Mexican Musicians Increasingly Targeted For Violence

Jose Luis Aquino, trumpet player for Los Conde (a popular group from Oaxaca), was found dead last Thursday with his hands and feet bound and a bag over his head, marking the third murder of a Mexican musician in less than a week. The other victims were Sergio Gomez, former resident of Chicago and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra and Zayda Pena of Zayda and the Guilty Ones — both popular mainstream singers who received posthumous Grammy nominations for "Best Banda Album" on the same day as the discovery of Aquino’s body.

Violence against Mexican musicians has been a problem in the recent past, but most victims have been performers of "narcocorridos," or drug ballads, and have thus had ties to organized crime and drug-trafficking. None of the latest victims appear to have any of the same connections, which is leaving authorities puzzled as to possible motives — though in Aquino’s case, a "crime of passion" is suspected.

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