The disturbing aspect of these killings is how rival cartels continue to find increasingly gruesome ways to settle scores and exert control, leaving their victims in fear and offing aside the sheer number.
READ MORE: El Chapo’s sons respond to cartel dismemberment by murdering three individuals with a ’24 hour notice’.
Los Zetas, established by ex-Mexican Army commandos who abandoned their positions following training from US forces, is among the cartels most associated with the rise in horrifying violence.
In March 2011, they were accountable for the large-scale killing of 193 individuals in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Prior to subjecting them to torture and carrying out their execution, members of the cartel kidnapped innocent individuals from buses, allegedly due to their concerns that the opposing Gulf Cartel was bringing in additional support from neighboring regions.
In a gruesome sport resembling gladiator battles, fresh assassins are trained to engage in deadly fights, where they are coerced to spill blood. Some of the able-bodied men were equipped with hammers and machetes, while the women endured sexual assault.
One Los Zetas member told the Houston Chronicle that they called the sick game “Who is going to be the next hitman?”.
There are also recent instances of individuals’ fatalities being transformed into entertainment for drug cartels.
In a gruesome video from June this year, an unspecified cartel’s hitmen were seen with multiple lifeless corpses in a wooded area.
One of the individuals was donning surgical gloves, clutching the detached visage of one of the casualties.
“Isn’t it stunning?” Inquired a single assassin, as reported by Borderland Beat’s translation of the video, while presenting it to the rest, saying, “Behold this.”
Following this, women will be flocking to you. You will appear stunning with it on, papi. Subsequently, another assassin remarked, at which moment one of the gentlemen had it adorning his face: “Impressive!”.
Among the cartels, it has become increasingly common for videos of execution-style acts to be carried out by Caballero Velázquez Iván, one of the leaders of Los Zetas, earning himself the nickname “El Talibano” in reference to the Taliban.
Other cartels have adopted the technique this year in July, in which members of the Cartel Generation New Jalisco (CJNG) filmed themselves chopping off the heads of three men, as a stark warning to a rival group.
Another man in the clip said, “While struggling to hack through their victim’s neck, we’re coming after you, sons of b*tches,” this will be the fate of every b*tch in Sierra Pájaros.
Other techniques used by cartels throughout the years include necklacing, which involves forcing a petrol-soaked rubber tire around the arms and chest of the victim, resulting in acid dissolving and setting them on fire.
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The Soup Maker, also known as Santiago Lopez Meza, is believed to have dissolved at least 300 human bodies while working for the Sinaloa Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel.
He is currently incarcerated, but at one stage he was included in the FBI’s top 20 most sought-after individuals.