Mexico’s musicians are silenced

I'm happy about what I've done up to now and if I die tomorrow, I will die happy," was the last thing Grammy-nominated singer Sergio Gomez said to his K-Paz de la Sierra bandmate Humberto Duran as they left a concert at 3.30 in the morning of December 2. The next day, Gomez's strangled corpse was found lying by the roadside in his home state of Michoacan. His genitals had been burnt with a cigarette lighter.

This is the latest in a mysterious and brutal series of murders of grupero - or 'country' - musicians in Mexico. Gomez, 34, is the thirteenth to die in the last year and a half. On December 1, Zayda Pena, the flamboyant lead singer of Zayda and the Guilty Ones, was shot in her motel room, and then finished off in hospital after the first bullet failed to kill her. Last week, the body of trumpeter Jose Luis Aquino was found on the roadside, a nylon bag over his head.

Concerts have been cancelled, as grupero musicians find themselves having to face up to the fearful realities of the problems that their ballads describe. Many write narco-corridos, which glamourise drugs and death in a country where more than 1,000 people have died this year in gang violence.

Valentin Elizalde, whose song The Mafioso's Return speaks of 'the thirst for revenge' and 'fighting over nothing more than a few grams', was murdered last year when more than 60 AK-47 rounds were fired at his car.

Like the US rap scene of the early 90s, many of today's grupero stars have forged friendships with underworld figures - an exchange of prestige for authenticity. Some may have been killed because rival drug dealers were offended. But Sergio Gomez, whose songs had schmaltzy titles like My Eternal Secret Love, had no criminal connections. Or so his friends maintain.