Inside Mexico’s drug gangs who force members to eat human hearts and serve victims’ buttocks on toast
MEXICAN drug gangs behind years of brutal murders are now suspected of taking the life of an innocent Brit last Tuesday.
Ben Crozer, 37, was shopping at a Mexican supermarket with two friends when all three were targeted by a gunman and shot dead in the Western city of Colima.
There has been an upsurge in violence in the area since a local drug gang switched allegiance to the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
His distraught parents said Ben, who had been living with a Mexican-American family, was in the " wrong place at the wrong time".
Innocent victim Ben is the second Brit to be murdered in Mexico in just three months, after property developer Chris Cleave, 54, was shot in front of his 14-year-old daughter in March.
But Mexico's drug wars are believed to be responsible for around 300,000 deaths since 2006, involving some of the most appalling torture and depravity imaginable.
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The former leader of the Los Zetas cartel, Heriberto Lazacano, is said to have eaten his victims' buttocks flesh in tamales - a Mexican dish of filled corn husks.
In twisted initiation rituals, young members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel were forced to eat the hearts of murder victims and new recruits of Familia Michoacana were forced to eat their rivals after torturing them and cutting them up alive.
Below we take a look at some of the main gangs that have terrorised Mexico since the inception of the state's war on the cartels in 2006.
LOS ZETAS
It was in 2015 reports first emerged of hopeful gang members being forced to devour rivals hearts as part of a twisted initiation ritual.
Alfredo Castillo, the federal security commissioner for gang-ravaged Mexican state Michoacan, claimed the practice was not widespread but did occur.
JALISCO NEW GENERATION
Local prosecutors claimed two teenagers, aged 16 and 17, remained unrepentant after they were drugged with crack then forced to eat human flesh by senior cartel bosses.
SINALOA
The Sinaloa cartel found infamy after the exploits of its long-time leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman came to international prominence.
The accused drug lord, who is currently on trial in New York, was once considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.
He was first captured in 1993 and jailed for 20 years only to escape in 2001. He was later recaptured in 2014, then re-escaped the following year through a 1.5mile-long underground tunnel.
In 2016, he was caught for a third time and extradited to the US to face charges relating to his leadership of the cartel.
The Sinaloa group also formed in the late 80s and is believed to be the primary supplier of heroin, cocaine, meth, MDMA and fentanyl into the US.
It was the Sinaloa group which pioneered the use of tunnels dug underneath the Mexico-US border to send their drugs into America.
In 2021, the bodies of nine men were found hanging from an underpass amidst a battle for control between the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, in the Zacatecas region
Their first tunnel was constructed in 1989 - today the border has been likened to a "block of Swiss cheese" with hundreds of tunnels criss-crossing it.
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According to , the Sinaloa cartel specialises in "super-tunnels" beyond the basic "gopher holes" first discovered in the late 80s and early 90s.
These costs millions of dollars to construct, and feature elevators, lights and ventilation ducts reaching more than 70ft below ground.