A vicious Mexican drug gang forced some members to
eat the hearts of murder victims as part of a gruesome initiation rite to root
out infiltrators, a government security official said on Tuesday, citing
witness testimony.
Reuters reports for much of the past year, Michoacan, a mountainous,
agricultural state in western Mexico, has been ravaged by fighting between drug
gang henchmen and vigilantes who took up arms against the cartels but have
since splintered into violent factions.
A mid-December shootout between two rival groups
that killed 11 people has reignited fears the government is failing to control the
state after flooding it with federal troops and pressing vigilantes into a
fledgling rural police force.
The renewed fighting in Michoacan comes as President
Enrique Pena Nieto faces his deepest crisis since taking office, following the
apparent murder of 43 trainee teachers by a drug gang working with corrupt
police in neighboring Guerrero state.
The incident sparked widespread protests against the
government, compounded by conflict-of-interest scandals enveloping the
president and his finance minister. Pena Nieto was expected to discuss Mexico's
chronic violence with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday.
The main gangs operating in Michoacan, La Familia
Michoacana, and later offshoot the Knights Templar cartel, were founded by
Nazario Moreno, or "The Craziest One," a cultish crime boss who was
finally killed in March 2014 after the previous government declared him dead in
2010.
Interviewed on local television, Alfredo Castillo,
Michoacan's federal security commissioner, denied cannibalism was widespread,
but said there were various testimonies indicating heart-eating was part of a
macabre initiation Moreno used to root out moles or test his men's loyalty.
"The ritual ranged from dismembering people
they intended to kill to sometimes serving up the heart," Castillo said.
He did not elaborate on who provided the testimony
and did not specify when and where the alleged initiation rituals took place.
Castillo could not immediately be reached for comment.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in
gang-related violence in Mexico since 2007.
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