On January 23, 2022, veteran journalist Maria Guadalupe Lourdes Maldonado López was shot dead inside her car in the Santa Fe neighbourhood of Tijuana, a city bordering the United States in the northern Mexican state of Baja California.
During her career she worked as a reporter and anchor for magazine Séptimo Día and television broadcasters Televisa and Primer Sistema de Notícias (PSN). Right before her death Maldonado had begun hosting an online radio show called Brebaje, focusing on local news.
In 2019, the journalist said at the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s daily morning news conference that she fears for her life and asked for the president’s support, help and labour justice, the latter referring to a labour dispute with the journalist’s previous employer PSN, owned by Jaime Bonilla, who was governor of Baja California from 2019 to the end of 2021.
According to news reports, Maldonado was registered in the Mexican government’s program to protect journalists.