MEXICO
CITY — A mass grave discovered in the Mexican state of Veracruz
contained more than 250 human skulls, most likely the victims of
criminal drug cartels, the state’s attorney general said on Tuesday.
“For
many years, the drug cartels disappeared people and the authorities
were complacent,” Jorge Winckler, the state attorney general, said in a
television interview with the Televisa network.
Veracruz,
on Mexico’s Gulf coast, has been the epicenter of battles among the
country’s drug gangs. The remains found at the site indicated that the
victims might have been killed years ago, Mr. Winckler said.
Describing
the crime-ridden state as a “giant grave,” Mr. Winckler said the state
authorities would match D.N.A. samples at the scene to a database from
the relatives of the missing.
Mr.
Winckler did not say when or by whom the pits were discovered, but the
first graves in the area were found in August with the help of members
of Colectivo Solecito, a group of women whose children are missing.
The
federal police and state prosecutors later discovered 125 clandestine
graves over eight months across a large area known as Colinas de Santa
Fe, said Lucía Diaz, a spokeswoman for the collective.
On
Mother’s Day last year, some of the collective’s members were
approached at a street protest by cartel members who handed them a map
indicating the locations of the graves, Mrs. Diaz said.
With
the new information, the collective raised money by holding bake sales
and raffles to finance the searches, including paying for excavators.
Among
the remains recovered in the last six months and already identified
were the bodies of a former state prosecutor and his secretary, who were
kidnapped by police officers working for a drug gang in 2013.
“What
we have found is abominable and it reveals the state of corruption,
violence and impunity that reigns not only in Veracruz, but in all of
Mexico,” Ms. Diaz said.
“A
reality that speaks of the collusion of authorities with organized
crime in Veracruz, for it is impossible to see what we found without the
participation of authorities,” she said.
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