KNIFE-WIELDING
gangs and police in full body armour on the beach aren't things you
expect to see on holiday.
But it's a disturbingly common scene in dozens of Brit holiday
hotspots in Mexico, as organised drug cartels are currently locked in
a violent war that is getting more brutal by the day.
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Credit: DEA
This weekend it was revealed that a Mexican drug lord dubbed the new
'El Chapo' is ordering the slaughter of pregnant women and kids amid
the country’s coke wars.
Cartel kingpin Nemesio Cervantes – or El Mencho - has become the
United States' new “most wanted” with a $10million bounty slapped on
his head.
The ruthless cocaine lord is believed to be even more violent
than El Chapo and does not even take mercy of women or children.
Specialist DEA agent Kyle Mori told Latin American news channel
Univision: “They are very violent.
“Decapitations, dissolving bodies in acid, public executions, ripping
out the heart, killing women and children, bombings against people
“It happens almost every day. El Chapo was violent, but El Mencho has
taken it to a new level.”
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Women are now fair game to El Mencho as he wages war against
rivals
In the first half of 2019, there were a staggering 17,608 gangland
murders - with 94 people being brutally killed every single day.
Last year saw a total of 33,341, making it the bloodiest year on
record, but this year is set to be the most violent of all time.
While the latest homicide statistics are horrific, the methods
cartels use to keep rivals in check is just as terrifying.
In recent years, large cartels have splintered into smaller factions
who then battle for previously shared turf, escalating the violence,
and prompting kidnaps and torture.
Here, we reveal the backstories and brutal characteristics of the
major cartels in Mexico who maintain their grip on the nation with
psychopathic ruthlessness.
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Motorway bridge hangings and coordinated massacres of police
Name: The Jalisco New Generation (CJNG)
Main turf: West
Enemies: Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, Zeta Old School, Shadow
Group, Knights Templar, Nueva Plaza
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Heavily armed members of the CJNG calling themselves 'the
warriors' of the cartel
Led by El Mencho, the CJNG has a reputation for unimaginable, extreme
violence, starting with the torture and massacre of 35 people in
Veracruz in 2011.
And in 2015 the CJNG ambushed and murdered 15 Mexican cops in one of
the deadliest attacks on law enforcement in the country.
They're known to have military-grade weapons including
rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) which they used to shoot down a
military helicopter in 2015.
The bodies of 44 missing people – many of them women - were last
month been found buried in a water well in an area of Mexico notorious
for brutal drug cartel executions.
The grim discovery was made after locals in Jalisco state – where El
Mencho’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel(CJNG) is based - complained of
a foul smell and when the well was dug up, the remains were found
stuffed into 119 black bags.
In August, the CJNG hung another 19 other bodies from bridges — with
10 more dismembered bodies full of bullets found nearby.
As well as the local drug trade, the brutal slayings were said to
also be over control of the region's billion-dollar avocado industry.
In May, video shared online showed at least 20 trucks marked with the
CJNG logo carrying heavily armed men in black — that night, three cops
and 10 others were killed as the convoy carried out a massacre in
Michoacán.
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Bodies hanging from a motorway overpass along with a banner
bearing a warning from the CJNG
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A burnt out cop car being inspected the morning after the CJNG
murdered 15 officers in an ambush
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The twisted wreckage of a military helicopter shot down by the
CJNG in 2015 - the crash killed six soldiersCredit:
Reuters
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Cartel members from the CJNG surrounding Adolfo Mendoza Valencia
shortly before they killed himCredit:
Central European News
Mexico’s most powerful criminal
gang holds rival cartel member hostage before hanging him from a highway
overpass
Chainsaw beheadings & drugging torture victims
Name: The Sinaloa Cartel
Main turf: Northwest
Enemies: CJNG, Juarez Cartel, Los Zetas
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Alleged members of the Sinaloa Cartel arrested on smuggling charges in
2010Credit: AFP - Getty
The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the biggest and most powerful drug
trafficking cartels in the world - and also the focus of Netflix's
Narcos: Mexico.
It is an offshoot of the Guadalajara cartel, and they grew to
international notoriety in 1985 when they kidnapped and murdered
undercover DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985.
The gang members blamed Camarena for giving up information which led to
an $8billion marijuana plantation being destroyed by authorities.
So over 30 hours, they broke Camarena's skull, jaw, nose, cheekbones and
windpipe, injecting him with drugs to make sure he was conscious
throughout the torture.
The unprecedented backlash from US police led to the gang breaking up
into different groups, with notorious El
Chapo ("Shorty") and his partner choosing to stay in Sinaloa.
But with tensions high, war between the splintered Sinaloa groups
immediately kicked off, with El Chapo sending 40 gunmen to a party in
Tijuana in 1992 where nine people were killed.
And their chilling reputation for violence has only grown since.
They've killed women and children, and have been known to rape family
members of their rivals and force them to watch.
In 2010, a video surfaced showing El Chapo beheading a rival with a
chainsaw before cutting the face off the head and stitching it to a
football.
The Sinaloa Cartel is known to favour dissolving the remains of their
victims in vats of acid.
With its vast resources, the group has been known to use Boeing 747s,
narco submarines and container ships to move multiple-tonne shipments of
cocaine, heroin and fentanyl into North America.
But the group is also famous for its drug "super tunnels", huge
underground passageways equipped with lifts and electric rail cars dug
across the US-Mexico border to move drugs into the States.
The Sinaloa Cartel is known to operate in 17 Mexican states and 50
countries around the world.
Its main enemy is the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), who they've
been locked in a horrific nationwide war with for overall supremacy.
Even with El Chapo behind bars for the rest of his life, the Sinaloa
Cartel remains one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico.
Last year, there were 2,513 killings in tourist hotspot Tijuana, where
the Sinaloa are desperately trying to keep control of the city from other
cartels' incursions.
And last Saturday, Mexican customs intercepted a 26 tonne shipment of
fentanyl — the most dangerous opioid known to man — which was being sent
to the Sinaloa Cartel from China.
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Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán is now serving a sentence of life without
parole in America's most secure prison after previously escaping jail
in Mexico twiceCredit: Getty -
Contributor
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A homemade fibreglass narco submarine - like the ones used by the
Sinaloa CartelCredit: Getty
Images - Getty
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A motorbike modified to run on rails which El Chapo used in his second
prison escape - this is the tunnel dug underneath his cellCredit: Reuters
Amazing footage shows the moment a
Coast Guardsman leap onto a moving ‘narco-submarine’ full of cocaine
Mexico’s most powerful criminal
gang holds rival cartel member hostage before hanging him from a highway
overpass
Gladiator-style fights to the death
Name: Los Zetas
Main turf: East and South
Enemies: Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel
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Members of the Zetas being presented in Mexico City by the navy - they
were alleged of being involved in the San Fernando massacreCredit: Associated Press
In all of Mexico, there's only one group more feared and considered more
brutal than the CJNG.
The Zetas started out as 31 deserters from the Mexican Army's Airborne
Special Forces Group who became assassins and bodyguards for the Gulf
Cartel.
Their specialised training and horrific tactics made them feared as one
of the most violent and sophisticated paramilitary groups in Mexico.
Unlike other cartels which use corruption to maintain regional control,
when the Zetas broke off to form their own cartel in the mid-2000s, they
maintained power almost entirely with fear and violence.
In 2010, the Zetas killed 72 undocumented immigrant workers in the San
Fernando massacre.
They were believed to have been killed for refusing to pay a ransom or
join the Zetas.
Gang members shot all 72 victims in the back of the head in a warehouse,
one by one, including several pregnant women.
An 18-year-old boy survived being shot in the neck and played dead before
running 22km to get help at a military checkpoint.
At the time, it was the worst atrocity of the Mexican Drug War.
Then, the next year, 193 people were murdered in the Second San Fernando
Massacre and buried in eight secret mass graves after they were abducted
from hijacked buses.
The Zetas raped female kidnapped victims and made males fight to the
death with other hostages with hammers and machetes.
Survivors of the sick bloodsport were forced to become hitmen for the
cartel, whereas the losers went into the mass graves.
Afterwards, gang members said they'd killed all the bus users because
they feared their rivals, the Gulf Cartel, would use them as
reinforcements.
The motorway from which the buses were stopped at a fake military
checkpoint became known as the "Highway of Death" to locals.
Starting in 2012, the Zetas heavily fragmented into independent localised
factions, no longer capable of large-scale international drug trafficking.
The horrific mass killing at a bar in Coatzacoalcos this week took place
in a Zeta-controlled area.
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The horrific scene in the aftermath of the first San Fernando
massacre, where 72 people were murdered at a remote ranch by the ZetasCredit: Reuters
ISIS tactics and city-wide warfare
Name: Gulf Cartel
Main turf: East and South
Enemies: Zetas, Sinaloa Cartel, Tijuana Cartel
The Gulf Cartel is one of the oldest and most powerful of Mexico's
cartels, but it's lost a lot of ground in recent years to the Zetas, who
were originally the Gulf Cartel's muscle.
Its origins can be traced back to Juan Garcia Abrego's alliance with
Colombian cartels to smuggle drugs into the US back in the 1980s.
When Garcia Abrego was arrested in 1996, the group was making billions
every year.
The Gulf Cartel are known for their extremely high number of kidnappings
— 68 victims were found in a Gulf Cartel safehouse in Reynosa in 2011.
They even used sports stars to carry out their kidnappings, including FC
Monterrey star Omar Ortiz and lucha libre wrestler Lazaro Gurralo.
But it was Garcia Abrego's successor, Osiel Gardenas Guillen, who
cemented the Gulf Cartel's violent reputation by recruiting the 31 special
forces deserters to do his bidding.
When those soldiers broke to form the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel became
locked in its bloodiest ever conflict — this time against a rival of its
own creation.
The violence has raged across at least five Mexican cities and even
spilled into America when two Zetas were killed by Gulf Cartel members in
Texas in 2010.
Their ongoing clashes have been described as turning entire cities into
"war zones" and in July this year, they threatened to destroy the entire
town of Asunción Ixtaltepe for helping rivals hide, drawing comparisons to
ISIS.
Holiday from Hell
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Armed cops patrol the beaches of Cancun after recent cartel violence
in the regionCredit: James
Breeden
Tourist hotspots are being swallowed up by the rising tide of cartel
bloodshed - including along the Carribean coast - where 500,000 Brits sun
themselves every year.
Increasingly, this stretch of paradise - which includes the white sandy
beaches of Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum – is blighted by cartels
battling for power and territory.
In Cancun alone, murder has exploded in the last two years from 205 in
2017 to 540 in 2018.
Francisco Rivas, 45, who monitors cartel activity for Mexico’s National
Citizen Observatory, told The Sun: "Years ago, they agreed there were
areas they would not fight in because it is bad for business.
"These were mainly tourist cities.
"The cartels also did not want to draw attention to particular areas that
were important highways for transporting drugs from Mexico to the US.
"But now the new cartel members, like those from Jalisco New Generation,
don’t respect the old rules. Something has changed.
Is Mexico safe for tourists?
Drug-related violence in Mexico has increased massively in recent
years with murders now commonplace.
Many fatalities are those killed in turf wars between the different
gangs competing for trafficking routes into the US.
Cops are trying to protect tourist destinations like Cancun, Playa
del Carmen, Cozumel, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco and Nuevo
Vallarta.
The Foreign Office warns that while the government has made efforts
to protect popular tourist destinations, including Playa del Carmen,
there has been a number of shooting incidents in the areas.
They advise: "Crime and violence are serious problems in Mexico and
the security situation can pose a risk for foreigners.
"Since 2017 there have been a number of reported shooting incidents
and other incidents of violence in the main tourist destinations,
including in locations popular with tourists.
"In certain parts of Mexico you should take particular care to avoid
being caught up in drug related violence between criminal groups."
However, the FCO also says most tourist visits are "trouble-free".
"They attack rivals in urban areas and murders happen in tourist areas."
In January this year, seven were left dead in Cancun when CJNG and a
rival gang had a shootout in the streets.