Blood and Bones: Santa Muerte as the Cartels’ Dark Protector
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
Inside the shadow of the cartels, female sicarias and the cult of Holy Death reshape violence into sacred duty. Discover how Santa Muerte fuels narcocultura’s most chilling narratives.
In the violent underworld of Mexico’s drug cartels, few stories have sparked as much fascination—or skepticism—as that of an alleged female assassin known only as Juana N., nicknamed “La Peque Sicaria.” According to widely circulated reports, she worked for Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s most feared criminal organizations, and later confessed to crimes so grotesque that even veteran cartel killers supposedly recoiled from them.
Whether every detail is true remains an enduring mystery.
Unlike many infamous cartel figures whose crimes appear in court records and official investigations, “La Peque” exists largely through anonymous reports, sensational media coverage, and retellings that blur the line between documented fact and criminal folklore.
A Childhood Shaped by Violence
According to the original accounts, Juana grew up in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, north of Mexico City.
Her descent into cartel life reportedly began long before adulthood.
As a preteen, cartel members allegedly forced her into sexual slavery. Years of abuse reportedly fueled addictions to alcohol and drugs, leaving her trapped in a cycle of exploitation before she reached adulthood.
At fifteen, she became pregnant by a man more than twice her age.
Determined to support herself and her son, she turned to prostitution.
There she met members of Los Zetas, including the cartel’s sicarios—professional assassins—who nicknamed her “La Peque,” a reference to her youth rather than her size.
Joining Los Zetas
Los Zetas broke from cartel tradition by recruiting women into operational roles.
Around 2010, Juana allegedly joined the organization as a halcón, or lookout. Her job involved monitoring police and military patrols and warning cartel members of approaching law enforcement.
In one interview attributed to her, she claimed cartel leaders punished mistakes with extreme brutality. Guards allegedly forced her to stand watch for eight consecutive hours, and failure reportedly meant being tied up for a week while surviving on a single taco each day.
Adding another layer of tragedy, reports claimed Los Zetas had murdered her own brother only months before she joined their ranks.
Crossing the Line
Juana later claimed the violence that once horrified her gradually became normal.
Eventually, she allegedly graduated from lookout to executioner.
Here the story takes an even darker turn.
According to the anonymous confession, she admitted that killing eventually became sexually arousing. She allegedly claimed she drank victims’ blood while it remained warm and engaged in acts of necrophilia with both bodies and severed heads.
If true, those actions would have placed her outside even the brutal culture of Los Zetas. Reports claimed fellow sicarios considered her behavior deeply disturbing.
She allegedly carried out murders over seemingly trivial disputes, including unpaid rent.
Some observers have speculated that within an organization already notorious for torture and beheadings, increasingly shocking acts became a way to earn attention, status, or fear. No evidence confirms that theory, but it reflects the culture of escalating violence associated with the cartel.
Separating Fact from Folklore
The story of Juana N. spread rapidly after it appeared on El Blog del Narco, an anonymous website known for publishing cartel-related content.
British tabloids and international media soon amplified the account.
The problem is that almost none of the central claims have ever been independently verified.
No publicly available court records identify a cartel assassin matching the story. Authorities have never confirmed her identity, her alleged confession, or the gruesome crimes attributed to her.
The name “Juana N.” offers little certainty. In Mexican reporting, the initial “N.” often serves as a placeholder when authorities withhold a person’s full identity or cannot verify it.
Many accounts also incorrectly state that she remains imprisoned in “California.” The reports actually refer to Baja California, the Mexican state—not the U.S. state of California.
No reliable public records confirm whether she remains incarcerated or whether she was ever prosecuted for the alleged cartel murders described in the reports.
The mystery surrounding her identity has become almost as infamous as the accusations themselves.
Women Behind the Trigger
Although the story of “La Peque” remains shrouded in uncertainty, women have unquestionably served as cartel operatives throughout Mexico’s drug wars. Some acted as lookouts, others transported narcotics, and a select few earned reputations as feared sicarias.
One of the best-known examples was Joselyn Alejandra Niño, better known by her alias “La Flaca” (“The Skinny One”).
Authorities identified La Flaca as a suspected assassin for the Gulf Cartel, a criminal organization based in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Unlike the mysterious “La Peque,” La Flaca left behind a documented trail that thrust her into the public eye.
On January 5, 2015, an anonymous user uploaded a photograph of the young woman posing confidently with an assault rifle to an organized crime leak page on social media. The image quickly spread across the internet, turning the previously unknown cartel foot soldier into one of the most recognizable female faces of Mexico’s drug war.
According to reports, La Flaca belonged to Los Ciclones, a Gulf Cartel faction operating out of Río Bravo. As a foot soldier, she allegedly fought rival gunmen from Los Metros, another faction locked in a violent struggle for control of the region.
Her notoriety proved short-lived.
On April 13, 2015, authorities responding to a grisly discovery in Matamoros found La Flaca’s dismembered body stuffed inside an ice cooler in a parking lot. Investigators reported clear signs of torture. They confirmed her identity through a distinctive forearm tattoo bearing her surname, “Niño.”
The scene revealed an even darker tableau.
Investigators also recovered the dismembered body of another woman and the decapitated remains of a man. Authorities believed all three victims belonged to Los Ciclones. A handwritten message left alongside the bodies claimed responsibility on behalf of Los Metros, underscoring the savage internal warfare consuming the Gulf Cartel.
Unlike the shadowy legend surrounding La Peque, La Flaca’s death became another documented chapter in Mexico’s cartel violence. Yet both women came to symbolize the increasingly visible role female operatives played inside organizations once dominated almost exclusively by men.
Their stories also demonstrate a grim reality of cartel life. Regardless of rank or reputation, few members escape the cycle of violence. Those who live by the gun rarely survive it.
A Story That Refuses to Die
Whether “La Peque Sicaria” truly existed remains unanswered.
The tale possesses every element of a modern criminal legend: an anonymous confession, unimaginable cruelty, fragmented reporting, and no definitive public record capable of confirming—or completely disproving—the account.
Perhaps somewhere in the archives of Baja California lies a forgotten case file waiting to surface.
Or perhaps “La Peque” has become something else entirely—a myth born from one of the bloodiest periods in Mexico’s cartel wars, where truth and horror became almost impossible to separate.
Sometimes the most unsettling mysteries are not the ones we solve, but the ones that refuse to reveal whether they ever happened at all.
The World of Los Zetas
Regardless of whether “La Peque” existed as described, Los Zetas unquestionably earned a reputation as one of the most violent criminal organizations in modern history.
Originally formed by elite Mexican Special Forces deserters—many of whom had received advanced military training—they began as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel before evolving into an independent criminal empire.
Unlike earlier cartels, Los Zetas embraced military tactics, psychological warfare, and public displays of extreme violence to intimidate rivals and civilians alike.
At the height of their power, they controlled territory across much of Mexico and expanded operations into Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales
Among Los Zetas’ most feared leaders stood Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, known by the radio code Z-40.
Investigators linked him to extraordinary brutality. Numerous reports described torture methods that included burning victims alive inside metal barrels filled with fuel. Other allegations claimed he committed acts so horrific they became part of cartel legend, although not every story has been independently verified.
As Treviño rose through the organization, Los Zetas fractured into competing factions, triggering an internal civil war that weakened the cartel’s grip on power.
In January, 2010, authorities started investigating Los Zetas and their drug trafficking activities. It revealed that from 2007 to 2014, they were involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, and firearms trafficking in the Eastern District of Texas and other places. Heriberto Lazcano AKA “Z-3,” was the leader, who gave the final OK, including authorization to kill. The Treviño-Morales brothers were identified as top cartel leaders.
Following the death of Heriberto Lazcano in 2012, law enforcement steadily dismantled much of the organization’s leadership.
The Racehorse Empire
While Miguel commanded cartel operations in Mexico, his brother José Treviño Morales maintained an outward appearance of legitimacy in the United States.
Living near Dallas, José managed Tremor Enterprises, a successful quarter horse racing operation.
Investigators later alleged the stable served as a sophisticated money-laundering enterprise.
Horses bearing names such as Forty Force, Big Daddy Cartel, and Break Out the Bullets captured major purses throughout Texas, California, and New Mexico while straw buyers allegedly concealed the cartel’s ownership.
Federal investigators eventually dismantled the operation, leading to convictions for money laundering and related offenses.
In November, 2022, two high-ranking cartel members of Los Zetas were sentenced to federal prison for drug trafficking. An American, Jose Maria Guizar-Valencia, 43, of Tulare, California, was sentenced to 40 years, and Francisco Hernandez-Garcia, 53, of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, received the same sentence.
Blood Rituals and Cartel Mysticism
Law enforcement has also uncovered evidence that some drug trafficking organizations incorporated ritualistic practices into their criminal enterprises.
In 2022, The Dallas Morning News ran a story titled: “Blood cult or religion? Feds say narcos prayed for blessings and hexes in Dallas houses.”
“The participants were drug traffickers, the feds say, who took part in occult rituals to protect themselves and their illicit operations from law enforcement. They even paid for a “hex” to be placed on a local DEA agent investigating them, court records show. The agent’s name was found on an altar.
“Their alleged cult leader, a Mexican-American known as “Padrino” or godfather, could not, however, foresee the fate that awaited them. Agents arrested more than 40 men and one woman across North Texas since 2021 on federal drug trafficking charges.
“The defendants hotly disputed the government’s claims about a cult and argued the bloody rites were a valid religious exercise. Most pleaded not guilty, and many remain locked up awaiting trial.
“Agents found multiple blood-soaked altars at the house near Paul Quinn College in southeast Oak Cliff as well as a ‘blessing book’ in the home of the ‘godfather’, Daniel Vallejo, the alleged cult leader and one of the charged defendants.
“They also found cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine in his house and others, court records show. A DEA agent in the case, Marcus West, said at a detention hearing last year that the cult’s purpose was ‘to bless the success of the ongoing drug-trafficking enterprise.
“The DEA agents testified about the group’s ceremonies during detention hearings in which prosecutors were asking judges to detain the defendants until trial because they were dangerous or a flight risk.”
Agents also found $250,000 in cash, a money-counting machine, a digital scale, three guns, and a kilogram of cocaine.
One of the defendants said they also practiced santeria, an African religion that developed in Cuba. This is reminiscent of drug traffickers during the Miami 1970s-1980s Cocaine Wars who sought the favor of non-Christian deities to safeguard their illegal activities.
Surveillance footage, when reviewed, showed the defendant and others making animal sacrifices and bathing themselves in the animal’s blood.
Despite the defendants disputing the government’s characterization of the ceremonies, arguing they represented legitimate religious practices rather than criminal occult rituals. In reality, this occult Mexican folk ‘saint’ is a very old enemy, manifesting in a new way — and it has come to America.
In the present day, the case is shrouded in mystery. According to federal court records, Daniel Vallejo was not yet sentenced or fully convicted at the time of the initial case public disclosures from the initial arrest in 2022. As of 2026, Vallejo’s exact final sentencing status has remained largely shielded under complex, ongoing multi-defendant federal proceedings
In 2010, an American priest and member of the Dominican religious order wrote the following, which proved to be prophetic:
“I spent my pastoral year working at our mission in Mexico, and I also work with Hispanics here in the states.
As a cult, La Santa Muerte is growing in Mexico and other parts of Latin America and the United States, and it is setting itself up with Temples, “priests”, and so forth, and it is making an attempt to challenge Catholicism, which is not silent about it in Mexico or here. I know, for example, that Card. George and other bishops in this country have spoken out forcefully against it as have bishops in Mexico. I myself as a deacon and in my adult catechism classes have preached against it. Sometimes, members of La Santa Muerte have attacked Catholic churches, and some people have destroyed their temples. The problem is complicated.
We tend to think of Mexico as a Catholic country, and it is — or was — in a way. But, as you know, things are not always as they seem. In the first place, it is not always and everywhere a well-catechized country, much to our shame. The faith is often not more than superficial. Also, there is the Mexican Revolution, the Cristero War, and 70 years of anti-Catholic legislation and rule by the PRI. In the center of the country — Guanajuato, Colima, Jalisco, Edomex, Puebla, for example — the faith is much deeper, but in the north and the south it is not so strong and never really has been, although it varies from place to place. I found in the north, along the border, a great deal of indifference to the faith. There is also a lot of superstition and syncretism.
Some of this is the fault of the Church. Often priests are elevated to a new social status by ordination, especially when they come from poor families, and they act like it. They rarely appear in public as priests (partially a left-over of seventy years of laws against wearing religious garb in public), they wear fine clothes, and they drive fine cars. This is, of course, a generalization, but the exceptions prove the rule. Further, it seems to me that the Church hierarchy has never really gotten over its loss of political power with the coming of the Mexican Revolution and the fall of Porfiriato, and they should worry more about their moral voice rather than a political one. But the other problem, as you rightly pointed out in another article, is a crisis of holiness and, to be honest, a willingness to shed ones blood as a witness to the faith.
Mexico is one of the most dangerous places for religious. Last year, in the state of Guerrero, the vocations director and two seminarians were pulled from their car and shot numerous times. The bishops and religious superiors in Mexico have stated that they will not pay ransoms for religious abducted by the narcotraficantes. And make no mistake, they are being threatened more all the time. In Juarez, sisters I know have narrowly missed being killed, and priests and religious who work with the poor are in very real danger, in addition to what they describe as living and working in war zone. In Tijuana, the cloistered nuns would not let me walk around the block after Vespers because, even in my habit, it was no longer safe to do so, and they and the active sisters talked about the priests and religious being threatened in the archdiocese. Dioceses in Texas have received priests whose lives are in very real danger. The greater sadness, though, is that some bishops are quietly paying bribes to defend their priests, and those that dare to speak out are often exiled — supposedly for their safety. And the few bishops who dare to speak out, such as Bp. Raul Vera, OP, of Saltillo, receive fairly regular death threats. One day somebody will make good on them, confident that the government will be helpless to do anything about it. There are heroic and saintly voices in Mexico, but if the Church is to win the hearts and minds of the people, and ultimately the salvation of their souls, then the Church there must itself be of one mind and one heart, and that mind and heart must be the mind and heart of Christ — and Christ on the cross, if need be.
On a different note, the government is losing the war, I think. Tijuana, for example, is presenting itself as a success story, but there have already been more narco-related murders there this year than at the same time last year, which means they are headed for an astounding total. And of course the battle, whether between the government and the narcos, between rival cartels, or even between rival factions of the same cartel, is spiraling into other parts of Mexico that have until now not really witnessed this kind of violence. And it is not just Mexico. According to religious and others I know in Guatemala, it is on the verge of morphing into a narco state. The government is very unstable.
I am not hopeless, but the reality is certainly grim. May the Lord and our Blessed Lady guide us and keep us.
Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, is an underworld deity associated with the narco-trafficking crime syndicates. Money and blood offerings are made to safeguard drug transactions as well as hex enemies. Many times they are referred to as “narco-satanists”.
If there is any spirituality among the narco-traffickers, it comes in the form of superstition. The belief in Santa Muerte is not a modern thing. The image, also known as La Flaca, or the Skinny One, was popular among prostitutes, thieves, and those who had difficult lives. For her followers, belief in Santa Muerte can coexist with Catholicism.
An article from Small Wars dated to about 2012 explained the following;
“Conventional wisdom holds that narco gang and drug cartel violence in Mexico is primarily secular in nature. This viewpoint has been recently challenged by the activities of the La Familia cartel and some Los Zetas, Gulfo, and other cartel adherents of the cult of Santa Muerte (Saint Death) by means of religious tenets of ‘divine justice’ and instances of tortured victims and ritual human sacrifice offered up to a dark deity, respectively. Severed heads thrown onto a disco floor in Michoacan in 2005 and burnt skull imprints in a clearing in a ranch in the Yucatán Peninsula in 2008 only serve to highlight the number of such incidents which have now taken place. Whereas the infamous ‘black cauldron’ incident in Matamoros in 1989, where American college student Mark Kilroy’s brain was found in a ritual nganga belonging to a local narco gang, was the rare exception, such spiritual-like activities have now become far more frequent.
These activities only serve to further elaborate concerns amongst scholars over societal warfare breaking out across the Americas. This warfare– manifesting itself in ‘criminal insurgencies’ derived from groups of gang, cartel, and mercenary networks– promotes new forms of state organization drawn from criminally based social and political norms and behaviors. These include a value system derived from illicit narcotics use, killing for sport and pleasure, human trafficking and slavery, dysfunctional perspectives on women and family life, and a habitual orientation to violence and total disregard for modern civil society and democratic freedoms.
A recent insight, gained by the authors after the conclusion of a major research project on Mexican drug groups, is that this insurgency has at its basis a spiritual, if not religious, component that threatens the underlying foundations of our modern Western value system. This component is derived from the well-known cartel technique of offering an individual ¿Plata O Plomo?–take our silver or we will fill you with our lead. As a tactic taken by groups with a theological bent, such as La Familia, this offer becomes Faustian: join us and, in the process, give up your soul or die, a choice historically associated with incidents of religious conversion at the tip of a sword.”
In 2017, another altar from Los Angeles had a Santisima Muerte candle illuminating a horse’s skull that holds a photograph of Charles Manson.
The altar was made to venerate Manson, who died on November, 19, 2017. A tape-recorded message was Manson speaking in a 2010 interview. The image, along with a video, was posted on the internet by the environmental group ATWAR, 3 days after Manson’s death. One of the promoters of ATWAR is Manson’s grandson, Jason Freeman Manson.
Jason Freeman’s father was Charles Manson Jr., the eldest biological son of cult leader Charles Manson. Born while his father was incarcerated, he later changed his name to Jay White. On June 29, 1993, Jay White died by suicide via a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his car. Ironically, reports suggested he was distressed by his father’s crimes and sought to protect his own son, Jason, from the associated stigma.
The body of Charles Manson Sr. was handed over to his grandson Jason, who scattered his ashes in the Gulf of America.
Another person in 2022 described their interpretation of the spiritual warfare going on with Mexican cartels:
“So here’s the synopsis, the conclusion that I draw: Mexican history across half a millennium can be understood as a direct and violent contest between Christ, whose forces here are led by the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the powers of hell, whose forces are personified in — well, all of it, the Mexica pantheon, the deceiver of Fr Hidalgo, the Freemasonic delusions, the demon of Madero, the Santa Muerte cultists, on and on. It is cyclical. When hell lost its rule over Mexico in 1521, it greatly resented it — in ways it did not resent the loss of many other lands — and it has been wracking the nation in convulsions, trying to win it back, ever since. We can only guess as to why. We only know that it does, and we know that a champion has been sent in Our Lady to lead the defense.”
.Why do the most ruthless criminal organizations on earth reach for a skeletal saint instead of relying only on guns, cash, and fear?
Across the internet, stories of Santa Muerte—known to her devotees as La Niña Blanca, the White Girl—spread like smoke through prayer, song, and whispered testimony. She is a death-white figure who promises protection, revenge, and survival in places where the state has long since failed. Most of her followers have nothing to do with crime. Yet drug cartels and their allies have selectively claimed her, weaving her image into the dark fabric of narcocultura. There she is no longer simply a folk saint. She becomes a legitimizing force, a supernatural partner in violence, and a powerful piece of cartel propaganda.
Narcocultura is the living mythology of the drug underworld: the symbols, songs, images, and stories that turn murder into destiny and risk into sacred duty. Inside this world, Santa Muerte does not function as formal religion. She operates as a set of recurring narratives—story forms that explain chaos, justify bloodshed, normalize death, and bind loyalty to a power that answers when the church and the law stay silent.
Criminal power does not rest on violence alone. It rests on the stories that make violence feel inevitable, righteous, and protected by forces beyond the grave. Santa Muerte’s cartel-adjacent face draws its strength from these stories. They are the scripts that allow her dark reputation to travel, adapt, and spread without any central command—turning devotion into a weapon and the White Girl into a silent partner of the underworld.