MEXICO CITY — A gunman killed a social media influencer during a livestream in Mexico’s volatile northwestern state of Sinaloa, authorities said Wednesday, a public killing that underscored ongoing violence targeting social media personalities in the Latin American nation.
The influencer, César Gastélum, was killed on Tuesday night in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan, officials said. Mexican authorities implied the killing of the young man was linked to cartel violence but did not blame any particular group.
A video of the moment of his death, which was viewed by The Associated Press, shows him laughing with two other men in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken when two men pull up on a motorcycle. One is seen pulling out a gun and shooting Gastélum. The attackers then flee the scene.
The attack was carried out just blocks away from the local prosecutor’s office during rush hour.
Mexico’s Security Cabinet and local prosecutors said an investigation was ongoing, and that it appeared Gastélum had released some videos in which he “alluded to a faction of a criminal group.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told journalists during her morning news conference on Wednesday that the “perpetrators must be arrested.”
“We must find out why this deplorable homicide occurred,” she said.
Gastélum had more than 650,000 followers on TikTok, and more on Instagram and other social media platforms and would regularly post comedy videos and content layered over Mexican regional music. He at times referred to himself in his videos as “bélico,” a term often used in subcultures in Mexico to imply a connection to cartel culture.
Messages of “rest in peace” were posted on Gastélum’s social media accounts on Wednesday.
Sinaloa has in recent years been ravaged by warring between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. At the height of the fighting, dead bodies would be left across the city marked with a faction’s signature. One of them, Los Chapitos, would regularly leave a pizza or a pizza box on a dead body. The other, Los Mayos, would leave behind a sombrero, and it soon became dangerous to wear the hats in Culiacan as it could signify allegiance to one group.
On Tuesday night, Gastélum was filmed wearing a white sombrero.
On Wednesday, candles were lit on the pavement where he was killed. It was the second time in little more than a year that a content creator was fatally shot by gunmen on a live stream.
In May 2025, 23-year-old beauty influencer Valeria Márquez was shot and killed while doing a TikTok livestream at a beauty salon in the central Mexican state of Jalisco.
The killing comes at a time when Mexico’s government is under mounting pressure by the Trump administration to crack down on cartel violence.
Gastélum’s death is part of a larger trend by criminal groups targeting influencers, especially in regions like Sinaloa and Jalisco dominated by organized crime.
Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said influencers are killed or threatened for a wide range of reasons. In some cases, the targeted influencers may have had ties to one criminal faction in a disputed region, producing social media content for them or having romantic relationships with cartel members. In others, influencers launder money for cartels or disseminate information similar to a journalist.
“Cartels are interested in dictating and controlling … the regions where they operate,” Saucedo said. The aim is to turn them “into channels for disseminating criminal messages.”
___
Associated Press journalist Aarón Ibarra in Culiacan, Mexico, contributed to this report.
___
About the Author
