Hanging bodies, extortion and suspicion: The Zacatecas murders expose drug cartel infiltration in Mexico
The 10 murdered men were business owners and public officials in small cities suffocated by the presence of criminal groups and their violent rivalries, which have increasingly permeated local politics
Around 20 men wearing balaclavas and carrying assault rifles pointed toward the sky stare into the camera, with a rural landscape in the background. One of them, standing in front of the others, reads from a sheet of paper. Beside him, a black banner bearing the initials CDS-MF identifies the group: Sinaloa Cartel–Mayito Flaco, one of the factions that has split from the criminal organization. In the foreground, a man lies on the ground holding a machine gun. This was the scene staged by the cartel two days after the discovery, last Saturday, of 10 bodies at three different locations in the state of Zacatecas, in central Mexico. Five of the victims were found hanging from a bridge, half-naked.
The cartel sought to send several messages, as if the killing of 10 businessmen and local officials last Saturday had not been enough. They called it a “small show of authority.” In a two-minute statement, the group threatened “any citizen who seeks to protest or is against our rules” with “ending up hanged or a little worse.”
The cartel also threatens Zacatecas Governor David Monreal, a member of Morena, the left-wing party that governs Mexico: “If you betray the agreements we have, not only with you but with all the corporations [municipalities], you and all your descendants will end up the same or worse.” It then adds, referring to the killings: “For our part, we are fulfilling our side, and as proof, there you have is what you ordered us to do.”
Beyond spreading terror, the message is further evidence of how deeply cartels are woven into the social fabric of small towns across Mexico and how brazenly they try to impose their own rules on the places where they operate and on society as a whole.
The preliminary investigation by the Zacatecas prosecutor’s office points to the involvement, “voluntary or coerced,” of two of the victims in an “extortion ring,” and it is also examining the connection of a municipal official who was also killed. Most victims in the latest massacre were business owners — working in mining, construction, events management, the owner of a bar that hosts concerts — and two active municipal officials in the city of Fresnillo: one in charge of social development and another a civil protection firefighter.
The state government says it is investigating the origin of the video — “it’s supposedly a cartel group saying a bunch of nonsense with political overtones,” said the uniformed general in charge of security in Zacatecas — and has raised doubts about its authenticity. However, 48 hours after the message was released, on Wednesday, Zacatecas secretary of government Rodrigo Reyes Mugüerza felt compelled to respond directly to the cartel’s claims: “We categorically deny any suggestion that there is any pact or link with organized crime.”
Unlike the authorities, who must gather evidence to determine what happened, criminals need no proof to spread fear and thrust themselves into local politics. It is enough for them to spread suspicion in such a defiant tone. Even if the message were eventually proven not to have come from a cartel, or to be entirely fabricated, it has already forced the state government onto the defensive in a country where suspicions of ties between organized crime and public officials run deep and have even cast doubt on past election results. The most prominent case is that of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, also a member of Morena, who is currently on temporary leave after the United States accused him of collusion with drug traffickers. President Claudia Sheinbaum has called on Washington to provide compelling evidence before he is handed over to the U.S. justice system.
Much of Zacatecas is sparsely populated desert, home to just 1.6 million people. Located in the heart of Mexico, the state is crossed by a strategic highway network linking routes between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, as well as the country’s north-south transport corridors extending toward the United States. Drugs move along those same routes, making them a key battleground for rival cartels competing for distribution networks. But that is not the only prize. Zacatecas is also rich in silver and other mineral deposits. “Criminal groups are involved in a range of other businesses. There is silver, gold, lithium, lead, zinc... They are specialists in extorting mining companies, which often have transnational capital,” says Raúl Benítez Manaut, a sociologist at the Center for Research on North America.
In Zacatecas, the northern part of the state is controlled by the Los Mayo faction of the fractured Sinaloa Cartel, while the Jalisco New Generation Cartel operates in the south. The two groups are locked in a bloody struggle for territorial control that kept Zacatecas among Mexico’s most violent states until only a few years ago.
“The display of the killings, with bodies hanging in public, bears the hallmarks of Los Zetas, who once controlled Zacatecas before being largely dismantled by the Mexican Navy, although remnants may still remain,” says Benítez Manaut. In his view, the message released by the gunmen was intended as a show of strength, demonstrating that they are “arriving with extreme violence.” He adds: “It is not normal for them to challenge the authorities so openly. There are elections next year, and they are effectively telling the political parties: ‘We’re here, we’re very powerful, and you’ll have to come to terms with us.’”
Condolences and funerals followed one after another during the first two days after the bodies were discovered. Eight of the victims died of asphyxiation and two from gunshot wounds. Investigators have yet to establish the exact sequence of events, beyond determining that the crimes occurred between 5:00 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. on Saturday. There were at least two gatherings involving groups of three people. The firefighter was part of one of those groups “by chance,” while another victim, a former mayor and businessman, had been abducted.
On Thursday, the state prosecutor said there were indications that several of the victims were linked, “voluntarily or coerced,” to an extortion-collection network. He stressed that no formal extortion complaints had been filed, acknowledged the seriousness of the problem, and urged citizens to come forward and “have confidence” in the authorities so that such crimes can be prevented. The former mayor had filed a complaint in 2024, but it concerned a matter that had since been “resolved,” according to the state interior secretary, and was no longer active. On Friday, Fresnillo Mayor Javier Torres, a member of the opposition PRI party, gave three hours of testimony. The prosecutor described his statement as “essential,” although no details were disclosed.
Speaking at a press conference last Monday. Governor David Monreal stated that there would be “no impunity” and that the process of “pacifying the state is irreversible.” “We will not return to that long dark night, to those not-so-distant times when there were executions day after day; at one point, 65 police officers were murdered in a single year,” he recalled.
After condemning the brutality of the killings, he quickly turned to statistics and downward-trending graphs: while in 2021 there were 1,741 intentional homicides and Zacatecas had the highest murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants (111), by 2025 the figure had fallen to 149, and so far this year there have been 48. “It has been a titanic effort,” said the governor, who came to power in 2021. According to the presentation, this represents a 97.2% reduction in this indicator, although he said nothing about how disappearances and extortion cases have increased during the same period.
The federal government sent 400 soldiers to Zacatecas and, last Thursday, another hundred to reinforce security. President Sheinbaum has barely addressed the massacre in her daily press conferences, despite the significant impact it has had on the public. She has only said that information will be provided and that the case is under investigation, while highlighting, in the same week, that July 21 was the day with the fewest murders nationwide, with 21 killings, in at least eight years. In fact, the president has praised Zacatecas’ progress as a success story in reducing homicides.
The 10 murders have shattered that image. “Violence decreased because there was a narco pax, a mafia pact to maintain peace, not because of the actions of public security forces,” argues David Saucedo, a security adviser to companies and embassies. In his view, “someone switched sides within the criminal power structure, someone cooperated with a rival group to gain advantages, because drug traffickers have no political affiliation; they can work with anyone in mining, agriculture, or construction projects used for money laundering. And that video is intended to provoke panic. What is still needed is the dismantling of criminal networks and the arrest of mayors tied to drug cartels.”
Fresnillo, the most populous city in the state, with around 240,000 inhabitants, is the common thread connecting the crimes. Most of the victims worked there. In 2021, the city topped the national ranking for perceived insecurity: 95% of its 240,000 residents said they felt unsafe.
The municipal government has endured years of violence beyond the two officials murdered on Saturday. Just 15 days ago, a motorcyclist shot and killed Benjamín Medrano, who served as mayor of Fresnillo between 2013 and 2016 and had been Mexico’s first openly gay mayor. The previous head of Social Development, Juan Pérez Guardado, was also murdered; he was the brother-in-law of a senator who is the governor’s brother. A nephew of both men, a municipal official in Fresnillo, was shot dead two years ago.
The governorship of Zacatecas belongs to the influential Monreal political dynasty. Nine of his siblings currently hold or have held political office in Mexico, including positions as governors, senators, several mayors of Fresnillo, and other senior government posts. However, Fresnillo is now governed by a coalition of parties opposed to Morena, consisting of the PRI, Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and National Action Party (PAN). It is within this municipal administration that the two recent murders occurred.
It is against this backdrop that organized crime further complicates the situation. “During electoral periods, or at times like now, when it must be decided who will control Morena in this state, violence erupts,” explains Noé Hernández, a political scientist specializing in electoral violence at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas.
“The video shows that criminal organizations want to destabilize that internal Morena process, create a realignment of interests favorable to them, and hold the state government responsible for these deaths,” he says. “In fact, through these murders, it challenges the official narrative of falling homicide rates and seeks to accuse the governor of criminalizing the opposition.”
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