Journalist’s Oaxaca restaurant shot at after extortion demand, Digi Mart USA News (Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, Mexico): An armed group fired on the restaurant of journalist José Ignacio Santiago Martínez in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, after he refused to pay 50,000 pesos demanded in an extortion phone call. The attack targeted the Rockaway establishment in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region.
No people were inside the business at the time of the attack. The State Attorney General’s Office said it opened an investigation and that specialized personnel handling crimes against freedom of expression are participating because the owner works as a journalist.
Santiago Martínez said that after he rejected the extortion payment, gunmen fired at the restaurant’s facade, leaving several bullet impacts. The journalist, director general of the online outlet Pluma Digital Noticias, broadcast live from his news outlet to report the incident and said he would keep reporting despite the threats.
“As a journalist, I decide not to remain silent,” he said, describing how he was informed of the attack during the early hours of the day. He also asked President Claudia Sheinbaum and Oaxaca Governor Salomón Jara for support.
In a telephone interview with the agency EFE, Santiago Martínez said that since June of this year he has filed four complaints with the state prosecutor’s office over extortion and threats, but has not been informed of significant progress.
The journalist has had security measures from the federal Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists since January 2022, when he survived an armed attack in the Oaxaca Coast region while doing his reporting.
The attack occurs amid persistent violence against the press in the country. Reporters Without Borders reports that 169 journalists have been killed in Mexico over the past 20 years, and that in 168 of those cases the intellectual author has not been identified and the motive has not been fully clarified.
Separately, Article 19 documented 451 aggressions against the press in 2025, including seven murders, one disappearance and eight attempted murders. In the same period, 701 journalists were enrolled in the federal protection mechanism.
