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These Times History Took a Turn for the Batty

Khalid Elhassan November 3, 2019 34 min

One of the caves where the Yerba Buena human sacrifice rituals were conducted and were the cultists barricaded themselves for the last stand. Amino Apps

38. The Low Key Con That Snowballed Into a Human Sacrifice Cult

One of the drawbacks of lying and scamming is the difficulty of keeping the deception going once suspicions are aroused. One option is for the scammer to simply cut and run. Another is to double down, and defend the original lie and scam with more lies and scams. The latter option could easily snowball, as illustrated by a series of unfortunate events that took place in the small Mexican town of Yerba Buena, Tamaulipas.

Brothers Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, two small-time crooks, arrived there in 1962, and convinced the impoverished and mostly illiterate inhabitants that they were prophets of the olden native gods, and would lead them to hidden Aztec treasure. By the time it was over, things had gone seriously haywire, and descended into a grisly cult that cut out the hearts from the chests of its still-living victims, and drank their blood.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.