The reporter Marcos Ernesto Islas Flores was assassinated during the early hours of this Sunday, Feb. 6th, in Tijuana, Baja California.
His death was confirmed by his father on social networks. The man assured that in the home where Ernesto was killed with four bullets, the criminals left a blanket with a threatening message whose message he said he did not know “but it has to do with the arrival of the new administration,” he said.
“The criminal act that will surely remain as part of the statistics, occurred outside one of the homes on Lomas Verdes Avenue, in La Mesa de Tijuana neighborhood. Residents who looked out after at least four detonations were heard, saw a couple of individuals run towards Boulevard Díaz Ordaz, presumably the murderers,” said the father of Ernesto Islas.
According to preliminary information, Marcos Ernesto was editor of the portal “Notiredes MX”.
With him, there are five journalists and communicators killed in the first five weeks of 2022: one journalist killed every seven days on average. And three of them, gunned down in Tijuana, Baja California.
Just last January 31, Roberto Toledo, a journalist from Michoacán, was assassinated in front of his office, a law firm located in the Moctezuma Oriente neighborhood, in Zitácuaro Michoacán.
Toledo was a collaborator of Monitor Michoacán. Through a message released on social networks, the portal’s director, Armando Linares, pointed out that “they had already received a series of threats” in recent months.
Four journalists have been murdered in Mexico so far in 2022On January 24, Lourdes Maldonado was also murdered at her home, in the same way as Marcos Ernesto, in Tijuana, Baja California. The event occurred just a few days after it was revealed that she had won a labor lawsuit against the company Primer Sistema de Noticias, owned by the former governor of Baja California, Jaime Bonilla Valdés.
She had already asked the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), for help, fearing for her life in this case.
A week earlier, on January 17, photojournalist Margarito Martínez was murdered at his home in Tijuana, in the Camino al Verde neighborhood. The photojournalist covered the public security source for Zeta Weekly and other international media. Martínez was under a protection mechanism for previous threats.
Finally, there is José Luis Gamboa, director of the digital media Inforegio, the first communicator assassinated this 2022. It happened on January 10 in the Floresta de Veracruz subdivision.
According to the international organization Article 19, even before the homicide of Ernesto Islas, registered this Sunday, 149 journalists and communicators have been murdered in Mexico since 2000. 29 of these homicides have been registered during the current mandate of the Government of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
