The bodies of five musicians from the Mexican regional band Grupo Fugitivo have been discovered in Reynosa, a northern city along the Texas border, authorities announced on Thursday.
The band, known for playing at local parties and dances, had been missing since Sunday. According to Tamaulipas state prosecutors, the musicians were kidnapped around 10 pm while en route to a performance venue in an SUV.
The discovery of their bodies on the outskirts of Reynosa has led to the arrest of nine suspects, believed to be members of a faction of the Gulf Cartel, which maintains a strong presence in the city.
While authorities have not yet disclosed the motive behind the killings, they have not denied local media reports suggesting the bodies were burned.
Grupo Fugitivo performed Mexican regional music, a genre that includes styles like corridos and cumbia.
Young artists sometimes pay homage to leaders of drug cartels, often portrayed as Robin Hood-type figures.
It was not immediately clear if the group played such songs or if the artists were simply victims of rampant cartel violence that has eclipsed the city.
But other artists have faced death threats by cartels, while others have had their visas stripped by the United States under accusations by the Trump administration that they were glorifying criminal violence.
The last time the musicians were heard from was the night they were kidnapped, when they told family members they were on the way to the event. After that, nothing else was heard of them.
Their disappearance caused an uproar in Tamaulipas, a state long eclipsed by cartel warfare. Their families reported the disappearances, called on the public for support and people took to the streets in protest.
On Wednesday, protesters blocked the international bridge connecting Reynosa and Pharr, Texas, later going to a local cathedral to pray and make offerings to the disappeared.
Reynosa is a Mexican border city adjacent to the United States and has been plagued by escalating violence since 2017 due to internal disputes among groups vying for control of drug trafficking, human smuggling and fuel theft.
This case follows another that occurred in 2018, when armed men kidnapped two members of the musical group “Los Norteños de Río Bravo,” whose bodies were later found on the federal highway connecting Reynosa to Río Bravo, Tamaulipas.
