On January 23, the Mexicans got up with a macabre find: 19 people had been burned to death in two vans near the border with the United States. They begin to reveal details of the horror.
The horror of 19 people who were burned to death in two vans in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, is beginning to be known. The macabre story not only moves Mexico, but also Guatemala, as 13 of the victims of the crime are suspected to be indigenous migrants from a rural area of this Central American country seeking to reach the United States.
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Families in an indigenous community in Comitancillo and San Marcos, Guatemala, are increasingly confident that they are their parents, husbands and children, 13 of the 19 victims of the first massacre reported in Mexico in 2021. According to reports from the local press, these people set off for Santa Anita in mid-January.
Camargo, the municipality where this town is located, is an area of dispute between the Northeast cartel, which emerged from the Zetas, which controls part of Nuevo León, and the Gulf cartel, which has operated in Tamaulipas for decades. Tamaulipas, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, is the shortest route to reach the United States from Guatemala, but is dangerous for gangs that kidnap, extort and murder migrants.
And it is right here where the authorities are looking for explanations, as the cremated vans were under the protection of the National Migration Institute (INM) before they were set on fire. What happened? The other mystery they are looking to solve is why one of the vehicles had 113 shots, but authorities did not find a single bullet casing at the crime scene.
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It was initially suspected that the dead were migrants trying to reach the United States via Mexico, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) compared the facts to the 2010 San Fernando massacre, in which 72 migrants were killed in the same region.
Tamaulipas government security spokesman Luis Alberto Rodriguez said the involvement of a migrant trafficking network, police and immigration authorities is being investigated. On Tuesday, 12 state police officers were captured, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barris reported. They are accused of having been involved in the crime, of premeditated homicide, abuse of authority, malfunctioning of administrative functions and falsity of reports.
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Barris did not detail whether the police perpetrated the murder or covered up the killers, and explained that on the day of the incident, other trucks loaded with Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants headed for the United States passed through the area.
The press reported that the National Migration Institute (INM) is also being investigated. The Secretary of the Interior of Mexico, Olga Sánchez Cordero, the ministry responsible for the INM, stated that “dozens of immigration officials” have been dismissed and reported to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for these facts.
“We have had problems with many of the Migration officials, precisely in this type of violation of rights and we must recognize it to move forward,” said Sanchez Be. Just yesterday, 49 Central American migrants were rescued in another town in Tamaulipas, who were locked in a building and were crying out for help. “The traffickers did not let them pass for refusing to pay more money than they had agreed to,” authorities noted.
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Mexico is experiencing a wave of violence linked to organized crime, especially drug cartels vying for routes to the United States. Since December 2006, when the federal government launched a controversial anti-drug operation, more than 300,000 violent deaths have been reported, mostly in criminal acts, according to official figures.