It has been just over two years since Poza Rica, Veracruz, no longer lives in peace. That northern city in the State has been the scene of two of the seven journalist murders that have occurred in Mexico so far this year. The first occurred on January 8. Independent reporter Carlos Leonardo Ramírez, 26, was attacked by an armed group that entered the place where he was eating and killed him. The case was not only about his death; it has also been linked to the disappearance of Karime Monserrat Murrieta and Wendy Arantxa Portilla, 23 and 22 years old, the young man’s friend and partner, who attended the funeral together on January 10 and were not found again. “This is the dilemma we have as families, as sisters, wives, searching mothers; we are not looking for culprits, we only ask that they be returned to us, that the Prosecutor’s Office moves to find their whereabouts,” says a relative of Karime Murrieta.
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There is fear. Fear and terror prevail in communities where the advance of insecurity destroys not only lives but also people’s peace of mind. That is why many families of the disappeared victims ask to speak anonymously. Wendy Arantxa Portilla’s family, the reporter’s partner, immediately filed a complaint about the young woman’s disappearance but fears reprisals due to their lack of knowledge about how this disappearance is related to the journalist’s murder.
Karime Murrieta’s relatives have only one photograph taken from a security camera video that one of the local businesses provided to the authorities, showing the two young women leaving the cemetery on the afternoon of January 10, heading to Poza Rica. They were alone, but that is all they have after more than six months of absence. According to them, the video is in the possession of the Veracruz Prosecutor’s Office, which, so far, despite repeated requests, has not shown them the complete footage from that camera to see the moments before and after what the image captured.
According to Murrieta’s family testimony, the two young women had known each other for some time. They were from the same circle of friends and even, they say, came to know Luis Ángel López Valdez, the 29-year-old reporter who was murdered last June 11. They used to meet to spend time together, and sometimes Carlos Castro was present.
Karime Murrieta, 23, has a three-year-old son who has been left in the care of his father. On the day of the burial, this same man, her ex-partner with whom she communicated about the child’s care, took her to Wendy’s house so they could arrive at the wake together. Both he and Karime’s family lost contact with her by the afternoon. It was unusual, a relative assures, that Karime did not respond immediately because that afternoon they were in contact about their son’s care. She was attentive and said she would arrive soon. But she did not.
Other witnesses told the family that Karime and Wendy, upon leaving the burial, were with a man whom they themselves said was Karime’s cousin, but the family has denied this; Karime Murrieta had no cousins in Poza Rica because her family had only settled there a few years ago.
“It has been about two years since everything started to get worse here. They went out on the street and were shot at, or they went into bars and shot whoever was there. Although sometimes I think there were innocent people. In fact, there was the case of Ivette Liliana Hernández García, a young woman who was taken from the Salinas Hotel. Her sister was Karime’s best friend, so we really experienced it closely. I never imagined going through this. I saw the case and did not imagine the pain her family was going through,” recalls one of her relatives.
Murrieta’s family stopped receiving responses to their messages on the afternoon of January 10. During the early morning and the following morning, they discovered that from her cell phone, some friends and other close people received messages that, they say, were no longer from her but came from her number. “It was another person using her cell phone. I thought maybe the people who had her told her to write as if she were her, and that it would be believable. But we obviously knew it was not her.” “Don’t make things worse; I’ll get in touch with you shortly,” was one of those messages.
The authorities have not announced any progress in the investigation of the disappearance of the two young women. The only thing the families have, they say, since January, is a photograph from a video that they have not even been allowed to see in full.
The disappearance of women in Veracruz is also a worsening problem. Data from the University Observatory of Violence against Women (OUVMujeres), of the Veracruz University, recorded 179 missing women in the State in the first five months of 2026. The families of Karime Murrieta and Wendy Arantxa Portilla accuse inconsistencies in the investigations and in the delivery of responses by the State Prosecutor’s Office. There are no detainees in either the murdered reporter’s case or the disappearance of the two women.
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