• By César López Linares
• August 12, 2026

Alejandro Leyva, the Mexican journalist who was killed in the state of Oaxaca on July 22, had sought state and federal protections for a year before his death.

Leyva had been the target of threats and a smear campaign. Known for his critical reporting on local officials, Leyva was convinced that the harassment came from the state government. On several occasions, in his video column “El Zumbido del Moscardón (“The Horsefly’s Buzz” in Spanish), he held Oaxaca Gov. Salomón Jara responsible for anything that might happen to him or his family.

After receiving death threats, Leyva filed state and federal complaints against Jara and two members of his administration in July 2025. He did not receive any protection; in fact, when Mexico’s Attorney General’s office referred the case to the state prosecutor’s office, the case file was lost.

Journalist Alejandro Leyva had a video column on social media in which he denounced acts of corruption. (Photo: screenshot from El Zumbido del Moscardón on Facebook)

Faced with government inaction, the journalist was planning to take his case to the Inter-American human rights system, but he was killed before he could do so.

“When you exhaust all the avenues available in a country, what else do you have left besides the international community?” journalist María de los Ángeles Nivón, Leyva’s sister-in-law, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “Unfortunately, that was the last step Alejandro had left.”

Leyva was shot and killed while having breakfast at a street-side food stand near his home in the municipality of San Pablo Etla. He was the seventh journalist killed in Mexico so far this year. Amid one of the deadliest periods for the Mexican press in recent years, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on the federal government to take over the cases and strengthen protections for journalists.

More than an isolated incident, Leyva’s killing exposed a hostile environment for journalism in Oaxaca. Journalists and freedom of expression organizations say the crime came after years of confrontation between government officials and the press, as well as institutional failures to protect threatened journalists. Now, a divided press corps is trying to come together to demand justice and guarantees to protect journalists.

“Leyva’s case confirms the difficult environment for the press in the state,” Balbina Flores, Mexico representative for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told LJR. “It clearly demonstrates the state’s failure to protect journalists.”

Harassment from those in power

In 2024, two years into his administration,  Jara introduced a segment called “Trapitos al Sol” (the equivalent of “dirty laundry” in Spanish) as part of his morning press conferences. He used the segment to counter information he considered false or misleading and to discredit journalists and political opponents.

Nivón was one of the journalists the governor targeted in that segment.

“He spent 20 minutes attacking my work in very bad faith during his morning press conference, associating me with a political group and saying horrible things,” Nivón said.

The journalist pursued legal action and eventually took her case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Nivón believes that the international attention gave her some protection and led the governor to stop mentioning her in his press conferences.

Jara also  attacked Leyva on “Trapitos al Sol” in December 2024. The late journalist linked the threats he received to the governor’s comments.

For RSF, the way Jara attacked the press in Oaxaca was part of the legacy of former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s communications strategy. López Obrador pioneered daily morning press conferences from which he stigmatized media outlets and political opponents.

“Some state governments have continued with that discourse, and one of them is the governor of Oaxaca,” Flores said. “That discourse has remained: ‘The press criticizes us because they don’t like us, because they’re from the right.’”

Several Oaxacan journalists have held Jara responsible for the climate of threats and harassment against the press.

“He is the one who carried out dirty, smear campaigns on social media against everyone who disagrees with his position, everyone who disagrees with the way he speaks or with his government,” Nivón said.

Leyva filed state and federal complaints against Oaxaca's Governor and two members of his administration in July 2025. (Photo: Portal ESPRIMERAMX)

Just days before Leyva’s killing, Jara had announced plans to compile a list of “hate portals” whose questions or criticisms he would no longer answer to.

But amid a wave of condemnation over Leyva’s killing and accusations against his government, Jara called a meeting with journalists and pledged to change his communications strategy and end his confrontation with the press.

“The change, at least in his public discourse, is because the Leyva case hit [Jara] directly and because of the direct criticism against him,” Flores said. “Journalists have been very direct in saying that Leyva’s killers are inside the government. That is a strong accusation, a very strong one.”

Reorganizing amid fear

A few days after Leyva’s killing, Pedro Matías, correspondent in Oaxaca for Mexican news magazine Proceso, condemned the killing on X. A user responded with a death threat, implying that Matías would be the next journalist to be killed.

Matías filed a complaint over the threats with the state prosecutor’s office, which assigned bodyguards to protect him. Other journalists also told RSF that they had felt watched while out in public.

“These past few days have been very hostile; there is a lot of anxiety among our colleagues,” Nivón said. “We are living in fear because what happened has crossed every limit. We feel very vulnerable.”

Following the incidents, Mexico’s Interior Ministry contacted Matías, Nivón and other journalists to enroll them in the federal program to protect journalists. Nivón said they were waiting for the agency to conduct a risk assessment to determine what protective measures would be put in place.

Despite the fear, Nivón said journalists in Oaxaca have no intention of giving up their work.

“We’re being very careful. We get home early [...] by 2 p.m. we’re already at home and we don’t go back out unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Nivón said. “But we are continuing with our critical work. We are not going to change it, because that would be like giving up.”

Matías said he will continue being critical and investigating  Leyva’s killing, despite the way the additional protective measures have altered his daily routine.

Matías said he is afraid but feels reassured by the attention his case has received, including from international media.

“I’m taking certain precautions, but I’m not panicking. I don’t want to get caught up in fear,” he said.

Less than a week after Leyva’s killing, a meeting with journalists convened by the state government turned into a discussion about advertising agreements, which several journalists interpreted as an attempt to divert attention from the crime and further weaken an already divided press corps.

Members of the Oaxaca press agree that the division between journalists who are critical of the government and those who, because of precarious working conditions in the state, have been forced to enter into advertising agreements with the government has existed for years.

“The state government leverages  advertising agreements [...] or the fact that others want advertising,” Matías told LJR. “That generally creates doubts [and] distrust among colleagues, and in the end they end up questioning or fighting with one another.”

In response, organizations including the Oaxaca chapter of the National Forum of Journalists and Communicators, the Oaxaca Journalists Association, the National Media Workers Union and the Journalism at Risk Movement called on journalists to band together and demand justice for Leyva’s death and for the attacks against Oaxacan journalists that remain unpunished.

Following a meeting on Aug. 1, the organizations announced that Oaxaca’s journalists had committed to working together and putting aside their differences to demand respect for freedom of expression and guarantees for journalists in the state.

“This forces us to reorganize so we can figure out what comes next [...] so that there can be justice,” said Nivón, who attended the meeting. “So that the state of Oaxaca can guarantee that something like this will not happen again, that no authority will ever intimidate another journalist.”

This story was translated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera