Journalist murdered in Sonora is the sixth this year

Jorge “El Choche” Camero, founder of the Sonora news site El Informativo, was murdered Thursday night while working out at a gym in the city of Empalme. The 28-year-old is the sixth practicing journalist murdered this year, a list that doesn’t include a former television host in Mexico City and the founder of a now-defunct Tijuana news portal who were also killed.

Armed men on motorcycles arrived at the Spartan gym around 8 p.m. and shot Camero at least three times. When Red Cross paramedics arrived at the scene, he was already dead.

The motive for Camero’s murder remains up in the air, and may be unrelated to his journalistic work. Less than two weeks before his death, he had quit his job as personal secretary to Luis Fuentes, the mayor of Empalme, after government colleagues accused Camero of being involved in criminal activity. The state Attorney General’s Office noted that in addition to his colleague’s allegations, he was a person of interest in a murder investigation.

It was only after leaving government employment earlier this month that Camero returned to journalism and El Informativo, a news page he had founded in 2018  to cover Empalme and nearby areas, including Guaymas.

Camero is the second person associated with the Empalme municipal government to be murdered this year. Daniel Palafox, an Empalme IT worker, disappeared in January and was found dead, with signs of torture, in early February.

After Palafox’s death, a video of an apparent interrogation circulated on social media in which he confessed to helping an armed branch of the Sinaloa Cartel install internet and video surveillance systems. In the video, Palafox also mentioned a man named Jorge who went by “El Choche,” apparently a media worker employed by the same band of criminals, and two online news portals, Sonora Informativo and El Informativo.

Camero started his career with XEPS, a radio broadcasting group he founded in Empalme, before working at a station in Guaymas. He also owned a publicity and vehicle-mounted loudspeaker advertising company.

With reports from El Universal and Infobae