Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) – the country’s two most powerful gangs – are currently waging war, with tensions particularly fraught in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas.
It has witnessed a wave of horrifying violence – with a local police chief beheaded and dumped on a roadside by CJNG hitmen earlier this month.
Its members routinely carry out such acts in order to intimidate rivals, with the CJNG now thought to be a greater force than the Sinaloa Cartel – led by drug lord El Chapo until his arrest and imprisonment last year.
Robert Almonte, a former US federal marshal who spent 25 years in El Paso’s Police Department tackling narcotics, believes further attacks are possible over Christmas.