Editing Decapitation (section)

=== North America ===

==== Mexico ====
[[File:BeheadingPanelSBCTajin.JPG|thumb|Panel showing ballplayer being beheaded, [[Classic Veracruz culture]], Mexico]]

[[Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla]], [[Ignacio Allende]], [[José Mariano Jiménez]] and [[Juan Aldama]] were tried for treason, executed by [[firing squad]] and beheaded during the Mexican independence in 1811. Their heads were on display on the four corners of the [[Alhóndiga de Granaditas]], in [[Guanajuato]].

During the [[Mexican Drug War]], some Mexican drug cartels turned to decapitation and beheading of rival cartel members as a method of intimidation.<ref name="Grayson">{{cite web|author-link=George W. Grayson |url=http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200901.grayson.lafamilia.html |title=La Familia: Another Deadly Mexican Syndicate |author-first=George W. |author-last=Grayson |date=February 2009 |publisher=[[Foreign Policy Research Institute]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090903015924/http://www.fpri.org//enotes/200901.grayson.lafamilia.html |archive-date=3 September 2009 }}</ref>
This trend of beheading and publicly displaying the decapitated bodies was started by the [[Los Zetas]], a criminal group composed by former Mexican special forces operators, trained in the infamous ''US Army [[School of the americas|School of the Americas]]'', in [[enhanced interrogation techniques|torture techniques]] and [[psychological warfare]].<ref>Grayson, George W. (2012). ''The Executioner's Men: Los Zetas, Rogue Soldiers, Criminal Entrepreneurs, and the Shadow State They Created'' (1st ed.), p. 46, Transaction Publishers. {{ISBN|978-1-4128-4617-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uj4aCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA272 |title=American Foreign Relations: Volume 2: Since 1895 |first1=Thomas |last1=Paterson |first2=J. Garry |last2=Clifford |first3=Robert |last3=Brigham |first4=Michael |last4=Donoghue |first5=Kenneth |last5=Hagan |year=2014 |publisher=[[Cengage Learning]] |isbn=978-1-285-43333-2 |access-date=30 December 2019 |archive-date=8 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240608031622/https://books.google.com/books?id=uj4aCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA272 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2008/10/us-created-monsters-zetas-and-kaibiles-death-squads |title=US created monsters: Zetas and Kaibiles death squads |access-date=26 December 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161224040235/http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2008/10/us-created-monsters-zetas-and-kaibiles-death-squads |archive-date=24 December 2016 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/04/los-zetas-recruit-las-maras-in.html |title=Borderland Beat: Los Zetas recruit Las Maras in Guatemala |author=badanov |access-date=26 December 2014 |archive-date=25 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225083845/http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/04/los-zetas-recruit-las-maras-in.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cronica.com.mx/notas/2004/158801.html |title=Los Zetas fueron entrenados por la Escuela de las Américas |publisher=La Crónica de Hoy |trans-title=The Zetas were trained by the School of the Americas |language=es |website=cronica.com.mx |access-date=30 December 2019 |archive-date=25 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225134251/http://www.cronica.com.mx/notas/2004/158801.html }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.soaw.org/component/content/article/1/1994 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170418211956/http://www.soaw.org/component/content/article/1/1994 |archive-date=18 April 2017 |title=U.S.-trained ex-soldiers form core of "Zetas" {{pipe}} SOA Watch: Close the School of the Americas |date=18 April 2017}}</ref>

==== United States ====
The United States government has never employed beheading as a legal method of execution. However, beheading has sometimes been used in mutilations of the dead, particularly of black people like [[Nat Turner]], who led a rebellion against slavery. When caught, he was publicly hanged, flayed, and beheaded. This was a technique used by many enslavers to discourage the "frequent bloody uprisings" that were carried out by "kidnapped Africans". While bodily dismemberment of various kinds was employed to instill terror, Dr. Erasmus D. Fenner noted postmortem decapitation was particularly effective.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Washington |first1=Harriet A. |date=2006 |publisher=Doubleday |title=Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present |location=New York. London. Toronto. Sydney. Austin. |page=126, paragraph 3}}</ref>

During the [[Vietnam War]], as a terror tactic, "some American troops hacked the heads off... dead [Vietnamese] and mounted them on pikes or poles".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Turse |first1=Nick |title=Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam |date=2013 |publisher=Metropolitan Books |location=New York |page=163}}</ref> Correspondent Michael Herr noted "thousands" of photo-albums made by US soldiers "all seemed to contain the same pictures": "the severed head shot, the head often resting on the chest of the dead man or being held up by a smiling Marine, or a lot of the heads, arranged in a row, with a burning cigarette in each of the mouths, the eyes open". Some of the victims were "very young".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Turse |first1=Nick |title=Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam |date=2013 |publisher=Metropolitan Books |location=New York |page=162}}</ref>

{{anchor|George S. Patton III}}
General [[George Patton IV]], son of the famous WWII general [[George S. Patton]], was known for keeping "macabre souvenirs", such as "a Vietnamese skull that sat on his desk." Other Americans "hacked the heads off Vietnamese to keep, trade, or exchange for prizes offered by commanders."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Turse |first1=Nick |title=Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam |date=2013 |publisher=Metropolitan Books |location=New York |page=161}}</ref>

Although the [[Utah Territory]] permitted a person sentenced to death to choose beheading as a means of execution, no person chose that option, and it was dropped when [[Utah]] became a state.<ref>{{cite book |last=Miller |first=Wilbur R. |title=The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia |year=2012 |publisher=Sage |isbn=978-1-4129-8876-6 |oclc=768569594 |page=1856 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tYME6Z35nyAC&pg=PA1856}}</ref>