Roxana Guzmán was taken in front of her parents, her children, her brother, and her nephews and nieces. A heavily armed group forcibly took the Veracruz journalist from her home, threw her into her family’s courtyard in Nanchital, handcuffed her and beat her, and dragged her into the street before forcing her into the back of a car and taking her away “towards the unknown.” It was the morning of June 2. Two weeks have passed without news of her whereabouts, and her family is “destroyed, shattered.” This is how her mother, Rubicelia Ramírez, 62, describes it, speaking with deep fear. With a gentle voice, she admits she never imagined having to give interviews or live through this: “I join the searching mothers with all my heart because this is like living in hell.” The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has taken over the investigation into the journalist after how quickly the case escalated, partly due to the brutal video of her kidnapping. Federal agents only contacted Rubicelia this Monday to report back, which gave her some relief: “I feel there will be more pressure, that they will intensify their efforts. They have to move forward now so they can give me my daughter back.”
Veracruz has once again become the epicenter of violence against journalists.
At the beginning of January, Carlos Leonardo Ramírez, a young journalist from Poza Rica, was killed; on June 2, Roxana Guzmán, who ran a local Facebook news page in Nanchital, was kidnapped; and on the same day that millions were watching the opening of the 2026 World Cup in Mexico City, 300 kilometers away Luis Ángel López Valdez was also murdered in Poza Rica. This is not the first time the state has become a focal point of terror against the press: the administration of Governor Javier Duarte (2010–2016) is recorded as the most violent in the country’s history, with 18 journalists killed. Since 2000, no other place in Mexico has seen more journalists murdered than Veracruz. The current governor, Rocío Nahle, has limited herself to saying that the attacks “are not related to journalistic work”: “In my government there is absolute freedom of expression.”
At 6:00 a.m. on June 2, a heavily armed group entered the Guzmán family courtyard in Nanchital. “There were four people dressed in black, carrying long guns. I thought they were police because they were dressed exactly like that: dark clothing and hooded, two of them were wearing sneakers, not boots,” says Rubicelia Ramírez, who explains that her daughter, Roxana Guzmán, was getting ready to go running, as she did every day. “They grabbed her, took her out of the house, threw her to the ground, handcuffed her, beat her. My husband was also coming out at that moment and they threw him to the ground, beat him, and she was still telling them ‘don’t hurt my father, he is sick,’” Ramírez recounts. Her husband is diabetic and has chronic neuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the legs and feet): “He suffers a lot, and unfortunately that day they kicked and hit him in the legs with a weapon.”
Rubicelia, who still has a catheter after kidney surgery on May 22, managed to avoid being thrown to the ground. They cornered her against a wall, but she ran to her granddaughter, Roxana’s 16-year-old daughter. “She was getting ready to go to school. I saw a man walk toward where she was. I was very scared. They were pointing a long gun at her chest. I stepped in between them, brought her to the dining room, and stood in front of her,” she says. Her 7-year-old grandson was asleep when one of the attackers entered his room and pointed a gun at him. The boy began screaming until his sister was able to get him out.
After subduing them, the armed group went to Roxana’s brother’s house, just across the street. That entrance is the one seen in the video. For 35 seconds of anguish, the man tried unsuccessfully to stop the attackers. “My other grandchildren were there: four older ones and a one-year-old baby. The young man seen in the video wearing shorts is my son, and if they already had my daughter there on the ground and she was their target, why did they go there too to cause all that chaos and scare my other grandchildren?” she asks. At the time of the recording, Rubicelia says, Roxana was already handcuffed and lying on the ground. The 12 family members were subdued in the shared courtyard of the homes. “They stayed inside my son’s house, they fired shots. And when they came out, they all went after my daughter.”
At that moment, her mother says, Roxana had already been severely beaten. “When they tried to make her stand up, she couldn’t. We told them not to hurt her. Then I asked them: ‘Where are you taking her? Where are you taking her?’ And they told me: ‘To the police station, go to the station.’ That’s all they said, and they took her away,” she recalls. Throughout the attack, no one responded to Roxana’s calls for help; only a neighbor tried to record until she was also threatened.
Roxana’s brother was the one who went to the prosecutor’s office to file the complaint, while the rest of the family was “terrified.” After that came “chaos”: municipal, state, and ministerial police came in and out of the home. Rubicelia says the state prosecutor’s office did organize operations and raids until last Thursday, after which she heard nothing further. By then, the case had already reached the National Palace. Rubicelia herself was able to ask President Claudia Sheinbaum for help during a press conference the president held in Coatzacoalcos, about 15 kilometers from Nanchital. “I asked her, please, as a mother to help me, not as a president, but as a mother, ‘put yourself in my place.’ That’s when she hugged me and told me she would support me, that they were working on it,” she recalls.
The Veracruz Prosecutor’s Office initially provided the family with aerial and ground surveillance, Rubicelia notes, “but now nothing.” However, they have obtained security thanks to support from the Journalists’ Association: “It is very important because only then can we rest. Sometimes I sleep one hour, sometimes two, and at 3 in the morning I am already up.” She says she must stay strong for her grandchildren, especially the youngest, who is “very, very badly affected and has not slept since.” “My husband is devastated, completely broken. He cries a lot, he wants his daughter back,” she says sadly.
The family ran a small seafood business, another selling snacks, and a michelada stand. They prepared everything at home and delivered it around Nanchital. “If my husband is hardworking, my daughter surpasses him,” she says proudly about Roxana. She had recently launched a Facebook page called Pulsión Informativa del Sureste, where she posted very local news from the region: missing persons, traffic accidents, and new business openings. “Since she was young she was interested in journalism; she has that charisma, it comes from her heart to transmit both good and bad news,” her mother describes. She rejects the idea that her daughter had to leave Veracruz earlier due to violence and does not know who is behind the attack. She only asks: “We are going to start over. Let’s see what news they give us.”
Source: elpais
