The Unsolved Murder of One of Mexico’s Biggest Rappers Has Fans Searching for Justice

GUADALAJARA, Mexico—As the clock inched closer to midnight of Mexican independence day, thousands of people descended on a monument in the city of Guadalajara, repeatedly chanting in unison — “Lefty! Lefty! Lefty!”

Lefty SM, an uber popular Mexican rapper known for often draping himself in the country’s flag as he performed, was executed less than two weeks before on September 2 in his house in the suburb of Zapopan. Three gunmen forcefully entered his home on a Saturday night and shot Lefty, real name Juan Carlos Sauceda, in front of his wife, according to authorities. His murder, like many in Mexico, remains unsolved just over a month later. While initial media reports insinuated that it was a robbery gone wrong, Lefty's wife suggested it was a targeted attack." 

A who’s who of artists from Mexico’s rap scene declared that they would be arriving at the well-known roundabout on Guadalajara’s lively Chapultepec street to mourn Lefty, and unite in a rally for justice, inviting anyone hurting to join them. Together, they’d sing Lefty’s megahit rap ballad Por Mi Mexico Remix (For My Mexico Remix) at midnight. The song, released just nine days before his murder, already has over 60 million views on Youtube and featured some of Mexico’s biggest hip hop stars. The track is a remix of the already popular original 2022 version by Lefty SM and Santa Fe Klan, arguably the most prominent Mexican rapper of the moment who’s collaborated with artists like Snoop Dogg, and appeared on the Wakanda Forever soundtrack. 

Legions of fans, friends, and families showed up too, with conservative estimates of around 10,000 people attending, many from local motorcycle chapters (MCs). Engines roared in all directions, circles forming in the street, where motorcycles took turns popping wheelies and performing tricks. Suburbans and trucks parked on the corners, flood lights brightly shining.

“He’ll never die. Lefty’s always going to be eternal,” said Adrián Castañeda, riding in the back of a truck with several of his friends doing circles around the roundabout, waving a flag, waiting to sing “Por Mi Mexico Remix”. “It’s a jam, the truth, it represents all Mexicans, the pride of being Mexican.” 

Mexican Independence Day begins each September 16 across the country with politicians shouting the famed Grito De Independencia (the cry of independence) at midnight—“¡Viva México!” (long live Mexico), three times loudly — from the nation’s president in Mexico City’s historic Zocalo, to state governors like that of Jalisco in the downtown plaza of its capital Guadalajara. 

A few miles away from where the Jalisco state governor would give his grito, the rappers decided to host their own “grito”, said Neto Peña, a Guadalajara based musician and a close friend of Lefty’s who helped spearhead the event.

“It really is a celebration in honor of Lefty, it is a cry for justice, a cry for love, for respect,” Neto Pena, who's featured on the “Por Mi Mexico Remix”, told VICE News. “So what we want most is to promote peace.”

The buses moved through the throngs of people, led by Neto Peña and the other musicians featured on “Por Mi Mexico Remix”: C-Kan, MC Davo, and Dharius, a founding member of seminal 2000s Mexican hip hop group Cartel de Santa. Other influential rappers like Gera MX, Tiro Loko, and El Pinche Mara who collaborated with Lefty SM rode along, waving Mexican flags and saluting the crowd. Along the side of one bus, written in giant letters the hashtag #JusticiaPorLefty (Justice for Lefty).

At midnight, the crowd erupted in communal song, hollering the lyrics to the hook of “Por Mi Mexico.”

Soy mexicano esa es mi bandera (I’m Mexican, this is my flag)

Yo la levanto por donde quiera (I’ll fly it wherever I want)

Verde blanco rojo hasta que muera (Green, white, red, until I die)

El barrio prendido ya quemo afuera (The hood lights up, it’s now burning beyond.)

“(The song) became an anthem of Mexican rap forever,” said Neto Peña.

“Fucking Envious People.”

Police have said little about Lefty’s death since their initial press release. The three men who allegedly arrived at his house at 10:50 that night and killed him have not been publicly identified, and no arrests have been made.

After some initial media reports that it was a botched robbery, Lefty’s wife Ezy Mary disputed that in a social media post hours after his death: “in reality, they came to kill you, fucking envious people.”

She claimed that he didn’t open the door, and that they came to their bedroom on the second floor, and pulled them out.

“You weren't involved in anything, much less were you looking for beefs, always doing what was best for me and your daughters,” she wrote. “If they knew what he worked for and struggled through to fulfil his dream and you cut my love’s wings.”

A month after the crime, the cops have released hardly any new information, although a house within the same gated community where Lefty lived in Guadalajara was raided by police on September 13. It’s suspected that police may know the identity of at least one of the three assailants, but no arrests have been made.

Neto Peña lamented how people were “inventing stuff” on social media and YouTube, “a lot of speculation, a lot of gossip, a lot of bullshit.”

“When it is possible, when it is correct, we want [the public] to know how it happened and what has happened, and how he went out—like a hero defending his family,” said Neto Peña. “Well, the authorities are investigating, but we do know that he defended his family and protected them as he always did.”

Video later emerged of someone filming outside Lefty’s house in the minutes after he was shot, and appear to be attempting to get him in a vehicle to go to the hospital, his daughter being carried and crying loudly at one point.

“He was loyal, he was a father, a born dad,” said Neto Peña. “I feel like he was born for that, because he was happy with his daughters.” 

Lefty SM was living his dream in Guadalajara with his family, which has become a hub for the country’s rap scene in recent years. He’d moved from his hometown of San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora on the Arizona border to pursue music and soon after was noticed by some producers who worked with the Guadalajara-based Alzada record label. Neto Peña, who’s also on Alzada and recorded numerous tracks with Lefty, remembered him as someone who was “very authentic,” and describing him as “direct”, “clever”, “funny”, a “a hard worker, rustic” type who could fix or build almost anything, his hands well worn from years as a handy man and other manual labor. 

Lefty was "reserved,” said Neto Peña. “In other words, his image was deceiving...he was always seeing everything, listening to everything, learning, absorbing.”

The outpouring of support after his death was staggering from musicians in the Spanish music scene—perhaps comparable to the impact of Nipsey Hussle’s 2019 death on many within the English language genre—with numerous artists recounting how Lefty influenced them as both musicians and people. 

Within the rap scene in Mexico, and especially Guadalajara, Lefty was a beloved figure, collaborating with nearly every major hip hop star in the country, from Alemán to Santa Fe Klan. He also crossed genres, sometimes recording with popular Mexican regional singers like El Komander and Luis R Conriquez. Just prior to his death, Lefty recorded a still unreleased song with Peso Pluma, the Mexican superstar corrido tumbado singer whose 2023 has included performing on Coachella's main stage, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon!, and the MTV Music Awards.

“Here in Guadalajara was where there was a lot of brotherhood, a lot of unity between rappers, there is a lot of history in Guadalajara, good and bad, it hasn’t always been perfect,” said Neto Peña, who was born in Guadalajara, before growing up in the northern cities of Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo. He returned to Guadalajara around a decade ago, and said the city and surrounding area are “definitely more dangerous than before.”

If Mexico City is sort of a hybrid of New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C, Guadalajara is more like Chicago: artistic forward thinking cities with a dark underbelly, known for having hosted the glory days of some of the most notorious gangsters of all time. Chicago had Al Capone; Guadalajara had Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in his early years. Recently, Guadalajara became the bastion of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG for its Spanish acronym) and its founder Nemesio Oseguera, alias El Mencho. Although El Mencho’s whereabouts are unknown and he’s thought to be hiding in rural areas of western Mexico, both his son and wife were arrested in Guadalajara in 2015 and 2021 respectively. Over the past decade, Guadalajara has become one of the disappearance capitals of Mexico. The CJNG has been accused of using extermination houses around the city to disappear enemies over the past few years while fighting with rival gangs and breakaway factions.

The city’s rap scene has also been mixed up in the ensuing bloodbath at times, perhaps most infamously in April 2018. That month, a popular local rapper called Mr. Yosie Locote was found dead in an empty lot, a note pinned to his chest with a screwdriver that said he was killed by the CJNG for being connected to a rival gang. Three days later, another rapper named Christian Palma, known as Qba, was arrested for being employed by the CJNG. He reportedly helped dissolve the bodies of three local film students who were mistakenly kidnapped and killed a few weeks before, in a case that provoked outrage across the country and condemnation from heavyweights of the Mexican film community like Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón.

But Neto Peña adamantly baulked at the notion that Lefty SM was mixed up in anything related to crime.

“If there’s anyone who is not involved in anything, someone that never went out to party, at home all day with their family, making music, playing or something, but at home, not running around with other girls, someone who is not involved in anything because I know he had nothing to do with it—it was Lefty,” said Neto Peña. “It’s not an exaggeration. In his words, he was an example to follow, he was very disciplined.”

Neto Peña didn’t want Lefty’s murder to just be dismissed by authorities as another dead rapper. It was exactly what Lefty’s lyrics talked about in his verse in the “Por Mi Mexico Remix”: being stigmatized, cops harassing him and others like him for the way they look, “just for my presence,” he raps in Spanish, “to la dick this system, that wants to see us below.” 

Lefty didn’t see being from the barrio as anything negative, but a place where you learn life lessons that can make you a good person. Neto Peña said that was why so many of Lefty’s songs talked about the pride of being Mexican from any circumstance, and why he often brought the flag on stage, because he saw himself as “El Super Mexicano” — The Super Mexican. 

“A hero from the barrio,” said Neto Peña.

“Hero from the Barrio”

The location of Lefty’s celebration wasn’t an accident. It took place at The Monumento a los Niños Héroes, a tower on a traffic circle in Guadalajara. In recent years, the monument was unofficially renamed as the Glorieta de Las y Los Desaparecidos, (the roundabout to the disappeared), where the base of the monument is plastered with posters of the faces of missing people from the region. 

While protests often meet at the intersection, this was less a demonstration, than a celebration. At least the rappers hoped. They’d posted numerous times on their social media to not shoot off guns or drink or fight, because it was a peaceful event, and there would be children there.

Nine-year-old Brandon Silva Jimenez attended with his parents, wearing a LeBron James Los Angeles Lakers jersey like Lefty SM in the music video for Por Mi Mexico Remix. It’s his favorite song and Lefty was his favorite rapper, he said, “because he talks a lot about things in Mexico, I like how he sings.” The boy wanted to be a rapper like Lefty when he grew up, he said smiling, “a big one.” 

Tania Perez, 23, went to the event with her mother and toddler daughter, all three holding handmade signs in Spanish; “we’ll remember you forever” one said besides a photo of Lefty. When she found out that he died, she was “sad. It was something really heavy that I can't get used to.” Perez said her favorite song was Que Bonita “because of the words he says, and because it’s dedicated to his wife.” 

But it certainly wasn’t mostly children who were there, the crowd was a true hodgepodge and people each had their own reason for attending. Alex Ruiz, 32, wore a T-shirt with the hook from the song that he made for the event. He didn’t know Lefty, but said he seemed like he “was a good person and he didn’t deserve what happened.”

“It’s horrible, I cried,” Ruiz said about the death. “I also have two daughters and knowing that he also left behind a family, and this is something very brutal to me.”

A 16-year-old who only gave his first name as Miguel Ángel and his neighborhood, Santa Lucía, sat on a motorcycle, smoking a cigarette. He liked Lefty’s songs because his lyrics portrayed the reality of his neighborhood “because those things happen to you, it’s tough there.” But he wasn’t upset when Lefty was killed, because also in his hood, ”those are things that happen.” 

Victor Ahumada, 18, wearing a Mexican national team soccer jersey, didn’t know what to expect at midnight but hoped the event would “promote a period of peace.” 

“Because what is being experienced here, throughout Mexico, is not good or is not comfortable, that girls can’t go out in certain clothes. And let's hope that this leads to a meaningful peace, because a lot is needed here in Guadalajara, and throughout Jalisco.”

“Without You”

Lefty’s death was mourned and celebrated across Mexico. In his home town of San Luis Río Colorado his funeral was a parade worthy of a diplomat. Other “gritos” appeared in a few towns and cities as well on September 16. Murals of Lefty popped up around the country, from Silao, Guanajuato to Mazatlan, Sinaloa, and of course, Guadalajara.

The musicians’ grito at the monument to the disappeared basically went off without a hitch, peacefully, without guns and drama, no problems, no beefs. 

Neto Peña said that Mexicans “have gone through so many things together, tragedies and things, that have brought the heart out of the Mexican people, because even with so much corruption, so much crime, so much insecurity, the culture is good, the people are good.”

“Here in Mexico there are many values in the barrio that your mother teaches you: to respect, to be loyal. And if anyone had all this it was my carnal, Lefty. And if anyone reinforced and promoted this Mexican pride, it was him,” said Neto Peña. “I think it's important to know about corruption, narcos, all that, but we can't do anything about it. Fortunately, the people in Mexico are not all like that.”

Since Lefty’s death, the words to songs have taken on new meaning, said Neto Peña. One collaboration released earlier this year with Lefty and another close friend and label mate Yoss Bones about past relationships, Sin Ti (Without You), hits differently, because “it’s about someone that’s not there anymore.”

Neto Peña posted a video of himself singing the hook in his studio on a piano after Lefty’s death.

Por favor, dame solo un motivo. (Please give me just one reason.)

Para seguir con esto, pa' sentirme vivo. (To continue with this, to feel alive.)

Porque sin ti no puedo, no encuentro sentido. (Because with you I can’t, I can’t find meaning.)

Quiero seguir contigo. (I want to continue with you.)

Follow Nathaniel Janowitz on X at @ngjanowitz