In the past 18 months, the war between CJNG (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion) and the Sinaloa cartels has been intensifying. Sinaloa is the largest, while CJNG is arguably the most violent.

The Mexican state of Zacatecas is their main battleground.

Sicarios (cartel assassins) on both sides fight for territory, and the profits from the production of synthetic drugs, particularly fentanyl, in that region.

They also profit mightily from kidnapping refugees trying to cross into the USA, and cooking the ones whose ransoms are not paid.

Violence in this war is not just done, but is seen to be done, with videos being released onto social media showing various atrocities, in order to demoralise the opposing cartel members. An earlier video involved a CJNG soldier using a spoon to remove the eyes of a captured rival.

A new video (widely and ironically known as “Sponsored By Adidas” due to the killers’ love of that brand of shoe) is circulating on the Internet now. It shows a soldier from the CJNG crouching over the disembowelled body of a man from a rival cartel, supposedly the Sinaloa. The man opens the corpse’s chest and removes an organ, either the heart of liver (some say a lung), and bites into it, then seems to offer it to the corpse to see if it wants a bite.

This seems to be the latest escalation of cartel violence. Before 2006, beheadings were unknown; but now there are dozens of beheadings every year in Mexico. How do you up the stakes from beheading? The previous video from a cartel, called “Funky Town” showed a live and conscious prisoner having his face flayed from his head, later to be sewn onto a soccer ball. But the big new thing for the cartels now seems to be cannibalism.

Man-eating appears to have become a requirement for new recruits to CJNG at its training camps or “cannibal schools.” One member of CJNG told a journalist that there is widespread cannibalism at the camps. Recruits are taught how to cut fingers and toes, and eat them They then graduate onto larger internal organs. He reported (anonymously) that:

“You have to do it without reacting or vomiting or you are beaten. If you didn’t want to [eat human flesh] they wouldn’t let you leave, they had you there.”

The video in question can be found on the Internet if you look hard enough. I am not posting links, because those who don’t want to see it might accidentally click, and those who do are gorehound enough to find it.

Why is cannibalism such a popular strategy for terrifying the enemy? Because there is no higher form of humiliation, no greater insult, than being killed, eaten, and then crapped out of the anus of your enemy.