MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon – The public humiliation of a top cartel operator inside a border state prison is the motivating factor behind the dismemberment and desecration of bodies belonging to gunmen in northern Mexico. In the past year, gunmen from Los Zetas Cartel performed unique retaliatory killings in response to their ally’s videotaped sexual assault behind bars.

The murders are all linked to the ongoing power struggle as the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas is trying to take territories away from Zetas Vieja Escuela and the Gulf Cartel in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Currently, the CDN is led by Hector Raul “El Tory” Luna Luna, the terrorist cartel boss behind the 2008 grenade attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey.

Earlier this year, Breitbart News reported on a series of high-profile executions ordered by El Tory and carried out by his top executioner Jesus Enrique “El Negro Cadereyta” Flores Ramirez. In an effort to spark terror among his rivals, Flores began desecrating bodies through beheadings, dismemberments, and skinning faces. In some of instances, Flores Ramirez put makeup on severed heads.

One of the most dramatic executions took place last year when CDN gunmen left the severed head of top Zetas Vieja Escuela leader Luis “El Rex or Z-12” Reyes Enriquez outside a prison in Tamaulipas. The victim’s head bore a pink ribbon and makeup, while the rest of his body was left in three other prisons in Nuevo Leon.

In another case, the CDN left the severed head of José “El Huesos or Flaco” Guevara Martínez outside the Nuevo Leon State Investigations Agency (AEI). In a similar fashion, CDN gunmen put makeup on Guevara’s head.

Breitbart News spoke with Mexican federal and state law enforcement officials who revealed that the use of makeup is payback for the March 2017 humiliation of Daniel Gustavo “El Muletas” Valencia Trevino, a key leader within the CDN in Nuevo Leon. Cartel members took special offense to their operator being sexually abused and offered cash rewards for the heads of the inmates involved.

Valencia Trevino was a key CDN operator in Nuevo Leon who was arrested by state authorities in February 2017 in connection with a murder and was sent to the Apodaca State Prison. Once inside, rivals forced him to perform oral sex while the group chanted his nickname “Muletas” and filmed the attack.

In a separate humiliation also at the prison, inmates forced Valencia and his fellow CDN members to wear women’s lingerie as they mopped and cleaned prison cells.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart News traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tony Aranda from Nuevo Leon.