Last Mother’s Day, a few dozen women, all mothers, marched through the central square of this picturesque port city, demanding local authorities find family members who had disappeared, suspected victims of the country’s drug violence. Suddenly, two men dashed out of an SUV, ran up to the women, and jammed crudely drawn maps into their hands.
The maps pointed to a field just off a main highway near a gritty housing project a few miles outside of town. One corner of the map was covered by a forest of crosses. “Bodies,” the map said, with an arrow pointing to the crosses.
And, if that was not horrible enough, it was the women themselves who hired the diggers and had to persuade forensic authorities to look into it while body parts kept turning up. In an area where bodies had been dumped for at least the last four years.
Think about that for a moment.
Is that what would happen in a narcostate?
253 skulls found, only two victims identified:
Pedro Huesca, an agent from the public prosecutor’s office who was 29 when he was kidnapped by armed men four years ago, and his assistant, Gerardo Montiel, who was taken the same day.
And by the way, this is not the Ayotzinapa case, where 43 student teachers are missing and only one man’s remains have been identified.
Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.
UPDATE
Veracruz: Report Unveils Mexico’s ‘State of Terror’
The report produced by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a non-governmental organization that conducts research and proposes policies for dealing with conflict zones, suggests that before Veracruz can be reformed, there is a need to obtain accurate data revealing the full scope of the violence and corruption, and the government needs to do an overhaul of state institutions.
Full report at the link.
My heart breaks for all those moms!