He had received no threats and there are no known witnesses to the crime.
Family members said Pacheco Beltrán was found outside his home in a pool of blood on Monday. Pacheco was also a magazine editor and a radio broadcast reporter.
His personal website focused on crime news from the notoriously violent southern state where he lived and died. His last posted story was about a string of gun battles in the Pacific Coast city of Acapulco.
“The endless cycle of violence against Mexican journalists is devastating the local press,” said Carlos Lauría, a senior coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Federal authorities must thoroughly investigate the execution-style murder of Francisco Pacheco Beltrán and exhaust all possible motives, including links to his work as a journalist.”
Pacheco was killed in another tourist city, Taxco, famed for its inexpensive silver jewelry.
At least 100 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the last 15 years, according to the Washington Post, making it the most dangerous county on earth to work as a reporter. In February, Anabel Florez, 27 and a mother of two who worked as a crime reporter, was kidnapped from her home in the town of Orizaba, Veracruz and later found dead.
In a February column for the Washington Post, journalist Javier Garza Ramos called Mexican law enforcement “inept” when it comes to protecting reporters.
“Journalists have been missing for days before their bodies are found,” he wrote. “When Flores was kidnapped, the Veracruz state government announced an operation to look for her. It didn’t work, and she was found dead two days later.”
