250 skulls found in Mexican mass grave

Land is likely drug cartel’s clandestine burial ground

MEXICO CITY— The top prosecutor in Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz confirmed Tuesday that more than 250 skulls have been found over the last several months in what appears to be a drug cartel mass burial ground on the outskirts of the city of Veracruz.

State Prosecutor Jorge Winckler said the clandestine burial pits appear to contain the victims of drug cartels killed years ago.

But the news came as no surprise to Lucia Diaz, one of the mothers of the disappeared whose group is known as Colectivo Solecito. The mothers pushed authorities to investigate the fields where the skulls were found, because they suspected more than a year ago that the wooded area was a clandestine burial ground.

In the face of authorities’ inaction, the activists themselves went out into the fields starting in August 2016, sinking rods into the ground to detect the telltale odour of decomposition, and then digging. When they found burial pits, they alerted authorities.

“We dig holes, but we try not to touch the remains,” Diaz said, because DNA may be the only hope of identifying the dead.

So far, Diaz said, searchers have found about 125 pits that contain about 253 bodies. Nobody knows when the burials began, but Diaz said some were quite recent.

The prosecutor said excavations have covered only a third of the lot where the skulls were found, and more people may be buried there.

“I cannot imagine how many more people are illegally buried there,” Winckler said, noting the state has reports of about 2,400 people who are still missing.