One of Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartels placed the body of a woman inside a large plastic drum along with a series of threats on a posterboard that was taped to it. The gruesome murder comes at a time when cartel violence continues to escalate in Mexico despite government assurances of improving security conditions.

The incident took place this week in Guadalajara, Jalisco where authorities found the woman’s body inside a plastic drum with a cartel message taped to it. The message left at the crime scene announced a “clean-up” and warned their rivals of a similar fate. The message had the letters CJNG on top.

The case sparked some controversy since the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office announced that it was handling the matter as a “femicide” instead of a traditional murder.

Feminicide is a term used in Mexico for a type of murder where the female victim is killed by a male because of her gender. Usually, the suspect is a partner or former partner. However, in recent years, the definition of the crime has become blurry as authorities in some states label any murder where the victim is a female as femicide. The issue has caused much confusion since the term femicide has become a political hot topic used by certain political groups to criticize the government.

However, according to statements made by researcher Guadalupe Sanchez Ramos during a conference on gender-based murders, government officials purposely undercount femicides, while the ones that are classified as such usually go unpunished, a news release from the University of Guadalajara revealed. The researcher claimed that government officials only classify a small percentage of female murders as femicides, in order to show an artificial decrease in gender-based crimes.

From January to August, the state of Jalisco has had 137 women whose murder should be classified as femicide, however, government statistics only show 20 cases in that time frame, El Informador reported.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “C.P. Mireles” from Tamaulipas.