In March of 2011, several busses filled with people were hijacked in San Fernando by members of the Los Zetas crime cartel. The US government considers these guys to be the most sophisticated, technologically advanced, and dangerous cartels in Mexico. Add ruthlessly sadistic to that list, too. The captured women were raped, and the captured men were forced to fight against each other to the death like in the movies Battle Royale and Hunger Games.
In an interview with journalist Dane Schiller, a member of the gang who remained anonymous reported that one of the reasons for this brutal event is to groom new assassins for the cartel. By taking the cream of the crop they’ll have found the toughest and most resourceful fighters, and they’ll have turned them into killers already and broken them into the perfect henchmen.
The same anonymous cartel member revealed that the name of this “game” was “Who is going to be the next hitman?” (Seriously.)
The men who won these horrific competitions by stabbing, slicing, or bludgeoning their opponents to death were then often sent on kamikaze missions against rival gangs where they were drastically out-gunned and out-numbered, basically being sent there to die. The Los Zetas also figured some of the people on these busses they were hijacking would have to be enemy gang members, so it was like they were killing two birds with one stone (Except instead of birds, it’s a lot of innocent people.)
So even after defeating other passengers, a lot of the hostages still ended up dead. Not much of a prize.
After the massacres of 2010 and 2011, roughly 10,000 residents left San Fernando. Their 2010 Census numbers put the population at shy of 60,000 so that’s almost 20% of the popular leaving all at once to get away from the violence and the cartel’s rule.
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