Mexico City – The number of bodies pulled from mass graves in a rocky field outside the northern city of Monterrey rose to 50 Saturday, authorities said, marking one of the largest dumping grounds ever found for casualties of Mexico’s drug war.
Forensic experts used earthmoving machinery to dig up several new graves beyond the nine pits already excavated.
Unnamed military sources told the semi-official Notimex news agency that workers uncovered 12 new bodies early in the day, bringing to 50 the bodies dug up in a landfill in the township of Benito Juarez east of Monterrey.
Some of the bodies appeared to have been incinerated, while others had bullet wounds, the Milenio news network reported on its website. It said the victims appeared to have been killed within the past two weeks.
“The majority (of the victims) are men between 20 and 50 years old, and most of them have tattoos,” said Nuevo Leon State Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza, adding that forensic experts would conduct genetic tests to identify the victims.
The mass graves are the largest discovery of a drug war killing field since May, when authorities found 55 bodies in a deep shaft in Taxco de Alarcon in Guerrero state.
That shaft in Guerrero state and the new discovery in Nuevo Leon state, which borders Texas, are the largest known killing fields of victims of Mexico’s drug war, which has taken nearly 25,000 lives since late 2006.
The army was tipped off to the mass graves in an anonymous phone call last Thursday, and when medical forensic workers appeared at the site they found broken branches and vegetation covering freshly dug pits, some as deep as 11 and 12 feet.
El Universal newspaper, citing military sources, said the victims were executed in large numbers, and then thrown in the pits where they were set afire.
It said the mass graves, some 12 miles east of Monterrey, are in an area where drug traffickers linked to the Gulf Cartel maintain safe houses. The former chief of the Gulf Cartel, Juan Garcia Abrego, was captured in the same area in 1995.
Photos from the new site show a dirt ramp leading into a gravel pit near the Santa Catarina River, and abandoned tires scattered about. Several rock pits on patches of ground were charred.
In other news related to the drug war, the Ministry of Defense reported that soldiers had recovered 50 large tubes of the industrial explosive Tovex, after skirmishing with drug gangs in a mountainous area of Chihuahua state last Wednesday.
The explosive is the same type that authorities said was used in a car bomb in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, that killed three people on July 15, the first time that Mexican drug cartels are known to have employed vehicle-borne bombs.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy