49 headless bodies dumped on north Mexico highway

OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ

PORFIRIO IBARRA RAMIREZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

MONTERREY, Mex­ico — Forty-nine bod­ies with their heads, hands and feet hacked off were found Sun­day dumped on a north­ern Mex­ico high­way lead­ing to the Texas bor­der in what appeared to be the lat­est car­nage in an esca­lat­ing war between Mexico’s two dom­i­nant drug cartels.

Local and fed­eral author­i­ties dis­cov­ered the bod­ies before dawn scat­tered in a pool of blood at the entrance to the town of San Juan, on a high­way lead­ing from the metrop­o­lis of Mon­ter­rey to the bor­der city of Reynosa. A white stone arch wel­com­ing vis­i­tors was spray-painted with black let­ters: “100% Zeta.”

Nuevo Leon state secu­rity spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news con­fer­ence that the 43 men and six women would be hard to iden­tify because of the lack of heads, hands and feet. The bod­ies were being taken to a Mon­ter­rey audi­to­rium for DNA tests.

The vic­tims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another loca­tion, then trans­ported to San Juan, a town in the munic­i­pal­ity of Cadereyta, about 105 miles (175 kilo­me­ters) west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, and 75 miles (125 kilo­me­ters) south­west of the Roma, Texas, bor­der cross­ing, state Attor­ney Gen­eral Adrian de la Garza said.

Only one cou­ple look­ing for their miss­ing daugh­ter vis­ited the morgue in Mon­ter­rey where autop­sies were being per­formed on the muti­lated bod­ies Sun­day, a state police inves­ti­ga­tor said.

The offi­cer, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to dis­cuss the case, said none of the six female bod­ies matched the miss­ing daughter’s descrip­tion. He said some of the bod­ies were badly decom­posed and some had their whole arms or lower legs missing.

De la Garza said he did not rule out the pos­si­bil­ity that the vic­tims were U.S.-bound migrants.

But it seemed more likely that the killings were the lat­est salvo in a grue­some game of tit-for-tat in fight­ing among bru­tal drug gangs.

“This is the most defin­i­tive of all the car­tel wars,” said Raul Ben­itez Man­aut, a secu­rity expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

Mass body dump­ings have increased around Mex­ico the last six months as the fear­some Zetas gang goes head to head with the pow­er­ful Sinaloa Car­tel, led by fugi­tive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guz­man, and its allies.

Under Pres­i­dent Felipe Calderon’s nearly six-year assault on orga­nized crime, the two car­tels have become the largest in the coun­try and are bat­tling over strate­gic trans­port routes and ter­ri­tory, includ­ing along the north­ern bor­der with the U.S. and in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

In less than a month, the muti­lated bod­ies of 14 men were left in a van in down­town Nuevo Laredo, 23 peo­ple were found hanged or decap­i­tated in the same bor­der city and 18 dis­mem­bered bod­ied were left near Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadala­jara. Nuevo Laredo, like Mon­ter­rey, is con­sid­ered Zeta ter­ri­tory, while Guadala­jara has long been con­trolled by gangs loyal to Sinaloa.

The Zetas are a tran­sient gang with­out real ter­ri­tory or a secure stream of income, unlike Sinaloa with its lucra­tive cocaine trade and con­trol of smug­gling routes and ter­ri­tory, Ben­itez said. But the Zetas are heav­ily armed while Sinaloa has a weak enforce­ment arm, he said. The Zetas, founded by desert­ers from Mexico’s elite spe­cial forces, started out as assas­sins for the Gulf Car­tel before those two gangs had a bloody split in early 2010.

The government’s suc­cess in killing or arrest­ing car­tel lead­ers has frac­tured some of the big gangs into weaker, quar­rel­ing bands that in many cases are lin­ing up with either the Zetas or Sinaloa. At least one of the two car­tels is present in nearly all of Mexico’s 32 states.

A year ago this month, more than two dozen peo­ple — most of them Zetas — were killed when they tried to infil­trate the Sinaloa’s ter­ri­tory in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit.

But their war started in earnest last fall in Ver­acruz, a strate­gic smug­gling state with a giant gulf port.

A drug gang allied with Sinaloa left 35 bod­ies on a main boule­vard in the city of Ver­acruz in Sep­tem­ber, and police found 32 other bod­ies, appar­ently killed by the same gang, a few days after that. The goal appar­ently was to take over ter­ri­tory that had been dom­i­nated by the Zetas.

Twenty-six bod­ies were found in Novem­ber in Guadala­jara, another ter­ri­tory being dis­puted by the Zetas and Sinaloa.

Drug vio­lence has killed more than 47,500 peo­ple since Calderon launched a stepped-up offen­sive when he took office in Decem­ber 2006.

Mex­ico is now in the midst of pres­i­den­tial race to replace Calderon, who by law can’t run for re-election. Drug vio­lence seems to be esca­lat­ing, but none of the major can­di­dates, Enrique Pena Nieto, Jose­fina Vazquez Mota or Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has referred to the body dump­ings directly. All three say they will stop the vio­lence and make Mex­ico a more secure place, but offer few details on how their plans would dif­fer from Calderon’s.

Ben­itez said the wave of vio­lence has noth­ing to do with the pres­i­den­tial election.

“It has the dynamic of a war between car­tels,” he said.

Posted by AP News on May 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.