49 Headless Bodies in Mexico – Identities of the Victims are yet to be Discovered
Authorities are still struggling to find the identity of the 49 headless bodies dumped near a main highway outside Monterrey, Mexico, on Sunday, May 13. It has been suspected that those murdered people were the victims of the fight between two dominant drug cartels of Mexico.
The bodies decomposed condition and no trace of gunshot near the dumping zone indicated that the victims could have been slain at least two days ago at a different spot, then transported to San Juan for dumping. Authorities said that these people might have been brought from another state, as there was no report of mass disappearance in Nuevo Leon state.
According to a Time magazine report, this massacre is the outcome of the fight between the Zetas gang and the Sinaloa Cartel, the two leading forces in the setting of Mexico’s drug trafficking and other crimes, who are trying to outdo each other in bloodshed and widening their smuggling routes and crime territory. Alejandro Poire, the Interior Secretary, also confirmed on Monday that they had evidence that indicated the massacre to be the outcome of a fight between the two main gangs.
In fact, the bodies were found near the white arch welcoming people to the San Juan town, which had the black graffiti ‘100% Zeta’ on it, indicating that the murders were committed by the Zeta gang. However, the gang denied the responsibility on the very next day of the massacre by showing banners signed by them in various parts of the area.
The 49 bodies, of which 43 were men and 6 were women, were disposed of on the spot by using plastic bags. The hands and feet were also chopped off from the bodies along with the heads, which made the identification process more difficult.
It was the fourth cartel mass execution that took place in the last four months. On April 17, 14 men were discovered dead dumped in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo. Twenty-three people were found hanged in the same border city on May 4. Two weeks ago, 18 mutilated bodies were found near the Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. Among those 18 people, at least nine were innocents with no criminal records. An arrested Zeta member also told police that they were kidnapping people in order to murder and dump them with an intention to ‘cause terror’.
Since President Felipe Calderon’s launching the army against the drug gangs in 2006, 47,500 people have been killed so far for drug violence. The President’s initiative rather prompted the emergence of two most powerful cartels of Mexico. Between these two cartels, at least one has its presence in all of the 32 states of Mexico. This mass massacre is a warning for Calderon too, whose conservative National Action Party (PAN) is gradually losing support and is less likely to score good result in the presidential poll supposed to be held on July 1.
