Madrid, June 28 (IANS/EFE) Mexican singer Sergio Vega was shot to death while driving on a highway in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, Mexican media reported.
Vega was heading to Alhuey, where he planned to perform with several other artists, when gunmen who had apparently been following the singer attacked him.
The death of the 40-year-old singer, known as ‘El Shaka’, was confirmed by businessman Jesus Tirado, who was organising the concert at which Vega was to perform and which has been cancelled.
Judicial officials also confirmed the killing of Vega, who was travelling with another person at the time of the attack, the Mexico City daily El Universal reported on its website Sunday.
Vega denied a few hours before his death that he had been the target of an attack.
The singer said he had bolstered his security in light of the attacks on musicians in Mexico in recent years.
Singer Carlos Ocaranza was gunned down last August as he left a bar where he had given a concert in the western city of Guadalajara and his agent was seriously wounded.
Ocaranza, who was related to a famous singer murdered in 2006, had just finished performing at the La Revancha bar in the city’s western section when two gunmen shot him and fled on a motorcycle.
Investigators found 12 bullet casings from 9 mm weapons at the crime scene.
Ocaranza’s agent, Jorge Altamirano Pelayo, was wounded in the attack.
Ocaranza was related to Valentin Elizalde, who was murdered in November 2006 in the border city of Reynosa by drug traffickers apparently unhappy with some of his compositions, the Jalisco state Attorney General’s Office said.
Elizalde and other singers perform what is known in Mexico as grupero music, a genre that includes so-called ‘narcocorridos’ ballads that recount the exploits and travails of drug kingpins.
Reports claim that drug capos pay large sums for the ballads and more than a dozen grupero singers have been murdered since 1992.
In January 2008, Roberto Ignacio del Fierro Lugo, the publicist for Jesus Elizalde, Valentin’s brother, was murdered near a recording studio in the Guadalajara suburb of Zapopan.
Before managing Jesus Elizalde’s public relations, Del Fiero had represented Valentin.
Valentin’s brothers, including Jesus, have stopped playing narcocorridos.
In December 2007, a wave of violence was unleashed against various grupero singers, such as Sergio Gomez, 34, the lead singer of Grammy-nominated band K-PAZ de la Sierra, who was kidnapped and murdered after a concert, and vocalist Zayda Pena Arjona, 28, killed by a gunman who pursued her to the hospital where she was recovering from gunshot wounds.
–IANS/EFE
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