When a 23-year-old Mexican influencer was shot dead while live streaming on TikTok, rumours began to swirl. Was it a cartel hit? Or another tragic example of violence against women?
On Tuesday, Valeria Marquez was shot dead at Blossom The Beauty Lounge, a beauty salon owned by the victim in Zapopan, a town in the central-eastern state of Jalisco.
The state prosecutor’s office said it is investigating the crime as a femicide, meaning that it believes the crime was motivated by the fact the victim was a woman.
The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, said an investigation is under way: “We’re working to catch those responsible and find out why this happened.”
But the fact that the crime took place in Jalisco, the state where the feared Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) emerged, led to speculation by some that the cartel may somehow be involved.
Ms Marquez was a Mexican model who began to make a name for herself in 2021 after winning the Miss Rostro (Miss Face) beauty pageant, according to Mexican media reports.
Shortly thereafter, she began creating content on social media. She would share makeup tips and personal care routines, talk about fashion and show off her travels.
Photos of her on private jets and yachts can be seen on her Instagram account, which had more than 223,000 followers at the time of her death.
Ms Marquez also had another 100,000 followers on TikTok.
Although it is unclear exactly what happened, during her final livestream, Ms Marquez said she was waiting for a courier she knew to deliver a gift.
She added that she was a bit worried, because her friend could not see the courier’s face when he arrived.
“Why didn’t he just drop it off (the gift)? Were they going to pick me up (kidnap me) or what?” she wondered aloud to her followers.
While holding a pink stuffed animal, Ms Marquez looked away from the camera and immediately grabbed her chest and belly before collapsing into her chair.
Another woman then took the phone and ended the livestream.
Police arrived at the scene around 18:30 local time (12:30 GMT) and confirmed Ms Marquez’s death, according to the state prosecutor.
Authorities say that at least two men on motorcycles arrived at the salon and one of them asked the victim if she was Valeria. When she replied “yes,” he pulled out a gun and shot her at least twice before fleeing.
Investigators say they are checking CCTV footage and tracking Ms Marquez’s social media accounts for clues as to who the attackers might be.
But the salon’s location in the wealthy Zapopan area of Guadalajara has raised questions about the motive for the crime. While the presence of private security and the tidyness of its streets give the impression that Zapopan is a safe area, in reality it is one of the most violent municipalities in Jalisco. In fact, shootings regularly occur in the area’s luxurious shopping centres.
More than half of the real estate and commercial development in the area is connected to the laundering of drug trafficking money, according to the US Department of Justice.
Jalisco ranks sixth among Mexico’s 32 states, including Mexico City, in terms of homicides, with 906 murders registered since the beginning of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term in October 2024, according to data consulting firm TResearch.
It is also one of the Mexican states most affected by the cartels. It was here, 50 kilometres from Zapopan, that a cartel training centre was found in March, and it is here that 15,000 people have disappeared since 2018.
The same day that Márquez was killed, a former congressman named Luis Armando Córdoba Díaz was murdered just two kilometres away, according to the newspaper Reforma.
According to the state of Jalisco, as many as 90% of crimes are never reported or investigated. The state attorney’s office has also long been accused of having links to cartels, which it denies.
The prosecutor’s office said that so far they have no reason to suspect that Ms Marquez’s murder was ordered or carried out by any of the organised criminal groups operating in the area.
Instead, the office suggested the murderer may have been motivated to kill her because of her gender.
Mexican media outlets had previously published messages in which Ms Marquez blamed her ex-partner if anything happened to her.
Mayor of Zapopan Juan José Frangie said his office had no record of Ms Marquez requesting help from the authorities due to threats against her, adding “a femicide is the worst thing”, according to news agency AFP.
“In response to claims pointing to alleged perpetrators of the femicide in Zapopan, we clarify that there are no direct accusations against any individual in the investigation file,” the Jalisco prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“All statements and clues, including videos and social media posts, are being analysed. The investigation is being conducted under the femicide protocol, with a gender perspective, without revictimisation and in accordance with the principles of legality, impartiality and respect for human rights,” it added.
Gender-based violence is a serious problem in Mexico, a country that ranks fourth in Latin America and the Caribbean for rates of femicide, behind Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
According to the latest data from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), there were 1.3 deaths per every 100,000 women in Mexico in 2023, Reuters reported.
Less than 48 hours before Ms Marquez’s murder, Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez, a mayoral candidate for Morena (the ruling party) in the city of Texistepec, Veracruz, was killed while participating in a political motorcade. Like the influencer’s case, the politician’s murder was recorded by cameras because the event was being live-streamed on Facebook.
