Horror as social media influencer Valeria Márquez shot dead during TikTok livestream

A social media influencer was during a livestream in what police are treating as a femicide.

Officers believe Valeria Márquez, 23, was killed because of her gender but have yet to make any arrests. Ms Márquez was shot in the chest and in the head in a beauty salon in , on Tuesday and died instantly.

The young woman appeared to have been speaking to a delivery man off camera during the livestream when she was struck. Ms Márquez, who had nearly 200,000 followers across and TikTok, had said earlier on the livestream that someone came to the salon when she was not there with an “expensive gift” to deliver to her. Ms Márquez, who appeared concerned, said she was not planning to wait for the person to come back.

Just a few hours after her shooting, a former congressman with the Mexican PRI party Luis Armando Córdova Díaz, was also gunned dead in a café in the area. It is unclear if prosecutors in Jalisco - the wider region - are treating her death as a potential femicide but this type of murder is relatively common across Mexico.

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The country is tied with Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia as the countries with the fourth-highest rates of femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the latest data. The Jalisco region, part of central Mexico, is ranked sixth out of Mexico’s 32 states, including Mexico City, for homicides.

Rival cartels have fought bloody wars for territorial control in much of Mexico for several years. It is not confirmed if Ms Márquez was caught up in such conflict but, since her death, tributes have been paid to the woman on social media. Her Instagram page has been flooded by comments mourning her and expressing shock. Ms Márquez regularly shared videos in which she gave beauty and fashion advice and inspiring mantras.

Venting their anger at the assailant, one fan posted: "This case really touched my heart... The wickedness that exists in the hearts of people, envy, lack of self identity among other things, is unbelievable." Another posted: "This is awful. Her videos on social media were very inspiring."

Mexico has enacted a number of local and federal laws in recent years to combat gender-based violence against women, but the country still has one of the highest rates of femicide in the .

Paulina García-Del Moral, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Guelph in , said the violence is the product of a "machismo" culture, ingrained sexism and institutions that resist acknowledging their own responsibility for gender-based violence.

Dr García-Del Moral said: "There’s still a sense of entitlement among a lot of men in Mexico — and elsewhere in Latin America and the world — they feel entitled to women’s bodies. It’s proven to be very resilient and resistant to change."