Mexican cartels are again taking to leaving grisly displays as a warning.
- The handiwork of drug cartels to send grim warnings
- Grisly public displays include corpses, beheaded bodies, dismembered remains
The bodies of three men were found hanging from a road bridge in Guadalajara, Mexico on Jul 8. They were wrapped in bags and had messages hung on their chests.
The killings are believed to be a result of a cartel-related crime. The manner of the killing is akin to that used by drug cartels to warn off rivals encroaching on their turf.
The two rivals in the area are the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels.
Such vestiges of the dark days of cartel warfare in Mexico have been emerging in different parts of the country in recent months, particularly in areas where drug trafficking is heavy.
Last November, a man with feet and hands bound was found hanging from a chain on a footbridge in Tijuana, less than 10 miles from the US border.
A message on a cardboard left with the body read, in part, “This is how all grasshoppers will be left,” with the word “grasshoppers” referring to cartel turncoats or dealers who sell to the wrong groups or outside of a certain territory.
According to the sign, the body was deposited by members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
The incident was the second time in two months that the particular footbridge had been used for a narcomanta.
Narcomantas are grisly public displays of violence, usually involving corpses or dismembered bodies, left as messages by criminal groups. They appeared frequently during the major cartel clashes in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
In early September 2016, a dismembered body crashed through the windshield of a woman driving under the bridge and authorities who arrived on the scene found several plastic bags containing the dismembered bodies of two other men.
In this incident, the human remains were believed to be the handiwork of the Sinaloa cartel.