Drug cartels employ extreme and brutal methods of torture to punish rivals, extract information, and intimidate the public and law enforcement

. These acts often serve as a form of “macabre theater” or propaganda to project an image of power and control. 

Commonly reported methods of torture used by various cartels include:

• Physical Beatings and Mutilation Victims are routinely subjected to severe beatings, sometimes until their bones are broken. Mutilation includes cutting off fingers or tongues, which are sometimes placed in or on the victim’s body to send specific messages.
• Asphyxiation and Drowning Methods such as waterboarding and fake asphyxiation (suffocation) are commonly used to torture detainees and extract confessions.
• Electrocution Electric shocks are frequently applied to victims’ bodies.
• Burning Cartel members have used methods like burning victims with an iron or a car lighter. In extreme cases, victims have been burned to death.
• Sexual Violence and Humiliation Sexual abuse of both men and women is prevalent. Genital mutilation and placing severed penises in victims’ mouths have been documented.
• Psychological Torment This includes mock executions, forcing victims to fight each other to the death, and threatening harm to victims’ family members.
• Ritualistic Violence and Post-mortem Desecration In some cases, linked to evolving “narcocultos”, killings have involved ritualistic elements, such as skinning victims or removing their hearts. Bodies are often displayed publicly (e.g., hanging from overpasses) with accompanying messages to maximize fear and intimidation.
• Feeding to Animals Members of the Sinaloa cartel’s “Chapitos” faction reportedly fed some rivals to tigers. 

These methods are designed not just to inflict pain but to break individuals psychologically and send a clear, brutal message to rivals, potential informants, and the community at large. 

Torture methods used by various groups and state actors against alleged terrorists or detainees involve inflicting severe physical and psychological pain and suffering to extract information, punish, or intimidate

. These methods are considered illegal under international and domestic law in most countries. 

Commonly reported methods of torture include:

• Physical abuse: Beatings, kicking, slapping, and punching. The use of objects like spike batons, electrical shock devices, or weapons is also reported.
• Forced positions: Forcing individuals into painful, unnatural, and prolonged stress positions (e.g., standing or sitting for many hours) that cause intense pain and muscle failure.
• Environmental extremes: Exposing detainees to extreme cold temperatures, often while naked or doused with cold water.
• Sensory deprivation and manipulation:Depriving individuals of light and auditory stimuli, or conversely, subjecting them to continuous, loud noise or music for days.
• Sleep deprivation: Preventing sleep for prolonged periods, sometimes lasting several days.
• Waterboarding: A technique that simulates drowning by binding a person to an inclined board, covering their face, and pouring water over the cloth to induce the misperception of suffocation.
• Sexual abuse and humiliation: This can include forced nudity, sexual assault, forced sexual acts with other prisoners, and sexual humiliation by interrogators.
• Threats and psychological abuse: Using scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severe harm is imminent for them or their family, or using phobias like the fear of dogs to induce stress.
• Inhumane confinement: Confinement in small boxes to severely restrict movement, or in filthy, overcrowded cells.
• Denial of basic needs: Withholding food, water, light, or necessary medical treatment. 

These techniques often lead to profound and sometimes permanent physical and psychological harm. The use of torture is widely condemned by international organizations like the United Nations and Amnesty International as a grave human rights violation.