Continuing in the spirit of catching up with Mexican Drug Cartels, here’s a video of execution of Manuel Mendez Leyva, originally published by Blog del Narco. Manuel Mendez Leyva was a member of Los Negros – a drug cartel gang lead by Texas, USA born Edgar Valdez Villarreal (La Barbie) who became a cartel boss after the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva.

In the video, Manuel Mendez Leyva is executed by beheading but what made the video notorious is how he was beheaded. In a bid to make his death more agonizing, the captors kept Manuel Mendez Leyva fully awake throughout most of the beheading by rupturing his trachea, but leaving much of the blood supply to the brain intact.

Prior to his execution, Manuel Mendez Leyva is interrogated by his captors and confesses to having worked for Edgar Valdez Villarreal aka “La Barbie” and his job was to obtain pills and ephedrine. Further into the interrogation, Manuel Mendez Leyva confesses that along with “La Barbie”, Lazarito, Alejandro and his brother Patricio Mendez Leyva, their main purpose was to wage war against Joaquin Guzman Loera aka El Chapo (leader of Sinaloa Cartel, the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world).

The interrogation is ended by captors stating: “Ya de aquí tú te vas” (Now, here you go). Manuel Mendez Leyva is then beheaded in a way so as to keep him fully awake and fully aware of the fact that he’s being beheaded. As I had already mentioned, his agony was prolonged by keeping the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain uninterrupted while he was forced to choke on blood clogging up his severed trachea. Easily one of the most graphic beheadings ever filmed on camera.

BTW – La Barbie, the Los Negros drug cartel lord Manuel Mendez Leyva worked for is credited for being the guy who started the trend of scaring the rivals with videos of their mates being tortured and brutally executed. Other cartel jumped on the bandwagon, but it’s said to have started with Edgar Valdez Villarreal. Mexican sicarios don’t fuck around and La Barbie spread that message with videos posted on the internet. Manuel Mendez Leyva drowned in his own blood, but I’m sure he would have (maybe even did) done the same if he was the one with a face mask, a rifle and a knife.

Many thanks to thediddler, Buffsmom and countless others for the video.