Influencer killings mount in Mexico as rival cartel factions wage a bloody fight
By Rey Rodríguez, Mauricio Torres, CNN
(CNN) — Mexican influencer César Gastélum was live-streaming outside a fast-food restaurant when two men on motorbike stopped next him, pulled out a gun and shot him in the head.
His brutal murder in Culiacán, the capital of the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, happened in just a few seconds on Tuesday in front of an audience of thousands of social media users watching his TikTok stream.
As news of his death ricocheted around the world, alarm was rising back home about the mounting deaths of influencers in Mexico, especially in the country’s most dangerous states.
It is a phenomenon that some experts have attributed to possible links between content creators and criminal organizations, as well as the ongoing clashes between different factions of Sinaloa cartel.
Gastélum’s last posts on Instagram and TikTok have thousands of comments ranging from sadness to disbelief. “Rest in peace” and “Justice for César,” several users say. One account points to another tragic case that was caught on a live stream: “Ahhh, the same thing that happened to Valeria Márquez, how terrible.”
Márquez was a well-known beauty influencer who, like Gastélum, was killed while streaming on her social media from the city of Zapopan, in the state of Jalisco, last year.
Federal authorities in Mexico have opened investigations to determine whether Gastélum and Márquez’s killings are related to drug cartels.
In Gastélum’s case, they are reviewing posts in which he referenced a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. In Márquez’s case, the federal security cabinet said at the end of July that, according to their investigations, Márquez had a relationship with the son of Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala, “el R1,” an alleged criminal leader recently arrested and who supposedly was asked to have the young woman killed. CNN has reached out to Álvarez Ayala for comment.
A rise in influencer killings
There is no official record of how many influencers have been killed in Mexico. Local media estimate there have been about 20 cases nationwide over the past two years, most of which occurred in Sinaloa, a state that during the same period has seen an increase in violence due to the struggle between the two main factions of the Sinaloa Cartel: Los Chapitos and Los Mayos.
This fight began during the second half of 2024, after Ismael “el Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, was transferred to the United States, where he was later prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison. Zambada claims he was betrayed by Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the sons of his former partner Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán, which unleashed a bloody struggle between the rival groups for control of the organization.
“You can see how in Sinaloa this is directly related to the dynamics of the Sinaloa Cartel conflict and how this has led to these kinds of people being affected,” María Fernanda Arocha, head of research for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean at the non-governmental organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), told CNN.
ACLED has its own count. According to its records, from 2024 to today, there have been 20 attacks against influencers in Sinaloa, resulting in the deaths of 14 people.
The NGO does not publish the names of the deceased for privacy reasons. CNN cross-checked its database with reports from federal and local authorities, as well as local media, and confirmed that among those victims are nine influencers and five of their relatives or people with whom they had some connection.
According to this review, the nine influencers who have been killed in Sinaloa since 2024 are: Rafael Lazcano Rosales, “el Peinadito”; Juan Carlos López, “el Chilango”; Jesús Miguel Vivanco García, “el Jasper”; Leovardo Aispuro, “el Gordo Peruci”; Agustín Paul Duarte, “el Pinky”; Adalberto Peña, “el Tata”; Víctor Manuel, “el Brasileño”; Gerardo Moya, “el Jerry”; and César Gastélum, “Cesarín.”
What kind of content did they produce?
Rafael Lazcano Rosales, shot on June 4, 2024, outside a car dealership in Culiacán, described himself on his Instagram account as a businessman, farmer, marathon runner and traveler. On that platform, he posted videos and photos of himself with luxury vehicles, shopping, and his travels around the world. In his last post, shared just a few days before his death, he is seen walking through the historic center of San Diego, California.
Gastélum posted similar content on his Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube accounts, which together had more than 1 million followers. He also shared humorous clips. In one of the last videos he posted on TikTok, he appears on a street dressed as a priest, accompanied by regional music and the message, “Only the Lord knows the sins I have committed to see you, my love.”
In another video, posted on YouTube in September 2024, he and Leovardo Aispuro, who would be killed two months after that recording, fire various weapons in a rural area of Culiacán. “We’re going to test the equipment. First of all, we’re in a place well outside the city … There’s no one here, no one at all, so there’s no one in danger,” says Gastélum.
Juan Carlos López, shot on October 19, 2024, was not known for posting content about a life of luxury, but rather for his walks through the streets of Culiacán and Mazatlán and his messages of support for “el Chapo,” co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in 2019.
“I will always be one of Chapo’s people,” he says in a video from April 2023 on the occasion of Guzmán’s 66th birthday.
What explains the growing violence against influencers?
Mexican authorities have not reported whether any of the Sinaloa influencers killed in the past two years were under investigation for possible links to criminal groups.
CNN contacted the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) for comment.
Among the slain influencers is Jesús Miguel Vivanco García, who was sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for alleged ties to drug trafficking organizations. His body was found in Culiacán on November 23, 2024, after he had been missing for several days.
While investigations into their death continues, experts say there are indications that some of the influencers did have relationships with criminal organizations and were killed as acts of reprisal by rival factions.
María Fernanda Arocha, from ACLED, explained that influencers have become relevant for criminal groups because they can serve “a double function” of helping them launder money through the activities the influencers carry out on social media, and acting as promoters of lifestyles and the image of the cartels, which in turn can help them recruit more members. The murder of an influencer could be interpreted as an attempt to send an intimidating message to the opposing side.
“If we see it within the framework of the dispute, that is what we would see as the most obvious reason in the sense that, by being public figures, through these attacks and the supposed connection they have with a criminal group, messages are being sent,” she said.
Some influencers may have become a new form of corrido singers, say experts. Their videos work as a modern take on the narcocorridos – ballads about the trafficking underworld that drug kingpins used to praise themselves and communicate with each other, said security expert Alexei Chévez.
As the children of cartel founders are increasingly the ones disputing territories and markets, Chévez argued that these new criminal leaders see the figure of the influencer as a tool to promote themselves, particularly among younger people who are frequent users of social media and can be recruited more easily.
“They discovered a way to be popular because it is also a culture, because what exists in the north of the country is a narco-culture, which started with corridos, continued with the glorification of criminal groups, and now many young people unfortunately want to be part of it.” he said. “They want to be part of having a truck, weapons, drugs, et cetera. There is an aspirational aspect.”
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