The Yerba Buena Does were 6 people who were lynched and dismembered under the guise of a sacrifice for the gods by a cult residing in Yerba Buena, Mexico. Magdalena and Eleazar Solís were arrested and convicted of their murders and orchestrating the events. Due to a majority of the population of Yerba Buena being illiterate at the time, it was not recorded which bodies were identified aside from the bodies of a child and a police officer. While eight bodies were found by police, it is possible the death toll from the cult's activities could be as high as 15.
Case[]
In either late 1962 or early 1963, Santos and Cayetano Hernández started a cult in the remote village of Yerba Buena to accumulate wealth by claiming themselves as priests of Inca gods. The village had a population of only 50 people who were mostly illiterate and poor, thus the Hernández brothers would catch the villagers' attention by using sleight-of-hand tricks and it was not noticed that Inca mythology was centered in Peru. They demanded monetary tributes in exchange for the promise of finding treasure in the nearby mountains. Due to the poor financial status of most of the villagers, the Hernández brothers stated they also would accept sexual favors, drug-fueled orgies, or selling subordinates into sexual slavery as payment from both adults and minors.
When villagers inevitably began to notice they weren't finding treasures in the mountains and became skeptical, the brothers traveled to Monterrey to find a sex worker that they could hire for their operation. They eventually crossed paths with a teenager named Magdalena and her brother, Eleazar Solís, two siblings that agreed to take part in their scheme. Once the group returned to Yerba Buena, the Hernández brothers used a smoke screen trick to reveal Magdalena as the reincarnation of the Incan goddess Cōātlīcue and regained the villagers' trust. Magdalena soon began to truly believe she was a goddess after suffering from psychosis and gaining control over the entire cult. By this time, at least two villagers began to become disillusioned with the cult and wanted to leave. Magdalena chose to handle this by having the two villagers lynched in the name of ritual sacrifice.
Following the murder of the two villagers, Magdalena began to demand human sacrifices and would actively consume the blood of her victims from a chalice that also contained animal blood and either marijuana or peyotes. The brutality of these rituals increased when Magdalena and the Hernández brothers were under the influence of drugs, and the sacrifices began to include ripping the victim's heart out. The victims of these rituals were always villagers that had grown skeptical or dissented, and they were often beaten, cut, burned, and mutilated by cult members before dying from blood loss. Magdalena excused her consumption of the blood by using Aztec beliefs and claiming that she needed to drink it to maintain eternal youth.
Discovery[]
After 6 weeks of the cult being active, in May of 1963, a young resident named Sebastián Guerrero was exploring the caves in the area and came across the cult in the middle of one of their rituals. He ran to the nearest police station in Villa Gran, situated over 25 kilometers away from Yerba Buena. When telling the police of his discovery, Guerrero was initially believed to be mentally ill or having an overactive imagination. When morning came, an investigator named Luis Martínez offered to escort the boy home and to find what Guerrero was telling the police about. After leaving with the boy to Yerba Buena, neither Martínez nor Guerrero were ever seen alive again.
After Martínez failed to show up for work and was reported missing, the police department became concerned and contacted the army for assistance. On 31 May, 1963, Yerba Buena was raided by police and soldiers, sparking shootouts in the village. The Solís siblings were arrested without incident on a farm in the village after being found under the influence of marijuana. Santos Hernández would be killed while resisting arrest by police while Cayetano was murdered by a cult member, Jesús Rubio, who believed having a piece of one of the priests would protect him. A number of cult members would be killed during the shootout with police and the army.
Once the violence was over, investigations began around Yerba Buena to record all of what the cult did. The dismembered bodies of Martínez and Guerrero were found near the farm where the Solís siblings had been detained, while six more dismembered bodies were found in caves around the village. For the murders of Martínez and Guerrero, the Solís siblings were each sentenced to 50 years of imprisonment, though their guilt in the murders of the six other bodies could not be proven due to the refusal of cult members to testify against Magdalena. Due to the cult members being poor and illiterate, most of them were sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment. Only recently have former members of the cult begun to speak of what occurred under the reign of Magdalena. Despite only 8 bodies being found, the number of people killed by the cult is suspected to be as high as 15. It is unknown how many of the bodies were identified outside of Martínez and Guerrero.
Sources[]
- Magdalena Solís on Wikipedia
- Infobae (Spanish)
- Televisa (Spanish)