Earlier this week, I wrote about a Mexican mayoral candidate who was murdered during a livestream. Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez was out walking the streets in the state of Veracruz, meeting and greeting her supporters as someone filmed the event live for Facebook. One minute she was smiling and hugging a potential constituent, and the next chaos broke out as at least one gunman killed her and a few others.
It's not exactly clear who did it. I've seen reports that one of her opponents in the race was arrested, and I've seen many more blaming members of a drug cartel. Here's the video (warning: some might consider it upsetting):
🇲🇽😱 Mexican Cartel Kills Mayoral Candidate Live on Air
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) May 13, 2025
In the Mexican state of Veracruz, mayoral candidate Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez was shot dead on livestream during a campaign event in the city of Texistepec. Three other people were also killed in the ambush.
The attack… pic.twitter.com/df7Mn4Mk6S
Shortly after we published that story, another headline began circulating about a Mexican beauty influencer who was also murdered during a livestream. Valeria Márquez was at a salon in the state of Jalisco, filming herself for her 113,000 TikTok followers. Earlier in the day, two men visited the salon when she wasn't there and said they had an expensive gift for her.
Márquez was telling this story during this livestream and even wondered if they wanted to kill or kidnap her. Shortly after she talked about it, they came back and gave her a gift, which Fox News reports was Starbucks coffee and a stuffed animal. And shortly after that, she was filming herself again when she was shot during her live video.
Some Mexican media is reporting that the suspect is her ex-boyfriend, a cartel leader who was jealous that her followers would send her gifts. Apparently, before her murder, she talked about how she no longer hangs outs with "thugs" and has cleaned up her life. (Again, I'm warning you that you may find the video below disturbing.)
🚨CONTENT WARNING: Mexican beauty influencer Valeria Marquez, 23, was shot dead during a livestream, allegedly by cartel leader ‘Doble R’ who was jealous of the expensive gifts she received from followers. #mexico #ValeriaMarquez pic.twitter.com/EsArxhBzCU
— Prince Carlton 🇺🇸 (@_PrinceCarlton_) May 17, 2025
These are two totally different yet oddly specific and similar situations that don't just happen every day. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has spoken out on both of them, promising that authorities will get to the bottom of them. However, if you take a look at what Mexican citizens are saying about both murders, she's part of the problem for allowing the cartels to run rampant throughout the country.
Mexico has become increasingly dangerous over the last decade, mostly due to organized crime. If the fact that two separate women were killed within days of each other during live video doesn't prove that, maybe these numbers will.
According to the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP)'s Vision for Humanity, "Between 2015 and 2024, peace in Mexico deteriorated by 13.4%, with many crime indicators significantly worse than a decade ago. The homicide rate increased by 54.7%, and firearm-related crimes rose by 71.2%." The number of missing people has gone up, too, along with the number of clandestine graves. Ironically, the IEP mentions that both political violence and femicide are on the rise. (I could go way more in depth with this topic based on all I've researched this weekend, and maybe I will in a separate article later this week.)
Maybe President Sheinbaum should look to Nayib Bukele for inspiration because it almost sounds like the cartels are running the country much like MS-13 was running El Salvador, at least in certain states.
Anyway, as I said when I wrote about the mayoral candidate earlier this week, the reason I try to shed light on stories like this is that it's the best argument for border security for the United States that I can think of. Wanting to secure our borders is not about keeping Latin Americans or people with "brown skin" out of our country as the left likes to say, and I will double down on that until I can't type another word.
It's about keeping crime at bay. Think of it this way — if your next door neighbors were kind of shifty, the police were at their house constantly, or you saw them committing crimes regularly, would you just unlock your door and tell them to come on in? No one in their right mind would. We should treat our country like we'd treat our own homes.
