The cartel responsible for the slaughter of six innocent teenagers in Mexico filmed them being led to their deaths and sent the footage to their parents, according to local reports.
The video shows an armed cartel member in a skull mask leading the teens — ages 14 to 18 — who are dressed with black hoods over their faces obscuring their view and their hands tied behind their backs.
Gun-toting gangsters follow the barefoot hostages as they walk up a mountainside in the state of Zacatecas in Central Mexico.
Out of the seven teenagers six were killed and a seventh was beaten to a pulp but survived, Mexican authorities said.
In the video, part of which was shown on local news channel Milenio TV, a “narcocorrido” can be heard playing, a type of mexican folk song which details mobster exploits
“Death is in their eyes,” the lyrics proclaim.
The teens, identified as friends and cousins by the Mexican edition of Spanish language newspaper El Pais, had been enjoying a family weekend at a ranch near the town of Malpaso when several vehicles loaded with armed men broke into the home at 4 a.m. Sunday and kidnapped the boys.
Their bodies were found days later in a remote area area which didn’t even have roads leading to it.
The sole survivor, Sergio Yobani Acevedo, remains unconscious in the hospital and has been unable to speak with investigators, according to Milenio TV.
Parents of the murdered teens released the footage to the media to counter claims by Mexican officials, who denied the minors were kidnapped.
The reason for the kidnappings and murders has not been made clear and they have rocked the country, leading many to believe ruthless cartels are in charge of the area according to El Pais.
Even with 6,500 members of the Mexican Army, National Guard and Federal Secretary of Public Security stationed in the state, a wave of violence has taken hold of Zacatecas.
At least six cartels are warring for control of the state, including Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the Sinaloa Cartel and the Northeast Cartel.
Smaller criminal groups who take orders from the mobsters are operating there, too.
“These are spaces of emptiness, there’s a lack of the rule of law, a lack of services… in these spaces, the [criminal] groups come to hide,” Miguel Moctezuma of the Global Security Programme at the University of Oxford told El Pais.
“And they don’t just live there: they place themselves in these populations as providers, administrators of justice. They sponsor things.”
Even in a country where cartels are part of the everyday life, many Mexicans feel the killings are a sign things are spilling over beyond government control.
“18 years into the ‘War against Narcos,’ we are a country that has on average 85-93 painful murders a day,” said Grupo Formula Journalist Oscar Belman.
Belman offered three theories behind the teens’ massacre, saying cartel members could be trying to take revenge on rivals and mistakenly targeting the teens; a new form of group hostage taking meant to extort money from families; or simply a new form of spreading terror.
“What this shows is cartel violence in Zacatecas is unchecked. There really are no rights,” he added.
