In a tragic development that has shaken Colombia’s journalistic community, a 25-year-old local reporter was discovered dead Friday in the country’s violence-plagued northwest, an area where multiple armed groups battle for control of illegal economies, President Gustavo Petro has confirmed.
Mateo Perez, who ran the independent online news platform El Confidente de Yarumal, had been missing since Tuesday. He was conducting reporting work in a rural district of Antioquia department, roughly five hours by car north of Colombia’s second-largest city Medellín, just weeks ahead of the country’s May 31 presidential election.
Perez’s remains were recovered in a territory long contested by two of Colombia’s most powerful illegal armed factions: dissident fighters who split from the now-demobilized FARC guerrilla movement, and drug traffickers aligned with the Gulf Clan, the nation’s largest criminal cartel.
Speaking via a post on the social platform X, President Petro directly attributed Perez’s killing to Jhon Edison Chala Torrejano, a top dissident guerrilla commander. According to Petro, Chala Torrejano is currently fighting to expand his control over the region’s lucrative illegal gold mining trade.
The Foundation for Press Freedom, widely known by its Spanish acronym FLIP, issued a forceful condemnation of the murder, praising Perez as an indispensable voice for residents of the local area. The journalist’s work centered on high-stakes beats: organized crime, regional security, local politics, and public corruption, reporting that repeatedly put him in danger. FLIP confirmed that Perez had already faced sustained legal pressure stemming from his investigations into illegal economic activities controlled by armed groups.
The area where Perez’s body was found is classified as an active disputed zone, with FARC dissidents and Gulf Clan fighters regularly clashing to secure territory and revenue streams, per FLIP’s on-the-ground research.
Attacks on journalists are a persistent crisis in Colombia, where armed factions hold sway over large swathes of the national territory, funding their operations through cocaine trafficking, unregulated gold mining, and systematic extortion of local communities and businesses. In the lead-up to this month’s presidential election, the country has recorded a sharp uptick in guerrilla attacks across multiple regions.
Since 1977, at least 170 journalists have been killed in Colombia, according to FLIP’s long-running tracking data. The killing comes amid shifting peace negotiations in the country: President Petro’s administration suspended peace talks with FARC dissident factions on April 21, but negotiations remain ongoing with the Gulf Clan, an organization labeled a terrorist group by the United States government.