MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL DUMP 49 HEADLESS & MUTALATED BODIES OF PEOPLE THAT THEY HAVE KILLED ON A HIGHWAY

The mass dumping of headless bodies administers a shock to Mexico, long numbed by a death count of nearly 50,000 brought on by president Felipe Calderon's war against the crime cartels. By the time his tenure ends this December, six years after his declaration, that number will likely surpass 60,000. What kind of headway has the country made since 2006? Of the seven major cartels, some have vanished, but smaller syndicates have scrambled into the vacuum. The two largest—Sinaloa and Los Zetas—remain in power and at each other's throats.


A beefed-up federal force has supplanted Mexico's underpaid, poorly treated, corrupt police force, but corruption persists, and journalists are being killed. The U.S. has been guarding its borders closely against violence, although the demand for drugs hasn't deviated much since 2006. Nor have the American gangsters who facilitate the network. Worse, the barbarism—with notes taken from the al-Qaida playbook—has escalated.

Mother's Day massacre in Mexico—49 to 70: The corpses, mostly men, were dumped Sunday on a highway in Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon, about 75 miles outside Texas. The corpses's heads, hands, and feet had been chopped off. First reports estimated there were 49 headless bodies, but the count may actually be closer to 70; the actual number won't be known until the body parts are untangled. According to Borderland Beat, these deaths resulted from a power struggle between the two largest drug cartels and were reportedly timed for Mother's Day, May 10 in Mexico—and a day when some mothers marched to protest the government's failure to stop the killings
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Los Zetas retaliated against the butchering spree by Sinaloas and its newest ally, the Gulf Cartel. The Gulf Cartel has been fighting with the Zetas since 2010 for Nuevo Leon turf. (Mexico has 32 states, and Nuevo Leon borders Texas.) Years ago, the Zetas were the gunmen for the Gulf Cartel.

THE MESSAGE BEHIND THE MUTULATIONS: The inhumanity amounts to near genocide. Heads have been thrown into nightclubs and one victim's face was skinned and sewn onto a football. There's been a resurgence in beheadings, thanks to cartel leaders inspired by al-Qaida execution videos. Every cut sends a message, and the extreme violence is intended to cow an embattled nation.

If a tongue is cut out it means the victim has talked too much. A person who has given up any information on a cartel, no matter how minuscule, has his finger cut off and put into his mouth upon his death. This is because a traitor is known as a "dedo"—a finger... If you are castrated it means that either you have slept with a cartel member's woman or you have, in the case of a government official, police or the military, become too boastful about battling the cartels.

Severed arms mean you stole from your consignment of illegal goods or skimmed profits. Severed legs mean that you tried to walk away from the cartel. Decapitation, however, is something altogether different. It is a statement of raw power, a warning to all, like the public executions of old. In other words, "we rule here." These are just a few of the symbolic "messages" the cartels use.