Mexico Official says 250 skulls found in clandestine graves

Members of the Solecito search group carry the coffin of Pedro Huesca, a police detective who disappeared in 2013 and was recently found in a mass grave

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, prosecutors said yesterday [Macau time].

Veracruz state’s top prosecutor, Jorge Winckler, said the clandestine pits appeared to contain remains of cartel victims killed years ago.

The news came as no surprise to Lucia Diaz, one of the mothers of people who have 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 known as Colinas de Santa Fe was a secret burial ground.

In the face of official inaction, the activists themselves went to the fields starting in August 2016, sinking rods into the ground to detect the telltale odor of decomposition, and then digging.

When they find what they believe are burial pits, they alert authorities, who carry out the final excavations.

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

Some remains had been found in the area even before the group started its work.

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.

“Some of the bodies had a lot of connective tissue. You could see an ear, or recognize part of a face,” she said.

Winckler, in the first official recognition, seemed to say the burials occurred before the new state administration took office in December.

“For many years, the drug cartels disappeared people and the authorities were complacent,” Winckler said In an interview with the Televisa network, in apparent reference to the administration of fugitive former Gov. Javier Duarte and his predecessors.

Duarte resigned as governor two months before his term ended last year and disappeared. He faces charges that include money laundering and organized crime and officials have accused him thoroughly looting state coffers. Winckler said that resources needed for DNA tests in criminal investigation had vanished, leaving officials to depend on help from the federal government and groups such as the Red Cross.

So far only two sets of remains — a police detective and his assistant — have been identified, Winckler said.

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.

“Veracruz is an enormous mass grave,” he said.

Diaz also said “it is impossible to say” how many people are buried, and isn’t sure the burial ground wasn’t used recently. “We don’t know when it stopped, or if it stopped.” She said searchers found eight bodies just 10 days ago.

The state had long been dominated by the ferocious Zetas cartel. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel began moving in around 2011, sparking bloody turf battles. Mark Stevenson, Mexico City, AP