journalist.
Although it has not yet been confirmed that the murder is linked to journalistic work, the director of the media outlet stated that his outlet exposes many cases of corruption of public authorities and many politicians.
Linares would have confirmed in various local media that they had received threats for the entire journalistic team and that they would have begun after having exposed an act of corruption by a high-ranking position in the regional Prosecutor's Office last year.
A source told several media outlets that at the scene of the events, those who perpetrated the murder left notices where a poster claimed responsibility for the murder and made more threats against lawyers, who are conducting investigations of the criminal group.
Making it clear that "Monitor Michoacán" will continue with his work, he demanded that the prosecution clarify the facts and find the culprits.
The journalistic union protests
Hundreds of local communicators joined the demands to the authorities and are raising a massive protest of the journalistic guild in the main cities of the region.
Zitacuaro is a state that is located next to the State of Mexico, where the authorities, both federal and local, have dealt with a bloody dispute between drug gangs.
The criminal organizations are identified as: La Familia Michoacana, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Los Caballeros Templarios, Los Correa and Jalisco Nueva Generación.
Four murdered in less than a month
Without Toledo's murder being included in the account, the NGO Article 19 has records of 148 journalists who have been murdered since 2000 solely for their informative work.
In 2018, the NGO recorded only one murder of a member of the journalistic union and 10 in 2019. In 2020 there were seven, as in 2021.
Toledo is assassinated less than a week after the great protests registered in Mexico by the recently assassinated journalists. So far this year there have been 4 homicides.
Prior to Toledo's murder, there was the murder of Jose Gamboa in Veracruz on January 10, then on January 17 and 23 Margarito Martínez and Lourdes Maldonado were murdered in Tijuana, Baja California.
