Journalist Reported Missing in Mexico

XALAPA, Mexico – A journalist who works as a stringer for several newspapers in the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz has been reported missing, state prosecutors said.

Moises Sanchez Cerezo’s whereabouts is not known since Friday, Veracruz Attorney General Luis Angel Bravo Contreras said.

Bravo Contreras said he was personally coordinating the search for the missing journalist.

Sanchez Cerezo covered the news and posted stories about local corruption and community issues on social networks, media reports said.

Veracruz Gov. Javier Duarte, for his part, said investigators were trying to determine what happened to Sanchez Cerezo, who he described as a “taxi driver and neighborhood activist.”

“Our priority is to find him and reunite him with his family,” Duarte told Mexican media.

Sanchez Cerezo works as a reporter in the city of Medellin de Bravo, writing stories and taking photos for his small weekly, La Union, the Cronica de Xalapa newspaper reported.

He is also a community activist in several neighborhoods, where residents have banded together to fight crime, the newspaper said.

Sanchez Cerezo’s relatives contacted several Veracruz and national media outlets via e-mail and reported his disappearance.

The journalist had received “prior threats,” relatives said.

Veracruz, Mexico’s third most populous state, has been plagued by a turf war between rival drug cartels that has sent the murder rate skyrocketing in the past few years.

The Gulf, Los Zetas and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels, as well as breakaway members of the once-powerful Familia Michoacana criminal organization, are fueling the violence in the state.