Andrés Villarreal Ayala is a journalist and currently the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Ríodoce, a weekly newspaper in the city of Culíacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. He has worked for several newspapers and television stations before. The newspaper RíoDoce lives with several threats from drug cartels, as well as politicians and business representatives. On May 17, 2017, one of the magazine's founders, Javier Valdez, was shot down in the open. Andrés Villareal Ayala has trained in investigative journalism, at the same time as he and a freelance journalist did the report Los otros hermanos Arellano and Los nexos de García Luna con el Grupo Arhe which digs into advanced money laundering with links to supreme power, corruption and organized crime in Mexico and the United States.