Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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Songs of Love and Murder, Silenced by Killings
Songs of Love and Murder, Silenced by Killings

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/world/americas/18mexico.html?ex=1198645200&en=77d764dce4693993&ei=5070&emc=eta1

http://tinyurl.com/39dddq

MORELIA, Mexico ­

Mexico’s country music stars are being killed at an alarming rate ­ 13 in the past year and a half, three already in December ­ in a trend that has gone hand in hand with the surge in violence between drug gangs here.


None of the cases have been solved. All have borne the signs of Mexican underworld executions, sending a chill through the ranks of other grupero musicians, who sing to a country beat about love, violence and drugs in modern Mexico.

One of the most shocking attacks was the kidnapping of Sergio Gómez, the founder and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra, who was seized as he left a concert in his home state of Michoacán early on the morning of Dec. 2.

His body was found the next day dumped on a roadside outside this city, the state capital. He had been beaten, tortured with a cigarette lighter, then strangled with a plastic cord, officials said. He was 34 and had just been nominated for a Grammy Award.

“We don’t understand why this happened,” his uncle, Froylán Gómez, said in an interview. “He never did anyone any harm.”

The motives for the killings remain a matter of speculation, and no evidence has been found to link them to a single killer. In some cases, the musicians appeared to have ties to organized crime figures, making them potential targets in reprisal attacks from rival gangs.

Others had composed ballads known as narcocorridos, glorifying the shadow world of drug dealers and hit men, which can offend other drug dealers and hit men. In still other cases, as the musicians’ fame grew, they may have become embroiled with criminals unwittingly.

“Sometimes there is a direct relationship between the musician and the narcotics trafficker,” said Miguel Olmos, a musicologist at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana. “But also there are a lot of passionate crimes. That is to say, the musician establishes some sort of sentimental relationship with people who are linked to this culture of violence and of narcotics trafficking, and somehow it gets out of hand. They always touch some nerve of the trafficker.”
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 9:31:02 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |  Related posts:
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