Rising Mexican corridos singer Jesús Cárdenas, better known as Chuy Montana, was shot to death Wednesday on a stretch of the Rosarito to Tijuana highway, according to multiple reports.
The body was found handcuffed with gunshot wounds at the roadside, Tijuana’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Fernando Sánchez said Thursday to local media. Police believe he was kidnapped before the murder.
Sánchez said police later confirmed that the victim was a singer. The news site Punto Norte and others reported that the victim was Cárdenas.
A spokesperson with the Baja California Attorney General’s Office couldn’t confirm the identity as of Thursday evening.
No arrests have been made.
Cárdenas was signed by Street Mob Records, owned by the lead singer of the popular regional Mexican band Fuerza Regida, Jesús Ortíz Paz.
“We deeply regret the passing of our colleague and brother Chuy Montana,” the label wrote on its Instagram account. “We stand in solidarity with his family during this time of grief. We kindly request understanding and respect from the media at this difficult moment.”
The prosecutor’s office has not provided information on the possible motive for the attack, and the case remains under investigation.
Last year, Ortíz shared on TikTok the moment he said he signed Cárdenas while he was waiting in line to cross the border from Tijuana to San Ysidro.
Ortíz, who was in the back seat of a vehicle, greeted Cárdenas, who was entertaining people between lanes, and sang to him “Porte de Scarface.” “I wrote the lyrics,” Cárdenas proudly told him. Afterward, Ortíz signed a blank sheet of paper and asked Cárdenas to sign it, too.
“Rest in peace, viejo,” Ortíz wrote Wednesday in a Jan. 29 video of Cárdenas on Instagram.
Chuy Montana has almost 820,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. His 2023 single “Porte de Scarface” has more than 22 million plays.
The singer was also featured in the song “Polvos de Chanel” from Fuerza Regida’s latest album.
In October, Fuerza Regida canceled a concert in Tijuana after a banner with an alleged cartel threat was found in the city. A couple weeks earlier, fellow corridos tumbados artist Peso Pluma faced similar threats and canceled his Tijuana show. And on New Year’s Eve, the Larry Hernández concert in Tijuana was canceled after grenades were thrown outside the venue. No one was injured.
In response to the first series of threats, the Tijuana City Council unanimously approved a municipal code to ban narcocorridos, or musical genres authorities believe glorify violence, from being played in public.
The regulation imposes a sanction to anyone who “broadcasts, exhibits, displays, shows, performs or reproduces music, videos, images or any other similar that promotes the culture of violence or advocates crime or the perpetrators of illicit acts in the presentation of public shows or entertainment.”
Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero reiterated Thursday that the ban will continue for those who sing narcocorridos.
