A viral video showing a man eating a human heart in Mexico is shedding light on the disturbing practices recruits must undergo at cartel “terror schools.”
“You have to do it without reacting or vomiting or you are beaten.”
A member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel—his stomach straining against a black sleeveless vest—is crouching over the body of a mutilated foot soldier from a rival crime group. The fallen man’s hands are bound and his chest looks like it has been torn open.
Shocking cellphone footage—captured in broad daylight—shows the hitman tearing large bites from the dead man’s heart. The cameraman continues to film as the hitman mocks the fallen sicario by pretending to offer him a taste of his no-longer-beating heart. In the background of the twisted scene, another body is partly visible, as is the shadow of someone hacking away at it.
He referred to the cycle of crime groups trying to outdo each other as “a sort of Olympics of cruelty and sadism” with cannibalism—which is considered one of the ultimate taboos in many cultures—being treated by the cartels as just another form of savage competition. “In the case of cannibalism occurring more frequently in Mexico, just like beheadings, it also has to do with imitation and escalating violence,” Teun said.
When it comes to escalation, the CJNG—which is led by Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantes, aka “El Mencho”—has taken the practice of feasting on human flesh to a whole new level. In fact, they’ve institutionalized it as part of the mandatory curriculum at their training camps, which are known colloquially in Mexico as “Escuelas de Terror” or “terror schools.”
“First they teach them how to cut people. They start by learning how to sever the extremities,” he said. This is an important skill for a future sicario, as the cutting off of fingers and toes—without letting the subject bleed out or lose consciousness—is the preferred torture tactic used to extract information from the cartel’s victims.
At the terror schools, recruits are also forced to devour the severed digits, the source said. If they pass that test, they move on to learning how to dismember entire bodies. Such expertise will prove vital later, when they are called upon to cut up corpses so as to make them easier to transport or disappear. And, as with the extremities, the cartel insider explained. the conscripts are later forced to feed on larger pieces of flesh, such as the vital organs.
“One of the terror school recruits violated cartel rules by telling his girlfriend where he was at and jeopardizing all the other trainees,” Vigil recalled. “After she left, the boyfriend was bound and told he was going to be killed for violating the rules. An ice pick was driven several times through his cranium into his brain.” Vigil said that inductees were also at times forced to sleep next to cadavers at night in order to desensitize them, and that the one goal of this process is to convert graduates into “emotionless killing machines.”
“Once a group of new recruits have graduated from training—that is, they have hunted down, killed, skinned, cooked, and then eaten their assigned victim—they cannot go back into traditional Mexican society,” Bunker said. “They have forever been changed; their souls have in a sense been darkened in the process… Having survived this brutal ‘trial by fire,’ they will not hesitate to carry out future cartel orders no matter how barbaric those may be.”
In discussing the viral video from January, Bunker referred to it as an act of “battlefield cannibalism” similar to other incidents that have been filmed during the conflict in Syria. For an enraged combatant, the eating of the “heart, flesh, or other body part is the ultimate act of disrespect and revenge for fallen comrades. The incident is typically taped by a fellow fighter and posted to social media,” to be used as propaganda. “The fighter engaging in the heinous act then becomes a real badass among his peers,” Bunker added.
Anthropologist Voeten said that acts of cannibalism, drinking the blood of slain enemies, or desecrating their corpses is a historical commonplace worldwide and “a standard repertoire of human behavior in warfare” meant to add “extra humiliation” after the initial defeat in combat.
Cannibalism sends a strong signal that says: “We are victorious and we can do what we want and act with impunity,” Voeten said. “It is a calculated strategy of intimidating enemies into submission.”
