Mexican Instagram star killed because he made fun of cartel leader

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Rosales, a 17-year-old who found fame posting clips of himself drinking heavily, was reportedly attacked by several heavily armed individuals. His death comes several weeks after he made a video insulting Rubén Oseguera Cervantes – alias "El Mencho" – the 51-year-old boss of the country's fastest-growing and deadliest cartel, the Jalisco Nueva Generación.

Mexican authorities have yet to confirm the motive for the crime or whether the cartel was involved.

Here, Rolling Stone explains what we know about Rosales and El Mencho, and the rumors of how the cartel murdered a viral sensation.

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Cervantes's CJNG emerged less than a decade ago in Mexico, growing apart from the Sinaloa, the Knights Templar, and Los Zetas organizations. The cartel has since been linked to brutal mass murders. In 2011, operatives dumped 35 tortured bodies into the streets of Veracruz, a port city on the Gulf of Mexico. Two years later, they raped and killed a 10-year-old girl, setting her on fire because they believed she was the daughter of a rival cartel leader. (She wasn't.) "We've seen it become very bloody, and a lot of people attribute that to El Mencho himself," Scott Stewart, a senior cartel analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, told Eells. "Wherever they try to muscle in, it creates bodies." Arrests and turf wars have weakened cartels, but infighting inspires violence. In 2016, following the recapture of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the country recorded 20,000 killings, a 20 percent rise in the homicide rate. The CJNG is linked to thousands of such murders. Globally, the CJNG has established drug trafficking routes across six continents by selling low-cost methamphetamine – rather than higher-prices cocaine and heroin – in Asian and European markets, which allowed them to amass over $20 billion in sales.

Authorities have few photos of the elusive El Mencho today. Still, narco groups sing about his enthusiasm for motorbikes and cockfights. "Over 25 years of working in Mexico, you'd run into guys who had met Chapo, would would talk about him," a former DEA agent told Eells. "But with Mencho, you don't hear that. He's kind of a ghost."

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Rosales's death with a recent video of him ridiculing El Mencho, in which he says, "El Mencho a mí me pela la verga" or "El Mencho, peel my cock," according to El Pais. (A common insult, it's essentially the verbal equivalent of a dismissive jack-off motion.)

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Witnesses are telling Mexican police that Rosales was targeted at the bar Mentados Cantaros, local newspapers reported, according to the IBTimes. Either four or five individuals – the information differs depending on the media outlet – were seen in a black truck, before shooting 15 bullets in the bar, killing Rosales and injuring the manager, who remains in serious condition at a nearby hospital.

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