CUERNAVACA, Mexico - The preferred form of cruelty by drug-cartel henchmen is to capture enemies and behead them, a once-shocking act that has now become numbingly routine.
Since March 22, authorities have come across four grisly scenes of beheaded bodies, in one case with several heads placed neatly in a row.
Dozens of people have been decapitated in recent months, most of them apparently members of rival drug gangs locked in turf battles over narcotics routes, betrayals of loyalty and territorial influence.
One morning earlier this week, four bodies were thrown on a sidewalk along a service road of radiator shops and garages abutting the main highway leading from Mexico's capital through this city to the south and on to Acapulco, the Pacific beach resort. One of the bodies was missing its head.
Within hours, government workers had carted away the bodies and scrubbed the scene nearly clean of bloodstains. Locals declined to talk.
Decapitations by drug cartels in Mexico began in 2006. That year, armed thugs swaggered onto the white-tile dance floor of the Sol y Sombra discotheque in Uruapan, a town in Michoacan state, and dumped five heads from plastic garbage bags.
The blood-curdling act shocked Mexico and evoked images of Islamic terrorism half a world away.
Border
Since March 22, authorities have come across four grisly scenes of beheaded bodies, in one case with several heads placed neatly in a row.
Dozens of people have been decapitated in recent months, most of them apparently members of rival drug gangs locked in turf battles over narcotics routes, betrayals of loyalty and territorial influence.
One morning earlier this week, four bodies were thrown on a sidewalk along a service road of radiator shops and garages abutting the main highway leading from Mexico's capital through this city to the south and on to Acapulco, the Pacific beach resort. One of the bodies was missing its head.
Within hours, government workers had carted away the bodies and scrubbed the scene nearly clean of bloodstains. Locals declined to talk.
Decapitations by drug cartels in Mexico began in 2006. That year, armed thugs swaggered onto the white-tile dance floor of the Sol y Sombra discotheque in Uruapan, a town in Michoacan state, and dumped five heads from plastic garbage bags.
The blood-curdling act shocked Mexico and evoked images of Islamic terrorism half a world away.
Border