Mexico‘s brutal cartel war has exploded into a new era of horror.
In recent times, beheaded corpses have been left dangling from bridges, charred bones have been found in underground ovens and innocent civilians gunned down at religious festivals.
Once confined to remote borderlands, the carnage is now brazen, public, and unrelenting, leaving Mexican streets soaked in blood.
In the last year, the country has been rocked by a wave of cartel atrocities so extreme, officials and investigators are calling them ‘extermination campaigns’.
One of the most shocking scene came just days ago, on June 30, in the cartel stronghold of Culiacán, Sinaloa, the home of Joaquín ‘El Chapo‘ Guzmán’s former empire.
Twenty corpses were discovered, including four beheaded men hanging from a highway overpass, their heads stuffed in black bags and dumped nearby.
The remaining 16 victims were found crammed into a van, many executed with close-range shots to the head.
Twenty bodies were discovered this week, including four beheaded men hanging from a highway overpass
Officials also found 16 male victims with their bodies packed into a white van – one of them was decapitated
An internal war broke out among the Sinaloa cartel after its leader El Chapo was arrested
A note, scrawled with the words ‘WELCOME TO THE NEW SINALOA’, was left at the scene as a warning to rivals to stay away
The gruesome murders were not just to remove rivals – it was also to send a clear message to anyone trying to encroach on cartel territory.
The power struggle between the factions erupted after the arrest of El Chapo back in 2016.
It ended up splitting the cartel into different groups. That has resulted in constant violence between the members.
Since September last year, more than 2,000 people have been reported murdered or missing in connection to the internal war.
Grim discoveries like the ones in Sinaloa is not an isolated incident – in March, forensic teams made a discovery that chilled even hardened investigators.
It was a secret compound near Teuchitlán, Jalisco, where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) allegedly ran a full-scale ‘extermination site’.
Buried beneath Izaguirre ranch, authorities found three massive crematory ovens.
Two hundred pairs of shoes were discovered at Izaguirre ranch, the skeletal remains of dozens of people were found
Some activists say the ranch was used to lure in innocent victims to teach them how to become killers
The Mexican National Guard arrives at the ranch to investigate the gruesome find
They contained piles of charred human bones, and a haunting mountain of belongings – over 200 pairs of shoes, purses, belts, and even children’s toys.
Experts believe victims were kidnapped, tortured and burnt alive, or after being executed, to destroy evidence of mass killings.
The chilling find was made on a ranch that has been secured by cops several months prior.
When cops stormed the site, they arrested ten armed members of the cartel, and found three people who had been reported missing (two were being held hostage, while the third was dead, wrapped in plastic).
José Murguía Santiago, the mayor of the nearby town, was also arrested in connection to the crimes.
The ranch was also being used as a training centre for the cartel, who have now been declared a terrorist organisation by US president Donald Trump’s administration.
Several advocates in Mexico have raised concerns about cartel brutality.
Two of them, a mother and son duo, were slaughtered in April this year after revealing what was going on at the ranch, which they called an ‘extermination camp’.
The CJNG is headed by Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho
The gang are said to be responsible for thousands of deaths and the disappearance of many people
Seven bodies and five bags with human remains were discovered abandoned at Monterrey in killings attributed to cartel wars
Maria del Carmen Morales, 43, and her son, Jamie Daniel Ramirez Morales, 26, were staunch advocates for missing people in Mexico.
According to cops, ‘a pair of men’ targeted Daniel in Jalisco and when his mother stepped in to defend him, she was also set upon.
Maria’s other son went missing in February the previous year. She fought tirelessly to find out what had happened to him.
Reports indicate that since 2010, 28 mothers have been killed while searching for their relatives.
Just a few weeks after the ranch was discovered, authorities in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, unearthed 169 black bags at a construction site, all filled with dismembered human remains.
So far, at least 34 victims have been identified through DNA.
The bags were hidden near CJNG territory, where disappearances are widespread. Activists say families reported dozens of missing young people in the area in recent months.
Despite the capture of some of its most ruthless leaders, the cartel remains one of Mexico’s most feared criminal enterprises.
The CJNG cartel has established itself as the most feared and ruthless in Mexico
The body of a high-ranking Sinaloa cartel member, who had been kidnapped and murdered, was found on a highway surrounded by boxes of fenantyl and other drugs
After the news of the ranch broke, the country’s president Claudia Sheinbaum, vowed to do more to strengthen laws relating to missing people.
The bloodbath in March continued when the bodies of nine people who had vanished were found on a highway.
They had been brutally hacked – a bag containing their hands was found alongside their remains.
The bodies were dumped inside the trunk of a car abandoned on San Jose Miahuatlan, 175 miles south of Mexico City.
Five of the nine were discovered underneath a tarp soaked with blood, while the remaining four were stuffed into the boot of the car.
Local reports initially indicated that the bodies of the four women and five men were students from Tlaxcala who had gone to Oaxaca for a vacation.
However, news outlet NVI Noticias alleged that the victims were members of the Los Zacapoaxtlas criminal gang.
The car containing the remains, a grey Volkswagen Vento, was seen along the highway just three days after the students were reported missing.
Forensic experts searched an abandoned car after the students were reported missing
Lesly Noya Trejo was one of the students whose bodies were brutally dismembered
In May, investigators raided a ranch outside Colima City, uncovering a mass grave containing the remains of at least 42 people.
The bodies showed signs of acid burns, blunt force trauma and ligature marks.
Authorities say that when they arrived at the location, some of the bodies were still burning.
Cartel enforcers are believed to have used the site to torture and eliminate rivals, before attempting to destroy the corpses with chemicals and fire.
The killings were linked to the Jalisco cartel, which has turned Colima into one of Mexico’s most dangerous states as it fights to dominate Pacific drug routes.
In October last year, the town of Ojuelos, Jalisco, woke up to yet another horror – the decapitated bodies of five men dumped by a dirt road.
Their heads were found in a separate sack, left beside a cardboard sign with a blood-soaked warning from CJNG.
Locals said they heard screaming the night before, followed by cars speeding away.
A victim lays dead as armed cartel members stormed a hotel and opened fire at Celaya, Guanajuato
Horrific photos last year revealed the carnage after drug gangs slaughtered rivals, burnt bodies, and shot corpses so they ‘don’t come back to life’
Police were called after plastic bags containing the body parts were discovered by drivers.
Authorities immediately deduced that because the bodies were dumped in such a public place, as well as the sheer brutality of the killings, was a strong indication that the cartel was involved.
Just last month, a festival celebrating the Nativity of Saint John in the city of Irapuato was plunged into chaos.
As families gathered in Irapuato for a traditional nativity festival, heavily armed men pulled up in trucks and sprayed the crowd with bullets.
Eleven people were killed in the horrifying attack, with 20 others injured, some critically.
Plastic chairs, drums, and food trays were left drenched in blood.
Afterwards, residents could be seen walking through the horror, with blood soaked streets and bullet holes in the walls.
Witnesses say the gunmen didn’t speak or issue demands. They simply shot and left.
A pool of blood seen at the venue of the religious gathering where gunmen opened fire killing eleven people
Bullet holes could be seen in the aftermath of the shocking incident in Irapuato
The gruesome nature of cartel assassinations is unmistakable. In January 2024, when workers showed up to a gas station in La Concordia, Chiapas, southern Mexico, to begin their shift, they were horrified at what they found.
Hitmen had left a cooler with severed human heads and attached a note warning their rivals to ‘stop hiding’.
The workers initially believed the cooler contained vaccines for veterinary use, but were left petrified when they opened it, according to local media.
The message found attached to the cooler was aimed at the CJNG, telling them they would soon suffer the same fate.
It read: ‘There’s your s**t you bunch of pigs. The same thing is going to happen to all the polleros (smugglers) who generate money for the scourges of the CJNG and the f*****s of the Chiapas Cartel.
‘Go out and fight you bunch of pigs, stop hiding under government skirt. Pure CDS.’
When workers opened the cooler, the were horrified to find a bunch of severed heads
There was a message attached to rival cartel gangs warning they would suffer the same fate
Workers at the gas station initially believed the box contained vaccinations for veterinary use
Just hours before the find, the CJNG had reportedly left a body hanging from an overpass on the Tuxtla-Ocozocoaulta highway in a warning to the Sinaloa cartel.
Mexico’s official homicide count surpassed 30,000 in 2023, but activists believe the true death toll is far higher, especially with so many bodies disappearing into secret graves and cremation pits.
By the end of 2023, there was more than 110,000 active cases of people who had disappeared without a trace. Exerts predict the number could be higher due to underreporting and unreliable data.
Mexico’s drug war is now dominated by some of the most brutal and dangerous cartels in history, whose violence has turned entire regions into blood-soaked battlegrounds.
At the top of the list is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), led by Nemecio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes.
CJNG is considered Mexico’s most powerful and ruthless cartel, feared for its military-style tactics and shocking public displays of cruelty.
The cartel controls vital drug routes along the Pacific coast, especially in Jalisco and Colima, where their turf wars have left hundreds dead.
The Sinaloa Cartel remains a heavyweight despite its internal splits.
Sinaloa’s grip on northern drug trafficking routes remains strong, but its ongoing violence continues to destabilise communities and threaten innocent lives.
In a gory video shows members of the CJNG cartel beheading an unnamed man
Two men were found strangled to death last year at Acapulco beach – police say cartel members ‘tortured’ them ‘around the neck’
Although Mexico’s president, Claudia Pardo has vowed to do more to tackle the cartel violence crisis, the issue still persists on a greater scale
In Guanajuato, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel has grown into a violent force in its own right.
Known primarily for fuel theft and extortion, it has expanded through bloody confrontations with larger groups like CJNG.
Smaller but vicious cartels like the Chiapas Cartel operate in southern Mexico, shocking communities with grisly killings and public warnings.
Though smaller, their willingness to engage in extreme violence keeps them relevant in Mexico’s cartel chaos.
Together, these cartels among others have pushed Mexico into a new era of brutality, where civilians, students, and activists often become the victims of ruthless power struggles.
