Mexico’s government is urging broadcasters, websites and social media users to avoid distributing a music video by grupero singer Gerardo Ortiz that it says promotes violence against women.
At the center of the controversy is Ortiz’s video “Fuiste Mia,” or “You Were Mine.”
It depicts Ortiz finding his female companion in bed with another man. He shoots the man in the head, ties the woman up and locks her in the trunk of a car. As police close in, he lights the vehicle on fire.
In a statement late Tuesday, the Interior Department urged media outlets and the public “to avoid distributing material like this that trivializes and promotes violence against women.”
The video has had more than 20 million views.
Ortiz’s website had no number listed for his representatives, but local media cited a press statement issued by his managers saying he had no intent to incite any kind of behavior.
The statement said Ortiz’s music “has touched the combative spirit of the people, with different stories that come from people’s daily reality, without ever having been an invitation to any kind of behavior in particular.”
The singer “doesn’t try to do anything other than show a vision of everyday reality,” it said.
On Wednesday, it emerged that police shown in the video arriving at the scene but failing to save the victims were apparently real officers who used their uniforms, guns and vehicles during filming. Mayor Pablo Lemus Navarro of the Guadalajara suburb of Zapopan tweeted that three municipal policemen were fired for allegedly appearing in the video and that prosecutors had been notified of the “unfortunate events.”
Gruesome killings of women have been an everyday reality in Mexico for some time, at least in some parts of the country.
In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, there were more than 100 eerily similar killings of women in the 1990s and early 2000s. The victims’ bodies were often found weeks or months later, raped, strangled and dumped in the desert or vacant lots.
On the outskirts of Mexico City in neighboring Mexico state, more than 1,700 women were slain between 2005 a 2014.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that authorities said Wednesday that real police officers were in the video.