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    'The training stays with you': the elite Mexican soldiers recruited by cartels

    Last year, Mexico’s murder rate reached the highest level on record – and years of military defections are fueling the violence
    by Falko Ernst in Apatzingán municipality Feb 10, 2018 5 minutes
    Delfino specialized as a sniper in the Mexican army and is now a member of the Knights Templar cartel. Photograph: Falko Ernst

    Delfino was handpicked twice. At 18, he was chosen by the Mexican army to join its elite unit, the airborne special forces group known by its Spanish acronym, Gafe, where he specialized as a sniper.

    Ten years later, he was recruited again – this time by the very people he’d been trained to kill.

    Nowadays, the only outward sign of his military background is the camouflaged hat on his head, and the Panther .308 sniper rifle slung across his back.

    Delfino belongs to what remains of a cult-like drug cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios, or the Knights Templar, whose original leaders blended extreme violence with pseudo-religious teachings and claimed a mandate from God.

    Once a dominant force in the rugged western state of Michoacán, the group is now locked in a bitter war for survival with rival crime factions.

    But Delfino describes himself as an instrument of divine justice.

    “God has his

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