Mexico - September 2026

On 2 August authorities in Mexico’s Jalisco state announced the arrest of a suspect in a high-profile femicide case. The case, which occurred in the metropolitan area of Jalisco’s state capital, Guadalajara, in May last year, saw a social media influencer shot dead while livestreaming on TikTok. The murder shone a spotlight on the issue of gender violence and piled pressure on the government led by President Claudia Sheinbaum to demonstrate how it was tackling femicide. The breakthrough in the case comes as Sheinbaum has recently introduced legislation in an attempt to combat femicides and other gender-related violence.

The Jalisco state attorney general’s office announced the arrest of Iván ‘N’, whom it said had been arrested on 1 August for being “a possible accomplice” in the murder of influencer Valeria Márquez. The arrest came as the federal public security minister, Omar García Harfuch, announced on 31 July that authorities were searching for a former romantic partner of Márquez’s in relation to the case, Francisco ‘N’. Francisco is the son of Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala, alias ‘R1’, an alleged leader of a violent cell of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) who was arrested over a high-profile political killing on 30 July. Harfuch stated that Francisco had “threatened her [Márquez] on several occasions, and everything indicates… that the son asked his father, ‘R1’, to commit the femicide”.

Scrutiny will remain high on the progress of the case, not least given that, on 15 July, President Sheinbaum presented a bill to create a new law to prevent, investigate, punish, and provide compensation for femicide. The bill aims to standardise the penal process for femicide across the country’s 32 states. If approved by congress, this would provide Mexico with the first nationwide legal framework by which to counter impunity for gender-motivated homicides. The bill is an expansion of a previous piece of legislation presented in March, which paved the way for the creation of a law that will standardise the classification and prosecution of femicide across all states and require that investigations into the murders of women be analysed as femicide from the outset.

The reform outlines a penalty of 50 to 70 years in prison for femicide, as well as a list of aggravating circumstances that increase the length of a sentence by 50%, including if the victim is disabled, pregnant, or a human rights activist, and if the perpetrator is a public official. In addition to legal penalties for offenders, such as a loss of custody and inheritance rights, the bill aims to provide support to “indirect victims” of femicide, such as the children of the victims. Ingrid Gómez Saracibar, the deputy minister for the right to a life free of violence in Mexico’s women’s ministry, emphasised the importance of “comprehensive care for orphaned children and adolescents,” including access to mental health services and other support.

Finally, the bill aims to create a preventive framework for femicidal violence through the national system to prevent, address, punish, and eradicate violence. This will see the creation of awareness-raising campaigns, technical support groups, and a national registry of children orphaned by femicide through a series of information campaigns and public policy initiatives.

Combatting femicide and gender-related violence remains a major aim of Sheinbaum’s, Mexico’s first female president. While some progress has been made on the issue in recent years, she has pledged to do more. On 25 July, Mexico’s national public security ministry (SSPC) released a report on violence against women that indicated a bell-curved trend in femicide victims within the last decade. Since January 2015, rates of the crime increased to reach a peak in July 2021 of 112 victims, then slowly declined to 46 femicides in the month of June 2026. While Sheinbaum noted that the average daily number of femicides had dropped by 36% between 2021 (2.8) and 2026 so far (1.8), she declared that the objective is for there “not to be a single femicide in the country.”

However, while the bill is a sign of progress, there are doubts that it will be sufficient to address the problem. Indeed, Senator Alejandra Barrales Magdaleno of the leftist opposition Movimiento Ciudadano (MC) party asserted during an April senate session that the reform is a positive step for women, but that the “problem is not going to be solved simply with this project”, calling for “more profound action”.

Influencers

The progress in Márquez’s case came as another social media influencer was killed in Mexico on 4 August. César Gastélum was livestreaming on TikTok with friends in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa state, when men on a motorbike shot him dead. Gastélum’s murder has been linked to messages he issued from his social media accounts in favour of a Cártel de Sinaloa faction two years ago. However, his exact connection with the criminal group remains unknown. According to US-based non-profit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), there have been 20 attacks against influencers in Sinaloa since 2024, resulting in 14 deaths.