Drug trafficking Los Zetas cartel creates ISIS-style beheading video to spread fear

Mexico's cartels

A graphic video shows an ISIS-style beheading of a cartel war victim.

Click through to see which cartels are running Mexico and where. Mexico's cartels

A graphic video shows an ISIS-style beheading of a cartel war victim.

Click through to see which cartels are running Mexico and where. Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close Drug trafficking Los Zetas cartel creates ISIS-style beheading video to spread fear 1 / 30 Back to Gallery

For a few years, a wide-spread effort by the Mexican military to arrest or kill cartel leaders, most notably Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, seemed to be making progress.

But as Cartels began to fight for the territory of military-weakened rivals, the homicide rate once again exploded.

Now, a disturbing video shows the extreme length that participants in the emerging all-out gang war will go to retain or take power.

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The graphic video shows two Los Zetas gunmen insulting rival gangs behind a shirtless, kneeling man.

The gunmen claim that their victim is part of a rival gang who was sent to commit crimes in Ciudad Victoria, according to a translation by Breitbart.

After delivering more threats to rival gangs, one of the gunmen pulls out a meat cleaver and cuts the victim's throat. The victim is then decapitated, and the gunmen place the severed head on the victim's back.

In 2014, Mexico's homicide rate dropped to 14,353, the lowest point in several years according to data seen on the Los Angeles Times. But that number began to steadily rise in 2015 until reaching 20,792 in 2016, a 44.8 percent increase in two years.

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Jorge Chabat, a security expert at the Center for Research and Teaching Economics, told the Los Angeles Times that the numbers are due to an over-reliance on guns and soldiers, and a lack of reform in the justice system.

"This is not a software problem, this is a hardware problem," said Chabat. "The government launched security operations but they didn't do the other part of the job — reforming institutions in a proper way and combating corruption. If you don't fix the state institutions, there is no security strategy that is going to work."

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