Mexico City — An independent Mexican journalist who reported on politics and crime was shot dead on Wednesday night in the violent coastal state of Veracruz, one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists, with 22 slain there since 2000.

Leobardo Vazquez Atzin, who previously wrote for an area newspaper and recently launched an independent news page via Facebook, was killed outside his home in the municipality of Gutierrez Zamora, state authorities said. Vazquez, 42, was shot by assailants on a motorcycle. No suspects have been arrested in the case.

He is at least the second Mexican reporter slain this year in a nation that ranks among the deadliest for journalists. In 2017, journalists were killed here at a rate of about one a month. Dozens of others came under threat and went into hiding or fled the country.

The largest number of killings has taken place in Veracruz, which press freedom advocates call a “zone of silence” because many reporters there practice self-censorship to stay alive. In Veracruz, with a population of half a million people — about the size of Wyoming — nearly two dozen journalists have been killed in the last 18 years. Reporters and photographers from the state have been slain at holiday parties, their bodies dismembered and dumped in canals; some have been tracked down and killed after going into hiding in other parts of the country.

Human rights advocates argue that Veracruz officials, and Mexican officials more broadly, have not done enough to protect journalists under threat and have not prioritized investigations into their killings. In Mexico, just 10 percent of journalist killings have resulted in convictions, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

On Thursday, press freedom advocates complained that the state Attorney General’s Office in Veracruz was not taking the case seriously because it released a statement dismissing Vazquez as a former journalist working as a food vendor.

Although Vazquez apparently did operate a taco stand, “his Facebook page clearly indicates that he was very active as a citizen reporter,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“His death,” Hootsen said, “is yet another sign that the conditions for journalists in Veracruz simply haven’t improved.”

In a statement about Vazquez, the Veracruz State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists implored police to “consider his journalistic activity as the principal line of investigation.”