59 Bodies Found in Mass Graves in Mexico
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: April 7, 2011
MEXICO CITY — Security forces have found 59 bodies buried in mass graves in northern Mexico, not far from where 72 migrants were killed last year.
The Tamaulipas State government said that the bodies were found by a joint federal and state investigation into the kidnapping of passengers on a long-distance bus that was hijacked on March 25.
Authorities arrested 11 people, according to the statement from the Tamaulipas State attorney general’s office. The bodies were taken to the medical examiner’s office to determine whether any of them were passengers on the hijacked bus, the state government said.
Mexico’s deputy interior minister, Juan Marcos Gutiérrez, said there was no indication that the victims were migrants, local news media reported. The bodies, discovered in eight graves on Wednesday, were found in the municipality of San Fernando, south of the Texas border, where 72 Central and South American migrants were killed last August. Two men managed to escape that massacre, which apparently occurred because the migrants refused to work for their kidnappers.
The Mexican Navy has arrested eight people who have been charged with participating in the killings. Officials say they are members of the Zetas, one of Mexico’s most violent drug gangs.
The Zetas, who have turned to extortion and kidnapping along with drug trafficking, are active in San Fernando. A main road to the border city of Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex., runs through San Fernando.
Since the migrants’ massacre, President Felipe Calderón has poured troops into Tamaulipas, where fighting between the Zetas and their onetime bosses, the Gulf Cartel, has erupted on city streets and emptied small towns.
In February, Mr. Calderón ordered four more battalions to reinforce security in the beleaguered state.