Police in
Mexico were met with a horrifying scene of decapitated bodies found inside a car, with each body baring a message giving the reason they were killed. Seven bodies, five of them decapitated and another completely dismembered, were in a car left in the middle of traffic on a main expressway in the city of Puebla on Friday. “On each of the bodies, we found hand-written messages written on paper, each one detailing the reason they were killed,” said Puebla state chief prosecutor Gilberto Higuera. Higuera did not mention whether the deaths might be related to . The incident was “not only a dispute (between gangs) but also something related to dominance over certain people, aimed at not only domination, but recruitment,” Higuera also said. Authorities became aware of the car because it was blocking traffic on the city's main ring road. While drug cartel murders are common, the killings may shock the nearby community as they occurred in an area of Puebla known to be affluent. Puebla, Mexico’s fifth largest city, has largely been spared the drug cartel violence affecting surrounding areas. Some cartels in Mexico, when seeking to establish a territory as their own, will kill off rivals or any petty thieves or drug dealers they find, and leave messages to convince local residents that such activities will not be tolerated under the new cartel. The murders come after a candidate for mayor of a violence-wracked city in Mexico was killed as she began her campaign. Bertha Gaytán was shot and killed on the outskirts of the city of Celaya in the state of Guanajuato. Guanajuato has for some time had the highest number of homicides of any state in Mexico. The state has been wracked for years by violent turf battles between the Jalisco drug cartel and the homegrown Santa Rosa de Lima gang. Horrific video from the scene shows several shots heard and people are seen running and falling down. Violence against politicians is also common in Mexico. In late February in another town in Michoacan, two mayoral hopefuls were shot dead within hours of each other. More recently, the mayor of Churumuco in the state of Michoacan was shot and killed in a taco restaurant in the city of Morelia. At least 14 candidates have been killed since the start of 2024 ahead of
elections on June 2. Gaytán was a member of the Morena party, the same party as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.