A journalist from Mexican national newspaper La Jornada has been found dead in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, the publication has said.
La Jornada reported on Saturday the body of Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez was found on the outskirts of the state capital, Tepic.
The Nayarit state prosecutors’ office reported that Sánchez Iñiguez, 59, had been missing since Wednesday and issued an appeal to find him. But the office did not immediately confirm the identification of the body.
The journalist’s wife reported him missing, along with a computer and his mobile phone.
Sánchez Iñiguez was last seen in Xalisco, a Nayarit town near Tepic that has long been linked to the smuggling of heroin and opium.
Sánchez Iñiguez would be at least the second journalist killed in Mexico this year. Last year was among the deadliest ever for Mexican media workers, with 15 killed.
In February, news photographer José Ramiro Araujo was stabbed and beaten to death in the northern border state of Baja California. Police later arrested two youths on a beach near the scene of the attack who they said had a knife and blood stains on their clothing. The suspects face charges of homicide and robbery.
Less than two weeks ago, Hipólito Mora, a vigilante crusader against Mexico’s drug cartels, was killed in an ambush further south in the violence-stricken state of Michoacán.
Video footage posted on social media showed the burning wreckage of what was identified as Mora’s vehicle in La Ruana, the rural community where he lived.
Also in late June explosives were thrown at a police station in the southern state of Chiapas, following the abduction of 14 police employees at gunpoint on a local highway in a turf battle between cartels for control of drug and immigrant trafficking in the state, which borders Guatemala.
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