Cannibalism in Mexico’s criminal gangs
According to a BBC report, there is cannibalism in Mexico’s criminal gangs, a practice linked to organized crime rituals.
Cannibalism has apparently found a place in the rituals of certain religious cults linked to organized crime in Mexico.
Several criminal groups, experts say, pay tribute to Santa Muerte.
As if it were a movie, cannibalism in Mexico’s criminal gangs appears to be a more common practice.
In Mexico, ritual cannibalism is not a widespread phenomenon within all criminal organizations, but its presence in some groups has been documented and is cause for deep concern.
Cannibalism in Mexico’s criminal gangs appears to be an act of violence combined with the cult of Santa Muerte.
These acts are carried out in occult ceremonies, where human flesh is consumed not out of necessity, but as a symbolic act of domination and control.
This is what anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz assures in his book ‘For a political theology of organized crime’. The expert gave details of this phenomenon to BBC News.
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Cannibalism in Mexico’s criminal gangs: Violence and idiosyncrasy
On this, the anthropologist stated that cannibalistic rituals in these cults are often shrouded in superstition.
It is believed that by consuming the flesh of an enemy, cult members acquire their strength, power and bravery.
In addition, these acts serve to reinforce group cohesion and loyalty to the leader, creating an unbreakable bond between participants.
Lomnitz allegedly told the BBC that cannibalism began in Mexico when “the so-called narco-satanists arrived in Matamoros in 1989. Human sacrifice was done to build a relationship of complicity, to keep a secret. Then cannibalism began to be used to recruit new members for organized crime, typically soldiers to work as hired killers.
It’s like a kind of test, where they put them to eat a part of a person who has been killed, usually from another criminal group, but it can also be from the same group.
READ MORE: ANOTHER CANDIDATE MURDERED IN MARAVATÍO-MÉXICO.
If they don’t do it, they kill them on the spot. It is the test to belong to the organization.
Another moment, the most sinister of all, is when you dominate your territory so much that you put human flesh in a saucer.
The expert told the BBC that “a kidnapped Honduran who survived told in an interview in 2021 that they fed them human flesh while the ransom money was coming in.
Other groups like the Zetas practice cannibalism.
But he also commented that there are other horrifying and chilling examples of cannibalism among the Zetas, where they kill a traitor and, as if they were butchers, have his flesh cooked.
We are not talking about ingesting a concoction with a bit of a person’s heart in a ritual. We’re talking about cooking the legs, the meatiest parts, to put in tamales.
“And these tamales are served at a banquet, at a New Year’s Eve party, where they invite the diners to participate in the ingestion of human flesh,” he said.
But it is not something new in Mexican lands; in ancient times, it was already a practice among the native peoples.
In fact, the right to eat human flesh was a privilege exclusively for the warrior nobility and some merchants.
The warriors consumed their prisoners, while the merchant elite could buy a captive to eat at an anthropophagic banquet.
