ALARM OVER MEXICO KILLINGS
A declassified U.S. report raises questions about cartel violence and police complicity.
MEXICO CITY — The grisly discovery of more bodies and human remains in the hills of Guerrero, Mexico, raises “alarming questions about the widespread nature of cartel violence in the region and the level of government complicity,” a newly declassified U.S. military report said.
The document, written by a human rights working group under the U.S. Northern Command, was circulated internally in October after its investigation of the disappearance of 43 students in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26. It was made public this week.
It expressed concern that none of the 28 bodies pulled out of numerous mass graves in the area were those of the missing students, raising questions about how many other people may have been killed and buried clandestinely.
Since the report was written, scores more bodies have been unearthed by search parties organized by families with missing loved ones.
“We’ve found bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, their eyes taped shut, many were killed by a shot to the head,” said Mario Vergara, 40, who leads a group of 300 families who say they have found 95 bodies buried in the dry, dusty hills around Iguala since November.
“We’ve found bodies with their mouths open, like they’ve been buried alive,” he said in a telephone interview from Iguala. “We’re doing the work that the government isn’t doing.”
More than 20,000 people are listed as “disappeared” in Mexico. Guerrero, long one of Mexico’s most violent states, is also a major production hub for the country’s booming opium trade.
The drug business has corrupted local institutions, and complicity between the police and drug gangs is commonplace.
The disappearance of the 43 students last year has been the biggest political crisis faced by President Enrique Peña Nieto since he took office in December 2012.
The students, from a rural teachers’ school in nearby Ayotzinapa, were taken away after clashing with local police.
The Mexican government claimed that police handed the students over to a drug gang, which executed them. But only one of the missing youths has been identified from remains found in a trash dump.
The Northcom internal report was made public through the National Security Archive, a Washington research group that pushes for the declassification of official documents.
The memo also refers to an incident that took place June 30 in Tlatlaya, 150 miles south of Mexico City. The army initially claimed that its 102nd Infantry Battalion was involved in a fierce shootout with drug gang members. Twenty-two people were killed, and photos later taken by journalists strongly suggested that some of the dead had been executed.
Further investigation resulted in the arrest of an officer and seven soldiers for what Human Rights Watch called “a horrific massacre.”
Another declassified document, also obtained by the National Security Archive, stated that the U.S. State Department had suspended assistance to the 102nd battalion pending the results of the investigations.