Los Zetas eat human flesh in Tamales and Tostadas

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from an El Debate article

Subject Matter: Cartel Cannibalism
Recommendation: Keep your sick bag handy

(Otis: Given the recent Noreste article I translated about cannibalism in CJNG, and the comments I made in that article about the same thing levelled at Los Zetas, I was not surprised when this article came up today on Debate about cannibalism and Los Zetas.

Juan Sanchez Limon had an interview with reporter J Jesus Lemus Barajas. During the conversation, in the Cefereso of Puente Grande, Jalisco, he narrarated scenes of extreme cruelty, almost surreal, for the levels of violence and horror that go on behind these doors.

The prisoner interviewed was a plaza boss from the centre of the country. He controlled Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas and Jalisco.

He recalled knowing Heriberto Lazcano, chief of the paramilitary group after the death of Guzman Decena, and former corporal in the Mexican forces.




Sanchez Limon did not have any communication with Lazcano during several years, later they were reunited when he was commissioned in the State of Durango with the rank of Lieutenant; Sanchez Limon received an invitation to join the group led by Lazcano, who functioned as security chief of the Gulf Cartels top man, Osiel Cardenas Guillen. It was the 90's, the army paid him around 8,000 pesos per month, and Lazca offered him 10,000 per week, and he didnt look back.

How was El Lazca in dealing with you, his people?

He is a guy that's strict but benevolent, very clever, he has a photographic memory, he does not forget anything and will never leave anyone without an answer that asks a favor from him, he always supports his people.

Is it true what they say about him, that he owns a ranch in Laredo, where he has Lions and Tigers to which he throws his enemies alive?

You fucking journalists, you and your shit, its all in peoples imaginations, they cant see a man grow up in society because they want to make him a myth, like saying children are eaten alive.

Is it not true what they said about Lazca?

I know he has a ranch with a zoo, but I haven't seen him throw his enemies to the lions, his enemies he executes them quickly, he would rather eat them than give them to the Lions.

Do you torture them a lot?

No he eats them, do you understand me?

You are saying El Lazca eats human flesh?

I have seen him do that yes

And you have been to meetings where El Lazca has eaten human flesh?

I have been in meetings in which, after judging someone and sentencing him to death, he orders him to bathe, and even to shave his whole body and let him de-stress for two or three hours, even better sometimes he gave them a bottle of whisky to relax, then he ordered a very quick death so there is no adrenaline in the meat to prevent it getting bitter or hard.

How do you prepare the meat to eat it?

I have seen that El Lazca likes to eat it in Tamales and cooked in Lemon on toast, as if it were tartar meat.

What part of the body is eaten?

Only the buttocks, from that they bring out the steaks to prepare the meal. Once were in a meeting where all the people got together; it was in an Inn in Ciudad Victoria and that time he ordered stew and tamales. Those who also eat the human flesh were Central Americans who went out of their way to do it, it was my turn to see how it was prepared to put them in the stew and the tamales.

Did everyone in the meeting eat human flesh in their food?

Everyone knew it was human flesh and I did not see anyone turn down the stew or the tamales, even the soldiers that arrived at the meeting, invited by El Lazca launched into the food with some appetite.

Lemus Barajas spent three years in prison and daily was subjected to intense sessions of torture that tried to kill any hope of being able to see the light of the sun again.

Lemus was director of El Tiempo, a small newspaper in La Piedad, Michoacan, and was arrested in 2008 under the charge of organized crime and drug trafficking. There was no evidence and he had no legal support, he says it was revenge by the Government because of the things he said about them.

He was quickly sent to Puente Grande, and the SHU, to keep him isolated, naked with no property or bed.

His stay at Puente Grande allowed him to collect experiences with celebrities such as Daniel Arizmendi, Mochaorejas, Alvaro Dario de Leon Aviles, El Duby, a member of the "Narco-Satanicos", and also El Chapo Guzman and his escape. Mario Aburto, the man condemned for the assassination of candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, who confessed that the weapon that found on him on the day of the assassination, was carried because he was going to sell it and had made an appointment with the buyer there.

It is also believed the Knights Templar also performed these practices

The narration of Lemus on Lazcano, is further enhanced with the statements of reporter Alfredo Corchado, Chief correspondent for the Dallas Morning News Daily in the USA, in which he ensures that Miguel Trevino Morales, capo and leader of Los Zetas is a believer in Santaria and carried out practises such as eating the hearts of his victims, with the aim of feeling more powerful.

Lemus Barajas recounts these experiences in his book " The damned, Black Chronicle from Puente Grande". The talk with Sanchez Limon happened four years before Lazcano was killed in Progreso, Coahuila in 2012.

Original article in Spanish at El Debate