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The DARK World of Cartels: Cannibalism, Cults & Catholicism

Camp Gagnon

Tue Oct 14 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: Camp Gagnon

Episode: The DARK World of Cartels: Cannibalism, Cults & Catholicism
Date: October 14, 2025
Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest: Dave Frank (former bodyguard for a Mexican general, firsthand witness to cartel activity)

Episode Overview

This episode of Camp Gagnon plunges into the dark intersection of Mexican cartel violence, occult rituals, and Catholic traditions. Guest Dave Frank draws from years of frontline experience confronting cartels, offering unvarnished insights into how faith, fear, and brutality intertwine among cartel members. Frank exposes the chilling impact of Santa Muerte, Mexico’s "Saint of Death," detailing how her veneration pervades cartel culture — from tattoos and altars to gruesome human sacrifices and ritual cannibalism. The conversation explores the weaponization of religion, the psychological toll on law enforcement, and the ways cartels manipulate faith to enhance their power and spread terror.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Santa Muerte & Cartel Occultism

Santa Muerte ("Saint Death") is central in cartel culture, often blended with elements of Catholicism, Santería, and Satanism.
Rituals include brutal torture, human sacrifice, and macabre symbolism to venerate death and seek spiritual power.
Quote:
"Santa Muerte is so prevalent in Mexico because it's such a Catholic country...they found this saint and mixed it with Santería and different elements of Satanism, like combined it to create their own patron saint." – Dave Frank [05:07]

2. Extreme Cruelty & Ritual Killings

Cartels routinely engage in prolonged torture, deliberately extending victims’ suffering.
Dismemberment, face-peeling, and even cannibalism occur, often as both punishment and ritual.
Some truly shocking cases: using defibrillators to bring victims back from death just to kill them again.
Quote:
"You'll have people in Mexico that will kill somebody and they'll have defibrillators there to try to bring them back to life so they can kill them more than once." – Dave Frank [00:37] / [19:25]

3. Weaponizing Faith and Religion

Rituals and the cult of Santa Muerte strip away moral inhibitions, pushing members into acts even they might otherwise avoid.
Many cartel soldiers display tattoos and pendants; altars to Santa Muerte are omnipresent in Mexico.
Religion is not only a justification but a psychological tool for control and recruitment.
Quote:
"With Santa Muerte, they're not at all held to the same type of moral code that we are. In fact, they're kind of encouraged by themselves and their own saint, the Saint of Death. They're glorifying death." – Dave Frank [07:51]

4. Personal Safety and Law Enforcement Realities

Frank discusses the constant threat facing police and military; carrying a single bullet for suicide is common — a last defense against torture and forced betrayal.
Quote:
"I keep around one round. That's to take off my own dome. Because they're going to torture you and cut off your head." – Dave Frank [06:13]

5. Symbolism, Altars, and Spread of Santa Muerte

Cartel affiliation marked by ubiquitous Santa Muerte tattoos, altars, candles, and rituals in private and public.
Even in prisons, shrines and symbols are widespread.
Quote:
"Everywhere you go, they have Santa Muerte altars, stores for buying, like, the Grim Reaper candles...for different things. Money, health." – Dave Frank [13:55]

6. Cannibalism, Human Sacrifice, and Rituals

Documented (though rare) cases of cannibalism, such as eating parts of enemies’ hearts or livers to gain spiritual power.
Altars and cemeteries built in shrines to Santa Muerte, especially in Sinaloa.
Quote:
"They will get their enemies and they will take out a body part, typically the heart or a liver, and they'll eat portions of it, try to grow their own power." – Dave Frank [29:31]

7. Catholicism and Religious Syncretism Among Cartel Members

Most cartel members blend Catholic upbringing with Santa Muerte beliefs.
Dual practice (Mass attendance and Santa Muerte veneration) is common.
Quote:
"If you're Mexico and you came from a Mexican mother, you're definitely Catholic. Without a doubt." – Dave Frank [26:03]

8. Changes in Cartel Culture

Old leadership (deeply Catholic) has given way to a new generation more openly immersed in Santa Muerte.
Initiation and adherence to this “death cult” is now near-universal among new cartel members.
Quote:
"This newer generation has been a lot more exposed to Santa Muerte, where it's a lot more prevalent the way that video games are prevalent amongst everybody." – Dave Frank [28:10]

9. Ritualistic Messaging and Terror

Cartels film acts of torture and publicize them to send unmistakable warnings.
Narco-mantas (large banners) and public displays of murder serve as visual instructions and intimidation.
Quote:
"When you hang a body from a bridge or film something...you show it to the entire country and world. Look, this is what we're about. It doesn't matter what language you speak." – Dave Frank [37:47]

10. Criminal Omnipresence and Broader Impact

Santa Muerte imagery is as common as graffiti in New York; alters found everywhere, including prisons, homes, and roadside shrines.
Systematic, top-down instruction from cartel leadership mandates these practices.
Large-scale violence: since 2012, more than half a million people have been murdered or disappeared, much of it ritualized.
Quote:
"All of it at the hands, or not all of it, but most of it at the hands of a criminal element that worships a satanic God, that has priests doing satanic rituals. And they're told by their top leaders, this is how we're going to operate." – Dave Frank [43:15]

11. The Psychology and Ethics of Ritualized Crime

Carving ritual from faith and weaponizing it, cartels have twisted spirituality into an excuse for horror.
The conversation draws parallels to other weaponizations of faith globally.
Quote:
"Once you understand that there's a spiritual and occult element, I think that actually really contextualizes everything." – Interviewer [44:32]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Reluctance to Glorify Death:
"My general would tell me all the time, 'Frank, quit glorifying death...there's no glory and death. It's just death.'" – Dave Frank [15:41]
Callousness and Mental Toll:
"You start seeing dead people and you see them without the soul...And you realize that it's just a pile of bones and meat." – Dave Frank [15:58]
Cannibalism Confirmation:
"Definitely in Mexico, I've definitely heard of that happening...for real." – Dave Frank [29:31]
The Prevalence of Santa Muerte:
"It's so prevalent. It's like going to the Bronx and not seeing graffiti." – Dave Frank [33:41]

Timestamps for Key Segments

Opening: Violence & Rituals Overview (00:00–02:18)
Torture and Ritualistic Killing Methods (02:18–07:43)
Faith and Moral Inhibitions (07:51–09:08)
Santa Muerte Symbolism: Tattoos, Altars, Shrines (12:12–15:41)
The Generational Shift in Cartel Faith (28:10–29:24)
Cannibalism and Rituals (29:31–30:08)
Public Displays, Messaging & Terror (37:35–40:16)
Statistics on Murders & Disappearances (40:28–43:19)
Faith Warped for Evil Purposes (43:31–44:32)

Concluding Thoughts

This episode exposes the chilling, little-discussed overlap between crime, faith, and occultism in contemporary cartel Mexico. The brutal acts described aren’t just crime — they are the embodiment of a subculture where death is deified, suffering is ritualized, and violence is sanctioned by a twisted spirituality. Dave Frank’s account is a sobering commentary on how ideology can justify almost anything — and how, in the battle for Mexico’s future, the real fight may be as much spiritual and psychological as it is physical or legal.

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Transcript

Dave Frank (0:00)

Santa Muerte, or narcos atanismo, which means like satanic narco trafficking, or members. When they capture you, they're going to torture you. It's going to be a prolonged thing. You're going to be dead in a few days, and they're going to cut off your head and they're going to stick you in some unnamed grave somewhere or leave you on the side of the road as a message or hung from a bridge.

Mark Gannon (0:18)

This is Dave Frank, and he has seen firsthand the bloody rituals of Santa Muerta, the saint of death that is deified by many in the Mexican cartels. He's seen the rituals. He's been in the rooms where the black masses are, and he's witnessed the chilling grip that Santa Muerta has on Mexico's most dangerous people.

Dave Frank (0:37)

You'll have people in Mexico that will kill somebody, and they'll have defibrillators there to try to bring them back to life so they can kill them more than once.

Interviewer (0:44)

You've seen this?

Dave Frank (0:45)

Yeah.

Mark Gannon (0:45)

He's seen how faith can be twisted into a weapon, how priests can be used to bless assassins, and how cartels use death itself as a way to control their soldiers and terrify their enemies. And today, Dave talks about how the cartels use priests and occult rituals to tighten their grip on power. The gruesome acts carried out in the name of Sant Muerta and why this figure's influence stretches from cartel leaders to everyday Catholics. This isn't just crime. This is religion weaponized. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Camp.

Interviewer (1:22)

Dave Frank. How are you? Good.

Dave Frank (1:24)

Mark Gannon.

Interviewer (1:25)

Yes, sir.

Dave Frank (1:25)

Good to be here, man.

Interviewer (1:26)

We're here in your basement. I'm really excited to talk today about a very specific topic that I've been fascinated by, and I think you're the guy to talk about it with. You've had a fascinating career serving as a bodyguard for a Mexican general.

Dave Frank (1:40)

Yeah.

Interviewer (1:41)

And spent several years protecting him, getting in firefights with the cartels. And there's a specific subset of sort of cartel occultism that I've been. I've come across that's.

Dave Frank (2:58)

Going to hell keeps people in check. So in Mexico, the cartel, because of Santa Muerte or narco satanismo, which means like satanic narco trafficking, or members, they don't have this same type of inhibition. So they'll do stuff like dismember bodies, or they'll torture people, have them pull out all of their money and rob them routinely or take over their houses, force them to sell their houses. And by sell, I mean give away to people. But there's one story in particular where we went in and they had kept this guy all week, torturing him and beating him. And they burned his body in two different places in this house. And it kind of hits home because it was very close to where I was, where I was, where I lived. And they burn. Is when you burn a body, it melts their fat. So I don't know if you. We've all fried bacon or something like that, but when you burn a body, the fat will start melting on the floor and so you can slip in it. Actually, when you're burning a body enough. And these people, when they have these rituals, they'll do all types of dismemberment, peeling people's faces off. The one person I'm talking about was an older gentleman, and they had tortured him all week, pulling the daily limit out of his atm, so robbing him periodically. And it's really a cruel thing to go through because a lot of times when you think about crime or whatever, it's something that happens and it's over. You'll get robbed. They'll steal your. They'll break into your house in Mexico. They'll sit there and they'll prolong it, and they'll sit there and torture these people as they go along. And there's no lack of inhibition, like, hey, my God doesn't want me Doing this. Santa Muerte is so prevalent in Mexico because it's such a Catholic country that they're so used to having just a church and saints and these things in their life, that they found this saint and mixed it with Santa Santeria and different elements of Satanism, like combined it to create their own patron saint. Right.

Dave Frank (12:20)

Well, here I'll give you some evidence of it. So one of the things that, like, I would be tasked with, the general that I worked for was the public secretary of security. So he's like the boss of all the police. Right? And by all the police, I mean, like, all the police. So any of the municipal police, any of the state police, whatever, he's in charge of that whole area of the country or that state that I was in is a better way to put it. So one of the things that we do is like in prison or in jails in the United States, they have different gang modules. Well, the same is true in Mexico. They have different blocks for different cartels that they put in. Because obviously, if they put different members of the cartel together, unlike what Bukele's got going on with 18th street and Marisol Betrucha. And to be clear, Marisol Betrucca and 18th street aren't really that active in Mexico because the cartels are not going to allow someone else to operate on their turf. And I know I've seen an American, I'll standpoint it's a cartel thing. And you're asking if Santa Muerte is prevalent. Here's some evidence. 18th street and Mar Delva Truche don't really have Santa Muerte tattoos on them to the extent that the cartels will. And even in different blocks in the prison, which we would go in and inspect to take away guns, take away knives, take away contraband, any type of contraband. And a lot of them would have these Santa Muerte tattoos all over their back, on their wrists with rosaries. But the rosary, instead of having a cross, is going to have a picture of the Santa Muerte. And I even had one too, because you can go to the store. They're everywhere in Mexico. Yeah, they're everywhere. You can walk down, like, we could walk down to 711 right now and go pick up some Reese's Pieces and a pack of cigarettes. If we smoke, which we don't but the same thing's true in Mexico. Everywhere you go, they have Santa Muerte altars, stores for buying, like, the Grim Reaper candles. Grim Reaper candles in different colored gold, red, green. For different things. Money, hell. Wow.

Dave Frank (15:41)

In a religious way. He meant it. He had all the tattoos. He had everything. He had the pendant. And I mean, I wasn't asking him that question at that time, because he was wearing the pendant. It was just kind of as a matter of fact thing. But his whole mentality was just glorifying death. And the fact that he knew that someday he was going to die. And anybody that falls into his hands are going to meet the same fate. Because they're just completely dedicated to it. And for some contrast, if you will, My general had the generals all wear a red ring. They're all in a fraternity. They all go to this thing called Colecho Heroico militar, Which is in distributo federal, in the federal district in the capital. So just think of, like, a major military sorority. And they all got their sorority. And they wind up leaving that place, Going to different places in the country and working together. My general had a best friend from school that he worked together. And I'm going to leave his name out of it, but he would tell me all the time, frank, quit glorifying death. Because I'm like, oh, we're gonna go get the bad guys. I mean, I was gung ho man. And he would tell me all the time, there's no glory and death. It's just death. And then you go to there and you start working, you see it and you realize that there is no glory and death. It's just a dead person laying there. Their soul is departed, they're not there anymore. And getting into like my co workers or other people that have self deleted, a big component of that is you start seeing dead people and you see them without the soul and you realize there was a guy that I folded up on a tablet in Spanish, I don't know what you call. It's kind of like a stretcher, a wooden stretcher that the coroner uses. And we had to fold his body up like a butterfly because he was all broken in different pieces. And we put him on this stretcher and you can tell that it's just a pile of bones and meat. I'm not trying to disrespect that guy at all. And I've never taken pictures of the dead. There's a lot of people that do take pictures of that. I don't. But this general would tell me that, hey, you know, you can't glorify death because it's just death. It's not good. Someone's departed, their soul's gone, and it's just a pile of flesh there. So you start seeing this and it gives you a callus. But on the other side of that, you have people that glorify death. In Santa Muerte, they act. They look at it like it's something glorious. They look at like depriving someone of life or torturing them or making them suffer is building their own power. And they do believe that. I mean, they're just like with the vacuum that we talked about in other episodes. There are people that strive to live their short existence and because it's going to come to a violent end, either at the hands of the government or the hands of infighting amongst themselves, or at the hand of another cartel. And then even once you become the man and you haven't fought anybody else in the cartel, even members within your own organization also worship the same thing and are looking at trying to improve their own status within their same organization. And you see it even in different members of the mafia in different countries. But there they take it to another level. There they have the spiritual acceptance, or not even the acceptance. What's the word? Approval. To try to be as bad as Possible. You've had people in Mexico. Here's how bad it goes. You'll have people in Mexico that will kill somebody and they'll have defibrillators there to try to bring them back to life so they can kill them more than once.

Dave Frank (19:46)

I have to think that there's a ritual element to it too, because, I mean, you'll see things like there's a cartel video where there's killing someone in a gunfight, which happens. I mean, that's just like, whatever. And I'm not being disrespectful or dismissive of the value of any person's life, be they a government soldier, agent, or even being a criminal, because all life has intrinsic value. And I want to say that to the camera to make it clear. All life, your life, my life, your life has intrinsic value because there's something there that we as humans cannot give to us, which is a living, breathing soul. But then. And so there's killing people in the course of fighting. And by fighting, I mean someone's not going home. Not UFC play fighting, which I've done combat, you're someone's not going home. But then there's torturing people and killing them and taking joy and pleasure in it, or trying to promote your own self power with your own evil deity. And that does happen. And I know that happens because they'll sit there. And the reason why I know that it happens is I've seen instances where they've peeled the mat, peeled the face off of people like masks and then played with it. Or other instances where they're torturing people that have legitimately done their cartel wrong. There's, it's, it's got a punishment, or a castigo in Spanish. There's a punishment element to it because they've done something incorrect. An example off the top of my head in cinco seniors, at 5 o' clock in the afternoon, they killed a transit cop and his wife. And they had tortured him for like 24 hours, but the guy was working for them, had done something incorrect. And so there's a penalty to be paid for that. Obviously, however, there's certain levels to it, and when you're, like, peeling someone's face off, or there was another guy where they had cut off his. Cut off his knees or his lower legs, cut off his forearms, and then they were cutting out his stomach, like the fat off of his stomach, and then there were beheading him. And when they were beheading them, the human body has, like, an instinct to it, to where he's intuitively trying to defend himself from having his head cut off. And this isn't just one or two people. This is several people taking glee in it. So they're operating as a group, being that gruesome to people, and it's doing one or two things. It's either improving their power on a satanic level or is sending or both sending a very clear message to the rest of the people that this is how we operate and this is the way that we're going to do it. And if you cross us, there's a definite price to be paid. And that's what's going on.

Dave Frank (22:49)

Yeah, that's definitely an instance to it. And. And I have to say that that's an instance to it. I have tattoos. Other people have tattoos. But when you see everybody in their organization branded with the same tattoo, worshiping a deity, that is the literal saintly representation of death, and it can only mean one thing. And then they go and they build altars to it. There's like narco cemeteries in Mexico. They're in Sinaloa. They're very expensive, very ornate. Everybody's seen videos of them. That's really the only region in the entire country where they've been built, because the rest of the country, they came down on it so hard that they haven't really built them, but even there they have images and saints to Santa Muerte. And then they'll go out and they'll build the altar. So they've got their tombs adorned with it, they've got their bodies adorned with it. They've got altars on the side of the road. They've got altars that they've built where they've had bala sarahs or. Or combat and have ambushed government soldiers or agents. So I definitely. And you know, this could get me into trouble making this video because some people might be like, you know what? We're going to go shut that gringo up. But Just what I have seen. They definitely, yeah, there's definitely rituals and mutual human sacrifice. And the reason I know that is because they'll just disappear people that they didn't have to. There are videos of this, of them just killing people indiscriminately for the hell of it that they didn't have to kill. Migrants passing through Mexico, I think they took a board and killed like 138 people or something. The exact number escapes me, but it was about 100 to 150 people. And it was a caravan of migrants crossing through Mexico, men and women. And they decided, you know what, we're going to kill them all. And that's the level of value that life has for these people. And the only way it can be that way is if they are purposely doing this to try to like perpetuate or promote themselves within their own, their own religion.

Dave Frank (30:08)

I think they are. I mean, why would you do that? Yeah. You're not hungry? I've had. We've had nights where we've gone out and been at work, had something horrible happen, and then we go hit the taco shack on the way back to base or whatever. I. I mean, you're going to eat. Stands to reason. Something that we've never done in our uniforms is sit there and think, hey, we just killed that guy. We're going to go over and cut out his heart and eat it. I mean, and that does happen. And I'm not the only one to say that. That's a lot of people that said that. And I'm saying that for the audience. I just want you to know I didn't know my life was ever going to go this way. I didn't know I was going to be having this interview with you. And I'm grateful to have the opportunity to do it. The whole reason I'm trying to do this is try to help the American people and the Mexican people. So it's important that I'm honest in what I'm saying. None of the videos I do are monetized. I'm doing this because it's a subject that's important to me. The American people are important to me, and the Mexican people are important to me. If I ever have to pay a certain Price talking about any of this, because I might get someone out there that sees these videos and think, hey, I don't like that guy talking about us the way that he does. And it could be costly. I'm saying this because I care, and everything I'm saying is as truthful as I can be. And I know with the brutality that I've seen in Mexico that the way people are treated has to be something other than just terminating an enemy or terminating that someone. That's an obstacle in the way of something that you want financially, politically. Because, I mean, in Mexico, a lot of people have been. A lot of politicians have been murdered. A lot of stuff that we would do is create VIP or do VIP escorts, security details and what have you. There's a thing with assassinating a politician to try to advance a political goal, try to advance in a criminal goal, whatever it is. And then there's going out and hacking people up and trying to bring them back to life, then kill them again, cutting off their skin and making them suffer as much as possible. And the only reason to do that would either be because you're psychopathic and you just get off on it, or if you have some type of religious motive to do it. And when you see altars all over the place in Mexico the way that you do, and this isn't something that I'm saying, you can look it up online for yourself. There's ample evidence. There's a cornucopia of evidence, if you will. It's spiritually related.

Dave Frank (40:28)

We. We touched on that. The other one in the. The other video, usually. Yes. And the reason why Americans are generally off limits. There's been a few, and I do mean a few distinct instances where they haven't been recently with the people that went over for some type of cosmetic surgery that wound up two of them being murdered. Unfortunately, they were African Americans, didn't blend in at all. They weren't Caucasian, they weren't Latino. So when they're in Mexico, in the north of Mexico, it's completely obvious that they're probably American, shouldn't have been touched. The cartel that was involved notably got the specific group that had murdered those people, fronted them out or told them, hey, these are the people that have done it. They're being punished for it. We don't do that. Why? Because the amount of influence that the American government wields is best to leave those people alone. There was another instance with the Mormons fighting over their land. I think it was on the Texas border and the cartel killed somebody that had something to do with Mormons or maybe it was an American in Mexico. There was another instance of that. But when you think of Mexico since 2012, they have a thing called the Institute Nacional de Estadistica, which is a negi, it's the Mexican Statistics Institute. They track all the killings and anything that you want to know in Mexico, they track it. I N E G I, if you're going to look it up in English, this Mexican institute that tracks all this data, statistical tracking of everything in the country. And then one of the things that they track, for example, in 2012, there was like 33,000 people murdered. Two thousand they. And they track even the amount of. They call them feminist CDOS. How many women are murdered since 2012. There's been like a hundred thousand people disappeared. And when you think about that, just think about like what the population. 35, 000 people on average a year since 2012. And now we're in 13 years. 20, 25. So every 10 years, that's 300,000 people. So we're talking like half a million people have been disappeared or murdered in the last 13 years in Mexico. All of it at the hands, or not all of it, but most of it at the hands of a criminal element that worships a satanic God, that has priests doing satanic rituals. And they're told by their top leaders, this is how we're going to operate. I mean, you know, what are you going to say to something like that? They're definitely sending a message. Wow. Yeah.