MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - No sooner had 23-year-old beauty influencer Valeria Marquez been murdered on a TikTok livestream than the Mexican rumor mill started. Comments poured in on social media blaming her for her own death: She was involved in shady business, her ex-boyfriend was a narco, she had it coming, they said.
By Friday, the media and politicians were already moving on. Marquez seems destined to become one in a long line of Mexican women whose murder briefly shocks the conscience only to recede into the background until the next gruesome crime happens.
"It sort of reflects a level of saturation, a level of societal acceptance of these sorts of killings," said Gema Kloppe-Santamaria, a sociologist at University College Cork in Ireland who studies gender-based violence in Mexico.
"There's a lot of re-victimization that I think allows people to say, 'Let's move on. This is something that won't happen to us. It doesn't happen to good girls. It doesn't happen to decent Mexican women.'"
Marquez, who had nearly 200,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, was known for her videos about beauty and makeup. On Tuesday, she clutched a stuffed toy and livestreamed from the beauty salon where she worked in the state of Jalisco, when a male voice in the background asked "Hey, Vale?"
"Yes," Marquez replied, just before muting the sound on the livestream.
Moments later, she was shot dead. A person appeared to pick up her phone, with their face briefly showing on the livestream before the video ended.
Almost immediately, local media honed in on a man they identified as Marquez’s ex-boyfriend, who they said was a regional leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels. Local media shared alleged text messages between the couple that appeared to show the ex-boyfriend threatening Marquez because she ignored him.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the identity of the ex-boyfriend or contact him for comment. Marquez's family declined to speak with Reuters.
The Jalisco state prosecutor said Marquez’s murder is being investigated as a possible femicide - the killing of women or girls for reasons of gender - but declined to say whether Marquez’s ex-boyfriend was a suspect.
"Anyone associated with this girl, whether friends, relatives, acquaintances, or boyfriends, is being investigated or interviewed," Salvador Gonzalez de los Santos said in a press conference on Friday.
