A trumpet player was found dead with his hands and feet bound and a nylon bag over his head in southern Mexico, in what authorities said was apparently the country's third murder of a musician in less than a week.
Jose Luis Aquino, 33, had been hit repeatedly on the head, said a spokesman for the Oaxaca state attorney general's office who could not be named according to departmental rules. He said authorities were still investigating possible motives but suspected a crime of passion.
Aquino played for Los Conde, which was founded in Tututepec, Oaxaca, and later moved to the resort town of Puerto Escondido, according to its Web site.
The band has recorded a half-dozen albums, and members appeared in the early-1990s movie Mafioso pero Gracioso, or "Funny Mobster."
Los Conde singer and guitar player Francisco Conde said Aquino played for 14 years in the band, was married and had two children.
"He was a good person and never fought with anyone," Conde said. "He didn't smoke or do drugs."
A wave of organized crime violence has terrorized many parts of Mexico and the latest victims appear to be popular musicians.
Most disquieting were the weekend slayings of two singers who had crooned only about love and loss, not drugs and guns like some narcocorrido celebrities killed in the past.
The murders of Sergio Gomez, lead performer for the top-selling group K-Paz de la Sierra, and Zayda Pena of the group Zayda and the Guilty Ones has mainstream singers worrying they may become targets by becoming identified with one or another of Mexico's warring drug gangs.
Meanwhile, Gomez' body was being returned Thursday to Indiana, where he lived since 2003.
His music was fashionable in cities from Chicago, where K-Paz made its first recordings, to Morelia, the capital of Mexico's western state of Michoacan.
Five of the band's albums have reached the Top 10 on Billboard magazine's Latin music chart.
Hundreds of people mourned Gomez on Tuesday in his hometown of Ciudad Hidalgo in Michoacan. About 200 more also gathered in Mexico City, where Gomez's body was transported on Tuesday night.
Although not known for songs glamorizing the drug business, Gomez had reportedly received death threats urging him not to appear in the capital of Michoacan, a hotbed of the drug trade.
Some believe that singers, whether they have any links to drug cartels or not, are routinely "adopted" by drug gangs, which post Internet videos showing their members torturing and executing rivals to soundtracks of popular tunes.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS