(NewsNation) — According to prosecutors in Reynosa, Mexico, authorities have arrested nine suspects in connection with the disappearance and killing of the five members of the music group, Grupo Fugitivo.
Those nine suspects are believed to be part of a faction called the Gulf Cartel.
Grupo Fugitivo played “narcocorrido” music, a sub-genre that sometimes pays homage to drug cartel leaders, depicting them as Robin Hood-like figures. However, it’s unclear if Grupo Fugitivo played these types of songs.
Authorities say it’s still unclear why the Gulf Cartel would have targeted the band.
Authorities say the band members were kidnapped last weekend while traveling to a venue where they’d been hired to play.
According to family members, before their disappearance, the band was hired to put on a concert but then arrived to find a vacant lot.
Authorities made the gruesome discovery of the five bodies in Reynosa, near the Texas-Mexico border, an area that has faced escalating violence in recent years as different cartels strive to gain control of drug trafficking and human smuggling there.
While authorities didn’t confirm what condition the bodies were found in, they also did not deny local media reports that they had been burned.
Additionally, some relatives of the band members say that at some point, they had received ransom demands for them.
“After their kidnapping, they were taken to a property near the Aquiles Serdan neighborhood, where the previously mentioned security and justice personnel conducted an operation,” Irving Barrios Murica, Tamapaulis State Prosecutor, said in a media conference.
“The operation is still ongoing, forensic services personnel are working at the location. At the moment, there are elements that suggest this is the place where they were unfortunately killed,” he added.
While the details are being pieced together, violence against music groups is common in Mexico.. Sometimes, when a group praises a rival cartel, it can put the musicians in the middle of turf battles between the criminal groups.
In April, the U.S. State Department revoked the visas of the band Los Alegres Del Barranco for glorifying the head of the CJNG cartel ‘El Mencho’ during a concert.