A BLOODTHIRSTY Mexican cartel beheaded nine people and then dangled their naked bodies from a bridge in an ongoing war with a rival gang.

Shocked cops found the butchered bodies hanging from the overpass on Thursday alongside a massive banner threatening other drug gangs.

Seven more blood-covered corpses were also found hacked to pieces and dumped by the road nearby.

Just over a mile away three more were found - taking the number of victims killed in the brutal cartel killing spree to 19.

The murders, which happened in the 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.

Back then, piles of bodies were regualarly dumped on roadways as a message to authorities and rival gangs.

All the victims in the city of Uruapan attack are reported to have been shot dead.

Some were hanged with their hands bound, some with their trousers pulled down.

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.

"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," said Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope.

"This kind of cynical impunity has been increasing in Michoacan," he added.

In one particularly brazen attack in May, a convoy of trucks marked with the initials of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel - drove through the city of Zamora gunning down several cops.

Uruapan is where Mexico's drug war first erupted in 2006, when members of the now-diminished La Familia cartel rolled five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall.

What followed were eight years of terror in Michoacan, until farmers rose up in an armed vigilante movement to drive La Familia and its successor cartel, the Caballero's Templarios, out of the state.

Late Thursday, authorities in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz reported that four dismembered male bodies had been found in 15 bags near the state's border with Puebla.

In 2011, the then-smaller Jalisco cartel dumped 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

In 2012, the Zetas cartel left 49 decapitated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico, and later in the same year they strung nine bodies from an overpass and left 14 severed heads near the city hall. </s> 19 bodies hung from bridge or hacked up in Mexico gang feud

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass 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 in the western city of Uruapan 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.

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.

Adrian Lopez, the attorney general for the western state of Michoacan, said the killings appeared to be part of a turf war.

"Certain criminal gangs are fighting over territory, to control activities related to drug production distribution and consumption," Lopez said. "Unfortunately, this conflict results in these kinds of acts that justifiably alarm the public."

For years, Mexican cartels had seemed loath to draw attention to themselves with mass public displays of bodies. Instead, the gangs went to great lengths to hide bodies, by creating clandestine burial pits or dissolving corpses in caustic chemicals.

But the Jalisco gang, which has gained a reputation for directly challenging authorities, appears to have returned to showy killings as a way to intimidate rivals.

In 2011, the then-smaller Jalisco cartel dumped 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. In 2012, the Zetas drug cartel dumped 49 decapitated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico, and that same year they strung nine bodies from an overpass and left 14 severed heads near the city hall.

Meanwhile, in another part of Mexico, an angry crowd beat and hung five suspected kidnappers, leaving some of their bodies dangling from trees.

The suspects had been detained by about 180 villagers in the central state of Puebla. The state government said police and soldiers were sent to the area to try to stop the attack, but villagers from the hamlets of Tepexco and Cohuecan wouldn't let them. </s> Mexico woke up to a stark reminder of its war on drugs when authorities discovered 19 corpses, including nine bodies hanging from an overpass Thursday in the western state of Michoacán.

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, considered the most powerful in Mexico, claimed responsibility for the brutal attack against members of the Viagras, suspending the bodies high above a highway stretch in the city of Uruapan.

Gruesome images showed the bodies of a male and female hanging in between a drug cartel banner threatening several members.

While the banner was not completely legible, it bore the initials of the notoriously violent Jalisco drug cartel, and mentioned the Viagras.

'Be a patriot, kill a Viagra,' the banner read in part.

The police were alerted by motorists approximately at 6am and found 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 Michoacán 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, Michoacán 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 pants 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,' said Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope.

'This kind of cynical impunity has been increasing in Michoacán,' Hope added.

In one particularly brazen attack in May, a convoy of pickups and SUVs openly marked with the letters 'CJNG' - the Spanish initials of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel - drove through the city of Zamora, Michoacán, at night, shooting up police vehicles and killing or wounding several officers.

The state attorney general said the killings discovered Thursday appeared to be part of a turf war.

'Certain criminal gangs are fighting over territory, to control activities related to drug production distribution and consumption,' López Solís said. 'Unfortunately, this conflict results in these kinds of acts that justifiably alarm the public.'

For years, Mexican cartels had seemed loath to draw attention to themselves with mass public displays of bodies. Instead, the gangs went to great lengths to hide bodies, by creating clandestine burial pits or dissolving corpses in caustic chemicals.

But the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has gained a reputation for directly challenging authorities, appears to have returned to showy killings as a way to intimidate rivals.

It is led by Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera Cervantes, a former ally of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán.

El Mencho is one of the 10 most-wanted men on the FBI's list and the U.S. Department of Justice is offering a $10million reward for his capture.

In 2011, the then-smaller Jalisco cartel dumped 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. In 2012, the Zetas drug cartel dumped 49 decapitated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico, and that same year they strung nine bodies from an overpass and left 14 severed heads near the city hall.

Meanwhile, in another part of Mexico, an angry crowd beat and hung five suspected kidnappers, leaving some of their bodies dangling from trees.

The suspects had been detained by about 180 villagers in the central state of Puebla. The state government said police and soldiers were sent to the area to try to stop the attack, but villagers from the hamlets of Tepexco and Cohuecán wouldn't let them.

When homicides dropped for a few years between 2012 and 2015, many thought Mexico's drug war was winding down.

But homicides surged again last year and Mexico now has more murders than it did during the peak year of killings in 2011.

In the first half of 2019, Mexico set a record for homicides, with 17,608, up 5.3% compared to the same period of 2018. The country of almost 125 million now sees as many as 100 killings a day nationwide. </s> Mexico City: Mexican police have found nine bodies hanging from a road bridge alongside a drug cartel banner threatening rivals.

Seven more corpses were found hacked up and dumped by the road nearby in the western city of Uruapan, and just down the road were three more, making a total of 19.

The killing spree marked a return to the grisly massacres carried out by drug cartels at the height of Mexico's 2006-12 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. </s> MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexican police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass 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, and one of the dismembered bodies were women, Michoacan Attorney General Adrián López Solís said at a news conference.

The victims in the city of Uruapan had been shot to death. Some were hung with their hands bound, some with their pants pulled down.

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.

"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," said Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope.

"This kind of cynical impunity has been increasing in Michoacan," Hope added.

In one particularly brazen attack in May, a convoy of pickups and SUVs openly marked with the letters "CJNG" - the Spanish initials of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel - drove through the Michoacan city of Zamora at night, shooting up police vehicles and killing or wounding several officers.

Uruapan is where Mexico's drug war first erupted in 2006, when members of the now-diminished La Familia cartel rolled five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall.

What followed were eight years of terror in Michoacan, until farmers and ranchers rose up in an armed vigilante movement to drive La Familia and its successor cartel, the Caballero's Templarios, out of the state.

Hipólito Mora, one of the original founders of the vigilante movement, said the violence is worse than ever and he wants the army to come back to Michoacan to help battle the cartels. "We're worse off now than we were then," Mora said.

The state attorney general said the killings discovered Thursday appeared to be part of a turf war.

"Certain criminal gangs are fighting over territory, to control activities related to drug production distribution and consumption," López Solís said. "Unfortunately, this conflict results in these kinds of acts that justifiably alarm the public."

Meanwhile, in another part of Mexico, an angry crowd beat and hanged seven suspected kidnappers, leaving some of their bodies dangling from trees, the national Human Rights Commission said Thursday night. The Puebla state government said police and soldiers were sent to the area to try to stop the attack, but villagers from the hamlets of Tepexco and Cohuecan kept them from intervening.

Late Thursday, authorities in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz reported that four dismembered male bodies had been found in 15 bags left along highways near the state's border with Puebla. Veracruz is another battleground between the Jalisco cartel and other criminal groups.

For years, Mexican cartels had seemed loath to draw attention to themselves with mass public displays of bodies. Instead, the gangs went to great lengths to hide bodies, by creating clandestine burial pits or dissolving corpses in caustic chemicals.

But the Jalisco gang, which has gained a reputation for directly challenging authorities, appears to have returned to showy killings as a way to intimidate rivals.

In 2011, the then-smaller Jalisco cartel dumped 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. In 2012, the Zetas cartel left 49 decapitated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico, and later in the same year they strung nine bodies from an overpass and left 14 severed heads near the city hall.

Still, homicides dropped for a few years between 2012 and 2015, and many thought Mexico's drug war was winding down. But homicides surged again last year and Mexico now has more murders than it did during the peak year of killings in 2011.

In the first half of 2019, Mexico set a record for homicides, with 17,608, up 5.3% compared to the same period of 2018. The country of almost 125 million people now sees as many as 100 killings a day nationwide. </s> Mexico has been no stranger to grim scenes in recent years, but on Thursday its cartel wars hit a fresh low as numerous bodies were found hanging from an overpass in the southern state of Michoacan, and others were found chopped up on a road nearby.

In total, 19 bodies were found in the city of Uruapan — seven men and two women dangling from the bridge at 5.30 a.m.; six men and a woman left lying in various states of dismemberment on the street below; and more male bodies found in a separate neighbourhood.

Photos in Mexican outlets showed human heads, arms and legs scattered about, as if arranged in a display. The bodies hanging from the bridge were in various states of undress, some with their pants pulled down.

On the bridge was a banner, a warning from one cartel to the others, which read: “Lovely people, carry on with your routines,” the banner read in part. “Be a patriot, kill a Viagra.”

The message was reportedly placed by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, led by a drug-trafficking former policeman named Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho.” In Uruapan, El Mencho’s CJNG, which dominates the methamphetamine trade, is fighting a cartel known as Las Viagras and another called the Knights Templar.

Since a government war on cartels was launched in 2006, more than 200,000 lives have been lost in Mexico. With Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman sentenced to life in prison in the U.S., it is El Mencho, who was once allied with El Chapo but later turned against him, who now dominates. U.S. authorities have put a $10 million price on the ex-cop’s head.

“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,” security expert Alejandro Hope told the Associated Press.

“There is a turf war between the (local) cells of different criminal groups. They are fighting for territorial control over the production, distribution and consumption of drugs,” Al Jazeera quoted the Michoacan attorney general Adrian Lopez as saying.

“That leads to this type of incident, which alarms the population, and rightfully so.
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Although the slaughter is being blamed by state officials on Michoacan’s drug trade, the region is also rich in avocados, a multi-million dollar industry that cartels use to enrich themselves via extortion of farmers and control of growing areas. Eight-in-ten avocados eaten in North America come from Michoacan. Sales to the U.S. hit $2.5 billion in 2018, El Pais reports.

“The big magnet here is avocados,” Falko Ernst, an analyst with the International Crisis Group told the Guardian. The outlet has previously reported that as many as four trucks carrying avocados are robbed in Michoacan per day. The crisis has become so bad in recent years that locals have set up armed self-defence groups to combat the violence — some of which have been themselves linked to the cartels.

The new president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, has sworn to tackle the escalating violence, yet 2019 could be Mexico’s bloodiest year yet. Al Jazeera reports that 14,603 murders were registered between January and June alone.

El Mencho’s latest act has evoked memories of one of Uruapan’s darkest episodes — the night in 2006 when 20 men stormed into a city bar and rolled five severed heads across the dance floor.

“He’s public enemy number one,” Paul Craine, who led the DEA in Mexico at the time of El Chapo’s arrest, told the Mirror of El Mencho earlier this year.

“And he’s got an army of thousands of bad guys.” </s> [BBC] Mexican police have found the bodies of nine people hanging from a bridge and seven more corpses hacked up and dumped on the road.

The massacre in the city of Uruapan in the western Michoacán state is thought to be gang-related, prosecutors say.

A banner hanging from the bridge reportedly bore the initials of one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels.

Criminals have previously hung the bodies of their murdered victims in public to intimidate rival gangs.

“There is a turf war between the [local] cells of different criminal groups,” state prosecutor Adrian López told reporters at a news conference on Thursday.

Mr López said the gangs, which he did not name, are “fighting for territorial control over the production, distribution and consumption of drugs”. </s> MEXICO CITY – Mexican police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass 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 pants pulled down.

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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.

“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,” said Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope.

“This kind of cynical impunity has been increasing in Michoacan,” Hope added.

In one particularly brazen attack in May, a convoy of pickups and SUVs openly marked with the letters “CJNG” – the Spanish initials of The Jalisco New Generation Cartel – drove through the city of Zamora, Michoacan, at night, shooting up police vehicles and killing or wounding several officers.

The state attorney general said the killings discovered Thursday appeared to be part of a turf war.

“Certain criminal gangs are fighting over territory, to control activities related to drug production distribution and consumption,” López Solís said. “Unfortunately, this conflict results in these kinds of acts that justifiably alarm the public.”

For years, Mexican cartels had seemed loath to draw attention to themselves with mass public displays of bodies. Instead, the gangs went to great lengths to hide bodies, by creating clandestine burial pits or dissolving corpses in caustic chemicals.

But the Jalisco gang, which has gained a reputation for directly challenging authorities, appears to have returned to showy killings as a way to intimidate rivals.

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In 2011, the then-smaller Jalisco cartel dumped 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. In 2012, the Zetas drug cartel dumped 49 decapitated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico, and that same year they strung nine bodies from an overpass and left 14 severed heads near the city hall.

Meanwhile, in another part of Mexico, an angry crowd beat and hung five suspected kidnappers, leaving some of their bodies dangling from trees.

The suspects had been detained by about 180 villagers in the central state of Puebla. The state government said police and soldiers were sent to the area to try to stop the attack, but villagers from the hamlets of Tepexco and Cohuecan wouldn’t let them.

When homicides dropped for a few years between 2012 and 2015, many thought Mexico’s drug war was winding down.

But homicides surged again last year and Mexico now has more murders than it did during the peak year of killings in 2011.

In the first half of 2019, Mexico set a record for homicides, with 17,608, up 5.3% compared to the same period of 2018. The country of almost 125 million now sees as many as 100 killings a day nationwide. </s> This article is more than 1 month old

This article is more than 1 month old

The merciless dogfight between Mexican drug cartels has produced its latest macabre spectacle with the discovery of 19 mutilated corpses – nine of them hung semi-naked from a bridge – in a city to the west of the capital.

'Can't fight evil with evil': life in Mexico's most murderous town Read more

The massacre, in Uruapan 250 miles from Mexico City, was claimed by the increasingly dominant Jalisco New Generation cartel which posted a large white banner beside the dangling bodies of its victims.

“Lovely people, carry on with your routines,” it read, beneath the group’s capitalised red initials, CJNG.

At least 10 other dismembered and bullet-riddled bodies were reportedly found dumped in two nearby locations.

Michoacán state’s attorney general, Adrián López Solís, blamed the killings on a clash between rival cartels battling for control of the region’s drug trade. Troops were being mobilized to investigate the crimes and catch the killers, he said.

Falko Ernst, an International Crisis Group researcher who studies Mexico’s cartels, said this week’s slaughter was clearly intended to intimidate rival criminal groups, the families of their members, as well as Mexican authorities.

Ernst said the bloodbath was partly about the struggle for control of Uruapan’s local drug trade. But a more important motivation was the fight for the region’s billion-dollar avocado industry. “The big magnet here is avocados,” he said.

Ernst said at least three armed groups were currently battling for control of the city of Uruapan – the CJNG, the Knights Templar cartel and Los Viagras, which is part of a larger organization called the the Nueva Familia Michoacana.

Stomach-churning displays of criminal might are not unusual in Mexico, which last year suffered a record 35,964 murders.

But the CJNG has become particularly notorious for its willingness to confront Mexican authorities with brazen public shows of brute force and firepower.

In May video footage emerged showing heavily armed cartel members parading through Zamora, another city in Michoacán, in cars marked with their group’s insignia. The cartel was blamed for a battle with local police that day that reportedly left at least four officers dead.

Quick guide Mexico's war on drugs Show Hide Why did Mexico launch its war on drugs? On 10 December 2006, Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s war on drugs by sending 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacán, where rival cartels were engaged in tit-for-tat massacres. Calderón declared war eight days after taking power – a move widely seen as an attempt to boost his own legitimacy after a bitterly contested election victory. Within two months, around 20,000 troops were involved in operations. What has the war cost so far? The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico spent at least $54bn on security and defence between 2007 and 2016. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption.



But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, over 250,000 people have been murdered, more than 40,000 reported as disappeared and 26,000 unidentified bodies in morgues across the country. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses including torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances by state security forces.



Peña Nieto claimed to have killed or detained 110 of 122 of his government's most wanted narcos. But his biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – was the recapture, escape, another recapture and extradition of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Mexico’s decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite indisputable evidence of human rights violations.



Under new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, murder rates are up and a new security force, the Civil Guard, is being deployed onto the streets despite campaign promises to end the drug war. What has been achieved? Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. Officials say 25 of the 37 drug traffickers on Calderón’s most-wanted list have been jailed, extradited to the US or killed, although not all of these actions have been independently corroborated. The biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – under Peña Nieto’s leadership was the recapture, escape and another recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP

Uruapan boasts an unenviable place in Mexican drug trafficking lore. It was here, in 2006, that five severed heads were rolled on to a nightclub dancefloor by gangsters – a ghoulish attack that made global headlines and helped trigger then president Felipe Calderón’s catastrophic six-year war on drugs. That failed offensive against the cartels resulted in an unprecedented period of bloodletting, with murder rates soaring across the country almost ever since.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who became Mexico’s president last December, swept to power promising to rethink his country’s fight against crime. He created a new security force called the national guard and vowed to tackle the social roots of crime by offering scholarships to disadvantaged teenagers.

But eight months into López Obrador’s presidency there is no sign of improvement. Official figures show there were at least 17,608 murders in the first half of the year.

La Voz de Michoacán, a local newspaper, said that this year, as armed groups battled for supremacy there, Michoacán state had found itself at the eye of the storm with 963 killings since January.

Even Mexico City – long seen as a island of relative calm from the conflict – has seen a surge in crime this year. </s> Mexican authorities have arrested the alleged leader of the Zetas drug cartel — long one of the country’s most powerful and notoriously brutal criminal groups.

Jose Maria Guizar Valencia, who is accused of overseeing an organization that traffics thousands of pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States each year, was nabbed Thursday while entering a hotel in a fashionable neighborhood in Mexico City, authorities said Friday.

Mexican National Security Commissioner Renato Sales said in a statement that Guizar, 38, was captured without force.

In a nation gripped by escalating violence driven by warring criminal groups, Guizar was one of Mexico’s most-wanted men. The United States had offered a $5-million reward for his arrest and had formally requested his extradition. Sales said there are arrest warrants for Guizar in several U.S. states for crimes including arms smuggling, kidnapping and murder.

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His capture was celebrated by public officials from both sides of the border, with U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson tweeting that Guizar’s arrest and other law enforcement efforts “make Mexico and the United States safer.”

But others reacted with caution, noting that in the past, Mexico’s “kingpin strategy” of targeting cartel leaders has not reduced violence, and in fact may have increased it.

In the decade since Mexico sent tens of thousands of soldiers into the streets to battle drug trafficking organizations so powerful they were often compared to multinational corporations, dozens of drug lords, including Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, have been taken into custody or killed.

While the kingpin strategy may have stopped Mexico from being completely overtaken by drug cartels, it unleashed a wave of bloodshed as criminals fought for control of lucrative drug trafficking routes and extortion and fuel theft schemes. Mexico’s homicide rate is soaring. Last year it hit a 20-year high.

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“It must be said that as soon as a leader is arrested, another leader often appears,” security expert Ricardo Ravelo said in a radio interview Friday.

In the year since Guzman was extradited to face charges of murder and drug trafficking in the U.S., his Sinaloa cartel has weakened significantly, and is now battling an ascendant group called the Jalisco New Generation cartel in several states.

In other parts of the country, such as the seaside resort of Acapulco, the cartel system has collapsed completely, with historic levels of violence being driven by dozens of warring street gangs.

Authorities say Guizar, known by his Zetas code name “Z 43,” was born in Tulare, Calif. He first appeared on the radar of Mexican law enforcement officials in 1998, when he allegedly began trafficking drugs in the state of Michoacan.

The Zetas cartel he went on to lead evolved from a group of deserters from the Mexican Special Forces. The ex-soldiers were hired to serve as a security force for the Gulf cartel, but in 2010 broke with their former employer to start their own drug trafficking network.

Via street battles and gruesome tactics that included beheadings, videotaped assassinations and the hanging of mutilated bodies from bridges, the Zetas became the most powerful force in several states, including Tamaulipas, on the Texas border. Officials say the group’s reach extends down to Guatemala.

Perhaps the group’s most shocking exploit was the 2010 killing of 72 migrants in the Tamaulipas town of San Fernando. Investigators said the migrants were shot to death after they refused to work for the cartel.

Experts say the group has weakened in recent years, and has begun to splinter into different factions.

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“They are very diminished compared to what they were at their height,” said security expert Alejandro Hope. Still, he said, “it’s an important arrest.”

Guizar’s capture in the country’s capital shocked many who have long viewed Mexico City as a haven from the drug war violence engulfing other parts of nation. But there have been signs that violence may be encroaching, including a large banner hung from one of the city’s main highways this week announcing the arrival of the Jalisco New Generation cartel. Law enforcement officials said they were investigating the banner to see if it is authentic.

Roma, the neighborhood where Guizar was arrested, is known as one of the nation’s trendiest, home to world-famous restaurants, expensive clothing stores and luxurious hotels.

Juan Carlos Silva, chief of the anti-drug division of the federal police, said in a radio interview that Guizar was about to walk into one such hotel Thursday. He was traveling without armed guards, likely in an effort to blend in, Silva said. Because of that, authorities were able to capture Guizar, he said.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum

Times researcher Scott Wilson and Cecilia Sanchez in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
Jalisco New Generation Cartel massacres 19 people, hanging 9 of their desecrated bodies from a bridge in Uruapan.