New Delhi: Drug cartels have allegedly been targeting social media influencers in Mexico to create a media spectacle.
Mexican influencer César Gastélum, who primarily created comedy and lifestyle content on TikTok, was livestreaming outside a KFC in Culiacán on a hot August night when a motorcycle pulled up and a helmeted passenger shot him in the head. The 25-year-old creator, wearing his signature beige cowboy hat and dressed as a delivery driver for an online challenge, died on the spot. His two friends, however, were unharmed.
Thousands watched him die online.
But Gastélum is only one in a series of rising attacks on Mexican influencers and content creators, The Times reported. At least 19 influencers have been killed since 2024. Eight of those deaths, including Gastélum’s, occurred in Sinaloa – the epicentre of a brutal fratricidal war inside the Sinaloa cartel.
The conflict began after the 2024 arrest and extradition of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. A faction known as La Mayiza, loyal to Zambada’s allies, is fighting the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Since then, thousands have either been killed or have disappeared. Against this turbulent background, influencers have become both useful tools and convenient targets.
Analysts point to several overlapping reasons for the killings.
Some creators are seen as informal propagandists romanticising the narco lifestyle. It is more effective than the traditional narcocorridos of the past by appearing to live it. Narcocorridos (also known as drug ballads) are a subgenre of regional Mexican folk music that uses traditional polka, waltz, or ranchera rhythms to tell stories glorifying drug trafficking, cartel lifestyles, and outlaw figures.
“The (social media) algorithm and the narcos promote the same thing: consumption and luxury as ultimate values, to be achieved in the quickest way possible.” Claudia Arruñada, a communications expert at Mexico’s Iberoamerican University, told BBC Mundo.
She added that these narco-influencers “promote narco culture much more efficiently than the songs… by showing what is supposedly their own life.”
Influencer culture
In Sinaloa, the line between content creator and cartel associate is seen as blurred.
Glamorous female influencers, known locally as buchonas, often move in the same social circles as senior traffickers. Dating one projects power and success for a cartel figure, and rapid access to wealth for the influencer. When the relationships sour, the resultant violence is often extreme.
The Times reported that it was a possible reason why beauty influencer Valeria Márquez, 23, was shot dead in May 2025. She was livestreaming from her salon in Zapopan, Jalisco. Authorities later said she had been romantically linked to the son of a senior Jalisco New Generation Cartel figure.
The murders have also been linked to commercial motives.
Influencers with large followings can promote restaurants, clothing brands or property developments that serve as fronts for money laundering. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) reported that 64 influencers are under investigation for helping criminal groups wash profits. Sometimes, creators may be targeted for refusing to cooperate, for perceived disloyalty, or because their online persona is interpreted as taking sides in the cartel war.
Gastélum’s case remains ambiguous.
One theory holds that he was seen as subtly supporting La Mayiza. Another focuses on his habitual cowboy hat. Zambada, the arrested co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, was nicknamed “El del Sombrero” (the one with the hat). Whether Gastélum’s hat was deliberate signalling to the cartel leader or a fatal coincidence remains unclear.
No arrests had been made for the livestreamed public killing.
Influencers have been labelled as this century’s version of the narcocorrido singers who once celebrated bandits, with the difference being reach and intimacy. A viral video or livestream can recruit, intimidate or launder reputation far more efficiently than a song, and cartels appear to have noticed. When creators are useful, they are cultivated, and when they seem like liabilities, or convenient symbols, they are eliminated — often deliberately in public.
The pattern is not limited to Sinaloa, as reports have noted.
Similar killings have occurred elsewhere in Mexico as organised crime groups compete for territory, loyalty and narrative control.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)