Members of Gulf Cartel Behead Five Rival Zetas With Machetes... On Camera

An unbelievably horrifying video has been posted on a popular cartel-focused blog that shows a number of Gulf Cartel members interrogating and eventually beheading at least three members of their rival Los Zetas, ABC News first reported.

The three-minute, low-quality video shows five shirtless male members of the Los Zetas on their knees, large black "Z"s painted on their chest. All around them are members of the murderous Gulf Cartel holding machetes.

The Zeta captives identify themselves by name when prompted by an unidentified narrator and when asked who sent them, each replies "Z-40." ABC News reports that the Zetas' second in command, Miguel Angel Trevino Moralas, is known as "40" in Zeta circles.

"You find yourselves here because you came to f*** us," says the narrator. "Pay attention, men."

Then in what can only be described as pure evil, the machete-wielding men begin chopping their prisoners' heads off, one blunt hack at a time. The process is slow and gruesome.

"This is how all your filthy people are going to end," the narrator of the video says.

Before the video concludes, the masked Gulf Cartel members hold up three of the severed heads to show the camera. "Very, very good," replies the narrator.

WARNING: The content of the video is extremely graphic and disturbing and is not recommended for younger readers. We have viewed it but have decided not to embed or link to it. 

ABC News has more details:

U.S. has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of "40," and he and his two brothers are also under federal indictment in Texas for alleged laundering of cocaine profits through a U.S. horseracing venture.

According to Mundonarco.com, the video was shot in Río Bravo, Mexico, on the U.S. border just south of McAllen, Texas in the state of Tamaulipas. Río Bravo is six miles from the Donna International Bridge border crossing. No date is given for the creation of the video.

The Gulf cartel has been operating out of Tamaulipas state since the 1970s. In 2010, when the Zetas cartel, which had once worked as the Gulf cartel's security force, went into business for itself, violence in Tamaulipas and the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon soared, with 2,000 dead in 2010 alone. Multiple mass graves have been discovered in the region and beheadings, hangings, and other forms of torture are common.

It appears that Mexico's drug cartels are engaging in a back-and-forth competition to see which of them can commit the most gruesome and disturbing crime. Now, the cartels are increasingly posting videos of these crimes online to intimidate their enemies.