In memoriam...



Nelson Matus Peña

Journalist, Nelson Matus Peña, 42, was shot dead 15 July 2023 in the port of Acapulco.

Matus Peña was the editor of Lo Real de Guerrero. He was also a photojournalist for the defunct Alarma Magazine, the newspaper El Alarmante, and the Agora Guerrero news platform.

Before being a reporter, Matus Peña, originally from Pinotepa Nacional, was a Red Cross paramedic.

Nelson Matus had told colleagues that as a first aid institution, the Red Cross, was required to attend to accidents, fires, or murders, which led him to carry a digital camera and take photographs of the events or injuries. That was his precedent to get into the “nota roja.”

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The Facebook page, Lo Real de Guerrero, was the “nota roja” in Acapulco and Guerrero.

"Matus covered everything that happened. Colleagues and media followed him to confirm reports. I had a lot of contacts, people who gave him a lot of data. Sometimes they informed him before the police," said an Acapulco reporter.

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In August 2019, Nelson Matus published a controversial video on his portal that shows a white Tsuru blocking his way and a subject shooting his windshield. He was unharmed from the attack.

15 July, at 3:20 p.m., the C5 of Acapulco, a video surveillance system, reported someone had been injured by a bullet in the parking lot of the Coppel store in the Zapata neighborhood, located on Vicente Guerrero Boulevard. 

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Police officers later confirmed that Nelson Matus had died at the scene due to head injuries caused by gunfire. His body lay outside the door of the driver side of his black car. 

In the last nine months, the homes of at least four reporters in Chilpancingo have been raided to steal equipment, work material, information, and personal documents.

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In addition, a dozen journalists are on forced displacement and two are missing. The last case is that of Alan García, who was taken out of his home on December 24 and no progress has been reported on his case.

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Reporters have also been subjected to verbal and physical aggression in the performance of their work by police, governor's staff and by the mayor of Acapulco, Abelina López Rodríguez.