In the Mexican drug trafficking network, there are practices that transcend the merely violent and delve into the ritual. Among these is cannibalism, a behavior that has been reported in both journalistic accounts and academic research analyzing the criminal mind.
One of the researchers who has delved into this topic is Claudio Lomnitz, a Chilean anthropologist and historian and member of El Colegio Nacional. In his work, *Para una teología política del crimen organización* (2023), he proposes a reading in which practices of ritual violence are inserted into an institutional vacuum, fueled by the absence of justice and the breakdown of the state order.
Popular devotions such as the cult of Santa Muerte, the veneration of Saint Jude Thaddeus, and practices inherited from Santería intersect in this context. Far from being isolated superstitions, these belief systems offer a spiritual structure that reinforces the identity of armed groups. Cannibalism, in this context, is not only an act of barbarism, but an expression of the distorted sacred, where the body becomes a message and violence, a ritual.
Cannibalism has ceased to be a mythological figure in Mexican organized crime and has become a documented and terrifying practice. In regions like Michoacán, this form of extreme violence became part of the internal code of organizations like Los Caballeros Templarios, founded by Nazario Moreno González, known as “El Chayo.”
Within the Los Zetas community, led by Heriberto Lazcano, alias “El Lazca,” cases have been documented in which traditional dishes, such as tamales or pozole, prepared with the flesh of executed enemies, were served.
“The victims whose flesh was consumed were enemies of the cartel,” he states. Although these were not religious rituals, the procedure for preparing the bodies was meticulous: “They were given whiskey to relax them and a surreptitious shot was fired, supposedly to prevent their flesh from filling with adrenaline, which, they said, makes the victim’s flesh bitter.”
