Marco Antonio Ávila García

Marco Antonio Ávila Garcia was abducted in Ciudad Obregón 17 May 2012 around 4:30 p.m. While waiting at a car wash, Ávila was asked if he was a journalist and then he was taken by three armed and masked men. The net that authorities created around the area after the journalist's disappearance failed to capture the criminals as his body was found 120 kilometers (almost 75 miles) from the scene of the abduction. The cause of death was strangulation. His corpse was found the next day wrapped in a large, black plastic bag on the side of the road around Guaymas and near Empalme in the state of Sonora, Mexico. Police say his body showed signs of torture and one ear had been cut off. A note written by a drug cartel was found near his body. The attorney general's office would not reveal which of the two warring cartels—the Gulf Cartel or the H. Cartel—in Ciudad Obregón wrote the note.

Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the world, but observers have noticed a sharp rise in the violence against journalists heading into the 2012 presidential elections. In the month before Ávila's murder, six other journalists have been killed in drug-related violence. Two weeks before Garcia's murder, the bodies of three other reporters were found in large trash bags similar to that in which Garcia was found but submerged in water. A reporter who had disappeared in January was found dead one week before Ávila's death.

Ávila's death shows how dangerous the country is getting as criminals kill with impunity. Depending on the source, He was the 81st or 92nd journalist killed between 2000 and 2012 and 14 to 15 others had also disappeared in the same period. According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, violence by the drug cartels was expected to increase in the period before the election and would be the major issue of the Mexican general election.

Marco Antonio Ávila Garcia (15 January 1973 – 17/18 May 2012), a Mexican crime reporter for Diario Sonora de la Tarde in Ciudad Obregón and El Regional de Sonora newspapers in Sonora state, Mexico. He was abducted in Ciudad Obregón and tortured to death by a drug cartel and left on the side of the road near Empalme, which is also in Sonora. Garcia was the fifth journalist killed in 2012 in Mexico, which has become one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, and his murder preceded the 1 July 2012 Mexican elections, in which drug violence had become a major issue.