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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Bodies found on Mexican highway
Forty-nine left without heads, hands or feet
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 lying in a pool of blood at the entrance to the desert 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 León state security spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news conference 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 Cadereyta municipality about 175 kilometres west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, and 125 kilometres southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing, state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said.
De la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility the victims were U.S.-bound migrants. But it seemed more likely 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 Raúl Benitez Manaut, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University.
Mass body dumpings have increased around Mexico in the last six months as the fearsome Zetas gang goes head-to-head with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, led by fugitive drug lord Joaqun "El Chapo" Guzmán.
Under President Felipe Calderón'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.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 14, 2012 A12
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