A mayor has fled the small Zacatecas municipality he governs after receiving threats from organized crime Institutional Revolutionary Party mayor of Monte Escobedo located in southwestern Zacatecas on the border with Jalisco left town with his family in May and will carry out his mayoral duties virtually In light of his departure and the resignation of the municipal government secretary the Monte Escobedo council agreed to allow a state government envoy to take charge of day-to-day business Alejandro Arce Pantoja was sworn in as temporary secretary of the municipal council in a ceremony presided over virtually by Mayor Sánchez last Wednesday the municipal palace had remained closed for two weeks some 100 armed men arrived in town and told municipal authorities that they were going to take over the municipal palace according to a report by the newspaper La Jornada that cited witness accounts published on social media and reporting by local news outlets The newspaper El Universal reported that the armed men demanded to occupy several areas of the building In the absence of the mayor — his whereabouts at the time were unclear — council personnel “became frightened and called 911 to ask for the presence of the army.” Arce told El Universal that all the workers abandoned the government building He said the unidentified armed men fled due to the expected arrival of the army which along with the National Guard and state police remains in Monte Escobedo: it doesn’t have a single municipal police officer since the local police chief — and sole officer — was abducted and murdered in January The council’s call to authorities for help is presumed to have been the trigger for direct threats being made against the mayor and the former municipal secretary “who decided to abandon their land together with their families,” El Universal said A replacement council secretary was sought among residents of Monte Escobedo but nobody accepted the position due to the fear that they might be targeted next who traveled from Zacatecas city to take up the secretary’s role said the deployment of security forces to the municipality where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are fighting for control polling booths were not set up in some Monte Escobedo communities on Sunday due to the threat posed by organized crime It is unclear when the mayor will return or whether he will return at all Zacatecas is coveted by criminal groups due to its location between Pacific coast ports where drugs enter the country and Mexico’s northeastern border with the United States It was the sixth most violent state last month in terms of sheer homicide numbers after Guanajuato With reports from El Universal (sp) and La Jornada (sp)  ADVERTISE WITH MND COMMUNITY GUIDELINES Subscription FAQ's Privacy Policy Mexico News Daily - Property of Tavana LLC A stray dog was spotted running down the street with a human head in its mouth in Zacatecas The victim's head and other body parts were left in an ATM booth in the town of Monte Escobedo in Zacatecas, Mexico late Wednesday, Oct. 26. The human remains were also left with a message referring to a drug cartel. However, before the police could act, a stray dog bit and ran away with the corpse's head, CBS News reported a video of the incident was posted on social media The video showed a stray dog trotting down a darkened street holding a human head by the neck in its jaws apparently intending to take it to a safe place to eat it Officers in Zacatecas revealed that the police eventually managed to wrest the head away from the dog, Fox News reported Zacatecas had been the place of a bloody turf war between local gangs backed by the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels It is common in Mexico for drug cartels to frequently leave notes alongside heaps of dismembered human remains as a way to intimidate rivals or authorities six severed heads were reportedly discovered on a car roof in Mexico The severed head carried a sign warning others: "This will happen to anyone who messes around." In a similar but unrelated incident, a stray dog was seen running holding a severed head of a baby in its mouth in the streets of the Bibikulam area, Madurai, India on Sept. 8, 2021, as previously reported A man noticed the dog in the street carrying the baby’s head and alerted the local police station The Tallakulam police quickly responded to the scene and located the dog opposite the Income Tax office near Indian Bank in the town The investigators recovered the head and sent it to the forensic lab at the Rajaji Government Hospital for autopsy The baby’s head was covered in dirt which raised suspicion that the dog must have found the head from some drainage or garbage dump A search operation was initiated to locate the rest of the body of the baby TwitterPolice spent several hours searching for the dog and severed head A shocking video surfaced online last week showing a stray dog running along a street in Mexico carrying a decapitated human head in its mouth As VICE reports the video was taken in the small town of Monte Escobedo in the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas The rest of the victim’s body was found in an automatic teller booth along with notes referencing organized crime groups but before authorities could cordon off the crime scene Police spent several hours that night searching for the dog and missing head but they were unable to find it again until the next morning when they spotted the animal in a fenced-off area of a house in the downtown region Per the New York Post police had to pry the severed head from the dog’s mouth They then handed it off to a forensics team to hopefully determine the corpse’s sex and age along with any other identifying details about the victim authorities also found several other body parts and notes that were likely meant to threaten or intimidate rivals or authorities As CBS News reports Zacatecas has long been subjected to violence as local gangs backed by the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels fight for control of the region there were several other incidents of bodies being left alongside threatening messages seven corpses were found in a popular tourist spot with warning messages written on the bodies saying “This is what happened to me for working with the Gulf,” referring to the Gulf Cartel whose operations primarily take place along the U.S cartel gunmen killed five high school students and a woman on a street in Guanajuato another Mexican state caught in the middle of gang warfare eight women and three men were killed in simultaneous attacks that appeared to be acts of gang revenge six severed heads were found on a car roof with a message that read “This will happen to anyone who messes around.” PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty ImagesA member of the Mexican National Guard walking through downtown Zacatecas Zacatecas in particular sees high rates of violence between rival cartels as the state is sparsely populated yet expansive making it a gainful route for trafficking drugs north to the United States Many criminal organizations also use the region to run drug labs and narco-camps for training new recruits the problem has become so bad in recent years that Zacatecas now ranks as one of the most dangerous Mexican states with one of the highest homicide rates in the country And cartel members have been leaving messages and human remains in public places as a scare tactic for over a decade The first notable instance occurred just before the 2006 presidential election when six severed heads appeared over a span of three months at an Acapulco beach resort the tactic has been used by notorious criminal organizations across the country it does not appear to be slowing down any time soon Mexico’s drug wars have long ailed the country. Learn more about some of the foul practices cartels employ — like making new members eat their victims. Or, discover how ex-cop Rafael Aguilar Guajardo became a powerful leader of the Juárez Cartel We have the address for the funeral home & the family on file If you're not happy with your card we'll send a replacement or refund your money created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories © 2025 Mission Park Funeral Chapels & Cemeteries Made with love by funeralOne A DOG spotted carrying a human hand in his mouth sparked the gruesome discovery of 53 bin bags crammed full of body parts in Mexico Cops found the horrific mass grave at an international arts festival in the Mexican town of Irapuato in Guanajuato state around 170 miles northwest of the capital Mexico City The terrifying find was made after a dog returned carrying a human hand in its mouth the founder of a women's collective searching for missing persons said she had come in search of her brother after hearing reports of the dog The remains have now been exhumed and analysed after they were first discovered in October So far, Bibian's brother hasn't been named. Bibian told Agence France-Presse: "While people from all over the world were celebrating the Cervantino festival, an international arts festival in the area, we were digging up bodies. "At the same time, I thought it was useless because they were burying more people elsewhere." during the search for missing relatives in the mass grave Guanajuato state in central Mexico has the highest homicide rate of any region of the country The state has seen more than 2,400 murders as well as some 3,000 disappearances between January and September this year Most violent crimes in the region are believed to be related to Mexico's violent drug cartels It is being driven by a years-long war between the deadly Jalisco and Sinaloa Cartels for control of the trades in cocaine and fentanyl While people from all over the world were celebrating the Cervantino festival.. several cartel members were killed after they attacked a police station in Celaya A shooting at a bar in Apaseo el Alto in Guanajuato left nine people dead on November 9 cartels are increasingly at war over the theft of fuel in the face of soaring prices often associated with the theft of petroleum and natural gas from the state oil company and other suppliers primarily in the south and central areas of the state," the US Department of State wrote in a travel advisory last month "Of particular concern is the high number of murders in the southern region of the state associated with cartel-related violence." It comes just weeks after a dog was seen carrying a decapitated head in its mouth in central Mexico Residents of the violence-ridden state of Zacatecas were shocked when they witnessed a stray dog carrying the decapitated remains on Wednesday evening A law enforcement official said the head had been dumped on a cardboard placard next to a Mexican ATM booth in Monte Escobedo Terrified residents saw the animal running away with the corpse’s head before police could investigate the crime scene signed off by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s (JNGC) leader El Mencho This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page The army and the National Anti-Kidnapping Coordinator (Conase) arrested a prominent cartel chief in Chihuahua on Saturday for aggravated kidnapping Rafael “N,” known by the moniker “El Fantasma” (the ghost), has been identified as the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Zacatecas. He’s thought to be responsible for the 10 bodies found hanging from an overpass in Cuauhtémoc on November 18 That was part of an ongoing wave of violence which saw at least 21 publicly hanging corpses reported in the state over eight days El Fantasma was in charge of training recruits and is suspected of extortion He is also being investigated for the kidnapping of two U.S citizens — brothers Javier and Alejandra Márquez Gómez — on December 23 The kidnappers demanded 350,000 pesos (about US $17,000) from the brothers’ U.S A turf war has raged in Zacatecas since mid-2020 between the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG which seeks to expand in the north of the country Zacatecas has already witnessed gruesome violence in 2022, despite a security plan through which 210 additional soldiers and 250 extra members of the National Guard were sent to the state in November In one holiday massacre, 10 dead bodies were found abandoned beneath the giant Christmas tree in front of the state government palace on January 6 and 18 people were killed in a single day on February 5 With reports from El Universal witnessed a dog carrying a  decapitated human head in its mouth and running down a dark street at night in which the dog can be seen holding the human neck in its jaws and running down the street of Mexico Dog walking with Human Head in its Snout 😳⚠️ Monte Escobedo, Zacatecas, Mexico 📍 pic.twitter.com/566FjXCxmG — Ibar Yahawadah 🔥💯 (@IbarYahawadah) November 1, 2022 The video was reportedly filmed in the town of Monte Escobedo in the northern state of Zacatecas by Ibar Yahawadah on his twitter page The head and other body parts were left in an ATM booth in the town of Monte Escobedo on Wednesday Before authorities could arrive at the crime scene a dog came and carried off the severed head the head was found by the police in the downtown area the head was sent to forensic team for determining the age of the victim The violence has spiked in recent years in the city of Zacatecas pointing to a turf war between the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels The Mexican drug cartels often leave notes next to mutilated human parts as a form of intimidation toward rivals or authorities Kalinga TV a 24-hour Odia news channel is part of Kalinga Media & Entertainment Pvt was founded by philanthropist and educationist Dr Himansu Sekhar Khatua the noted film maker at it’s helm as the Managing Director Kalinga TV is a 24-hour news channel and plans to be the premiere news channel in Odisha with special emphasis on social development The company was incorporated on 24.04.2013 under the Companies Act of 1956 were reportedly found in Mexico's Zacatecas state and authorities believed that members of the rival Sinaloa Cartel killed them According to Infobae, the discovery of the bodies in Monte Escobedo happened during the early hours of Wednesday the same day Arturo Medina Mayoral was sworn in as the new head of the Public Security Secretariat of Zacatecas Borderland Beat reported that the corpses of three men and a woman bore signs of torture and had gunshot wounds Two of them were reportedly tied with ropes by their hands and feet and were all lying face down when they were found on the streets of the town Three of the victims had caps with letters of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel or Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) on their sides and one of them seemed to have had packaged food at his feet and a caltrop on one side The areas where the bodies were discovered were in Don Manuelito square and another next to the Monte Escobedo library authorities believed that the bodies could belong to alleged hitmen of the Jalisco cartel and members of the Sinaloa Cartel could have attacked the victims Zacatecas has seen bloody turf wars between Mexican drug cartels in recent years and Los Talibanes are the drug cartels reportedly operating in the state All five crime organizations are involved in the operations of trafficking fentanyl and other illegal drugs Security experts previously said a wave of violence had enveloped the streets of Zacatecas as Mexican drug cartels fought for control of territory They noted that Zacatecas was not only an important market for drug dealing but also crucial in transporting fentanyl from Mexico's South Pacific ports to the U.S The state reportedly links the center and west of Mexico to the American border a key territory for drug-trafficking routes Mexican drug cartels usually display dead bodies or human body parts publicly not only to intimidate their rivals or authorities but also to scare residents The Jalisco cartel is currently the Sinaloa Cartel's main rival The Jalisco cartel is being led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," who continues to evade capture. The U.S. government has already offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest. El Mencho remains to be the most elusive criminal and is reportedly hiding in Mexico The Sinaloa Cartel is reportedly not a hierarchical structure as its leaders like Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada all maintained their own separate but cooperating organizations Mexico recently reported an increase in violence in January after the number of people killed was higher than in December and November Mexico reportedly closed January with 2,303 victims Preliminary figures showed that the average number of murders per day in December was 73 and 69 last November The Security and Citizen Protection Secretariat (SSPC) reported that 2,277 people were killed in December Data also showed that Guanajuato is the state with the most number of homicides A total of 249 murders were recorded in Guanajuato last month The State of Mexico followed with 238 murders WATCH: Mexico Sends Troops to Tijuana After String Of Cartel Violence - From NBC News Sign up for our free newsletter for the Latest coverage!