Decoding the Murder Rituals of the Mexican Drug Trafficker

The killing of a Juarez policeman who was burned alive on a city street could signify a new escalation of “narco-horror,” with criminals committing ever more grotesque acts in order to intimidate their rivals -- and for fun. This article was inspired by a concrete act: the burning alive of a police officer in Ciudad Juarez in December. Why was this done? Why commit such a grotesque act? What kind of sense does this killing make, and what can it tell us? According to the current logic of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the spiral of violence that is hitting Mexico (by the end of 2011 46,000 had died as a result of the militarization of the battle against drug trafficking organizations) are desperate actions of people who are losing the war. But today, with a narco-society that is increasingly urbanized, the new forms of killing are atrocious: cooking a victim until their meat and bones become soup, cutting them in pieces and burning them to ashes, decapitating them with saws or wooden knives, or crushing them under the hooves of cattle. Women are increasingly targeted, like in the case of political aide Adriana Ruiz, in Tijuana. She was kidnapped and tortured, a broomstick inserted into her anus and then, in response to her own pleas, killed. She was decapitated. Her crime was to be the girlfriend of an undercover soldier. The increasingly violent nature of these messages sent by drug traffickers tells us something...more