Thread: More than 40 bodies found in mass grave in Mexico

More than 40 bodies found in mass grave in Mexico

Apr. 6, 2011 06:02 PM
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - More than 40 bodies have been found in a mass grave in the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas, near the site where suspected drug gang members massacred 72 migrants last summer, authorities said Wednesday.

Ruben Dario, a spokesman for the Tamaulipas state Attorney General's Office, said the site was being excavated to determine the exact number of dead and their identities.

State officials said the graves were found by a military patrol, but the press offices of both the Defense Department and Mexico's navy said they could not immediately confirm the discovery. The site is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the border at Brownsville, Texas.

The mass burial was discovered late Tuesday in the township of San Fernando, in the same area where the bodies of 72 migrants, most from Central America, were found shot to death Aug. 24 at a ranch.

Authorities blamed that massacre on the Zetas drug gang, which is fighting its one-time allies in the Gulf cartel for control of the region.

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At least 59 bodies uncovered in San Fernando
April 06, 2011 10:41 PM
THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD

Mexican authorities have begun an investigation into a mass grave discovered in San Fernando just 80 miles from Brownsville.

Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office, or PGJE, is taking the lead in the investigation, but the Mexican Attorney General’s Office, or PGR, is also working on the case, PGR spokeswoman Graciela Ornelas said.

Tamaulipas authorities began investigating the San Fernando area when they received a complaint of a hijacked bus on March 25. In response to the investigation, Mexican authorities arrested 11 individuals who were turned over to the PGR and also found eight graves where they discovered a total of 59 bodies, a PGJE press release stated.

In the first six graves, authorities found 11 bodies. Most of the bodies were discovered in the seventh grave where authorities found 43 victims. An additional five bodies were discovered in the eighth grave. The agency is conducting forensic testing to identify the bodies and determine if the bodies found are those of the missing passengers.

San Fernando is located 80 miles south of Brownsville and is the same place where last August the Mexican military came across a mass grave with 72 bodies from migrant travelers that had been kidnapped. American missionary Nancy Davis was also shot earlier this year during a hijacking attempt in San Fernando only to later die at a McAllen hospital.

According to a source with firsthand knowledge of criminal activity in Mexico, San Fernando is currently under control of the Zeta drug cartel that regularly hijacks passenger vehicles for personal gain and hijack passenger busses looking for migrants in order to force them into the organization and bolster their numbers.

While Mexican authorities continue to investigate the massacre of the 72 migrants from last year, the source stated that they where migrants that had been kidnapped and killed after refusing to join the Zetas.


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San Fernando massacre victims are missing bus passengers
April 06, 2011 10:41 PM
KATHERINE CORCORAN, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The buses crawled to a halt to obey roadblocks manned by armed men, who boarded like military or police doing an inspection. One by one, they tapped certain passengers, all men, mostly young, to get off: "You. You. You."

Relatives and travel companions watched in horror as the buses pulled away without them. Less than two weeks later, security forces following reports of abducted passengers in Tamaulipas stumbled on a collection of pits holding a total of 59 bodies.

The grisly discovery early Wednesday came in virtually the same spot near the town of San Fernando where 72 migrants were murdered in August and on the same day several thousand people across Mexico took to the streets to say they were fed up with the violence. The United States' top drug enforcer said in Mexico a day earlier that the violence means authorities are winning.

By Thursday, investigators had identified a few victims of the latest massacre as Mexicans, not transnational migrants trying to reach the U.S. They did not say if they were connected to 12 official missing-person reports from the buses. Authorities interviewing witnesses calculated that from 65 to 82 people went missing, Tamaulipas state Interior Secretary Morelos Canseco said.

They were kidnapped on one of Mexico's most dangerous stretches of highway that runs along Mexico's Gulf coast to the border with Texas, an area where federal authorities launched a major offensive in November seeking to regain control of territory from two warring drug gangs, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.

Despite an estimated 1,000 soldiers in Tamaulipas, criminals have become so brazen they apparently kidnapped dozens of passengers in a stretch of open desert that locals say lay between two military checkpoints. The Mexican military would not comment on the location of roadblocks for security reasons.

Authorities speculated the men who were pulled off the buses had fallen victim to ever more brutal recruiting efforts to replenish cartel ranks.

But one local politician, who didn't want to be identified for safety reasons, said there were rumors that the Gulf Cartel was sending buses of people to fight the Zetas, who control that stretch of road and who began boarding buses in search of their rivals.

The Zetas are blamed for the migrant killings last August as well as the death of U.S. Immigration and Customs Agent Jaime Zapata in neighboring San Luis Potosi state.

There are many more missing in San Fernando, the politician said, adding that "if they keep looking they'll find more and more mass graves."

More than four years and tens of thousand of troops into Mexico's crackdown on drug trafficking, authorities say they have the cartels encircled. More than 34,600 people have died in drug violence.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonart told an international drug conference in Mexico's resort city of Cancun this week that violence is an unfortunate sign that the offensive is successful.

Besides the migrant massacre, Tamaulipas has been the scene of all-out drug battles that have nearly emptied border towns and led to the creation of Mexico's first displacement camp for victims of drug violence.

A gubernatorial candidate was assassinated last year and a U.S. missionary was murdered in January as her husband tried to evade an illegal roadblock on the same road where the passengers went missing.

Cartels such as the Zetas — the latter started by elite military deserters — are turning more and more to common criminals for their assassins, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said at the drug conference this week.

And there are signs the gangs are turning even to innocent civilians who perhaps have never handled a gun. Survivors of the August massacre said the 72 illegal migrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and Brazil were killed for refusing to work for the Zetas.

The latest mass grave was found by Tamaulipas state investigators and federal authorities who went to the site about 80 miles south of Brownsville to check on reports that gunmen had begun stopping buses and pulling off some passengers in the area.

The first report came March 25 from a woman in Matamoros whose husband failed to arrive from San Luis Potosi, Canseco said. There were reports of at least two other buses stopped since then, he said.

State and federal investigators and soldiers conducted the raid, but differed on what exactly happened.

The federal Interior Department said the first pit was discovered Saturday and soldiers detained five suspected kidnappers. Tamaulipas officials said the pits were found Wednesday, and a total of 11 suspected kidnappers were captured and five kidnap victims were freed. The reason for the discrepancy was not clear.

But the security forces agreed a series of eight burial pits had been found, one of which contained 43 bodies and the others 16 corpses.

Many of the victims found in the pits appeared to have died 10 to 15 days ago, dates that would roughly match the bus abductions, Canseco said.

The wave of drug-related killings drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Mexico's capital and several other cities Wednesday in marches against violence.

Many of the protesters said the government offensive has stirred up the violence.

The marches were spurred in part by the March 28 killing of Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, and six other people in Cuernavaca outside Mexico City.

As of Thursday, the elder Sicilia had taken up camp outside the governor's office in central Cuernavaca, saying he would give Gov. Marco Adame and President Felipe Calderon a week to produce those responsible for his son's death before calling for Adame's resignation and a national march to end an "absurd war."

"We are putting pressure on the government, because this can't go on," Sicilia said. "It seems that we are like animals that can be murdered with impunity."

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