MEXICAN MUSICIANS TARGETED

Artists' Live in Fear of Brutal Slayings That Mirror Rise in Drug-Gang Violence

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.

None of the cases has 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 came when Sergio Gomez, the founder
and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra, was kidnapped while leaving a
concert in his home state of Michoacan early Sunday morning, Dec. 2.

His body was found the next day dumped on a roadside outside Morelia,
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, Froylan Gomez,
said. "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 songs known as narcocorridos, ballads glorifying
the shadow world of drug dealers and hit men, which sometimes offend
other drug dealers and hit men. In still other cases, as the
musicians' fame grew, they seemed to have become embroiled with
criminals unwittingly.

"Sometimes there is a direct relationship between the musician and
the narcotics trafficker," Miguel Olmos, a musicologist at the
College of the Northern Border in Tijuana, said. "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."

The killings have been particularly brutal. Dec. 13, Jose Luis
Aquino, 33, a trumpet player with Los Conde, was found beaten to
death in Oaxaca state, with a plastic bag over his head and his hands
and feet tied.

Dec. 1, Zayda Pena, the raven-haired lead singer of Zayda y los
Culpables, was shot in a motel room in Matamoros in Tamaulipas state.
She survived the attack, but the killers followed her to the hospital
and finished her off with two more bullets as she lay in bed. She was 28.

"We are in shock, because it's a weird thing that in one week three
members of the grupero wave would be killed," Jose Angel Medina, the
leader of the group Patrulla 81, said after the recent killings. "We
are afraid because we are super exposed and this could keep going. We
don't know who's next."

Entire groups have been targeted as well. Four members of Los
Padrinos de la Sierra were shot and killed in Durango state June 9.
Feb. 19, assassins with machine guns attacked the members of Tecno
Banda Fugaz in the town of Puruaran, Michoacan, killing four and wounding one.

All the victims played various genres of Mexican country music,
distinguished by its oompah beat and emotional lyrics about
everything from unrequited love to bandits.

Some were known particularly for their narcocorridos. One of Pena's
hits, "Tiro de Gracia," was a reference to gangland executions.
Elizalde also was well known for his ballads about bandits and drug kingpins.

After the slayings, some musicians have canceled concerts. Others
said the killings made them nervous about appearing in public.

"These assassinations have been done with a lot of cruelty and this
makes us tense," said Jorge Medina, a singer with La Arrolladora Banda, on TV.