19 bodies hung from bridge or hacked up in Mexican narco ‘turf war’
- Killing spree marks return to grisly massacres by drug cartels at height of country’s 2006-2012 drug war
- Gruesome display next to banner bearing initials of violent Jalisco gang meant to ‘intimidate rivals and send message to authorities’, expert says
Mexican police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass on Thursday alongside a drug cartel banner threatening rivals, and seven more corpses hacked up and dumped by the road nearby. Just down the road were three more bodies, for a total of 19.
The killing spree reported by prosecutors in the western state of Michoacan marked a return to the grisly massacres carried out by drug cartels at the height of Mexico’s 2006-2012 drug war, when piles of bodies were dumped on roadways as a message to authorities and rival gangs.
Two of the bodies hung by ropes from the overpass by their necks, half naked, were women, as was one of the dismembered bodies found in the city of Uruapan, Michoacan Attorney General Adrián López Solís said at a news conference.
The victims had been shot to death. Some were hung with their hands bound, some with their trousers pulled down.
This kind of public, theatrical violence, where you don’t just kill, but you brag about killing, is meant to intimidate rivals and send a message to the authorities
While the banner was not completely legible, it bore the initials of the notoriously violent Jalisco drug cartel, and mentioned the Viagras, a rival gang. “Be a patriot, kill a Viagra,” the banner read in part.
