Reporter killed in restaurant she owns hours after journalist shot dead in separate attack in Mexico

The U.N. human rights office in Mexico said Wednesday journalists in Mexico need more protection, after gunmen killed a journalist whose Facebook news page covered the violent western Mexico state of Michoacan. Then less than 24 hours later an entertainment reporter in the western city of Colima was killed inside a restaurant she owned.

Journalist Mauricio Solís of the news page Minuto por Minuto was shot to death late Tuesday just moments after he conducted a sidewalk interview with the mayor of the city of Uruapan. State prosecutors said a second person was wounded in the shooting.

Solís had just finished an interview on the street outside city hall with Mayor Carlos Manzo. Manzo told local media he had walked away and “two minutes later, I think, and just a matter of meters away, we heard gunshots, four or five gunshots.”

“We sought cover because we thought the attack was aimed at us,” Manzo said. “After a few minutes we found out that Mauricio was the one they attacked.”

Manzo said he could not rule out a connection between the interview and the killing.

The radio station where Solis worked mourned his killing in a statement published on social media.

“Mauricio was more than a colleague, he was an unconditional friend, a source of inspiration and a tireless voice in the service of our community,” the station said.

The U.N. rights office said Solís was at least the fifth journalist killed in Mexico this year. It said he had previously reported security problems related to his work. His Facebook page reported on community events and the drug cartel violence that has wracked the city.

“His killing is a wake-up call to defend the right to information and freedom of expression in Mexico,” the office wrote.

An increasing number of the journalists killed in Mexico have been self-employed and reported for local Facebook and online news sites.

Uruapan is the nearest large city to Michoacan’s avocado-growing region, and it has been the scene of drug cartel extortions and turf battles between gangs. The cartels demand protection money from local avocado and lime orchards, cattle ranches and almost any other business.

Solís was reporting on a suspicious fire at a local market just before the shooting. Gangs have sometimes burned businesses that refuse to pay extortion demands.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, entertainment reporter Patricia Ramírez González was found with serious injuries inside her Colima restaurant and died at the scene, according to the Colima state prosecutor’s office.

Local media said Ramírez, who was better known as Paty Bunbury, published a blog on local entertainment and was a contributor to a Colima newspaper.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned both killings and called for transparent investigations.

Wracked by violence related to drug trafficking, Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, news advocacy groups say.

Reporters Without Borders says more than 150 newspeople have been killed in Mexico since 1994 — and 2022 was one of the deadliest years ever for journalists in Mexico, with at least 15 killed.

Media workers are regularly targeted in Mexico, often in direct reprisal for their work covering topics like corruption and the country’s notoriously violent drug traffickers.

In August, a Mexican journalist who covered one of the country’s most dangerous crime beats was killed by gunmen, and two of his government-assigned bodyguards were wounded.

In April, Roberto Figueroa, who covered local politics and gained a social media following through satirical videos, was found dead inside a car in his hometown of Huitzilac in Morelos, a state south of Mexico City where drug-fueled violence runs rampant.

All but a handful of the killings and abductions remain unsolved.

“Impunity is the norm in crimes against the press,” the the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report on Mexico in March.