On January 23, the Mexicans woke up to a macabre discovery: 19 people were burned inside two trucks near the border with the United States. They’re beginning to reveal details about the horror.
The horror is beginning to be known that 19 people who died burned to death in two trucks in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. The macabre story touches not only Mexico but also Guatemala, as 13 of the victims of the crime are suspected of being indigenous migrants from a rural area of the Central American country seeking to reach the United States.
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The families of an indigenous community in Comitancillo and San Marcos, Guatemala, are increasingly confident that their parents, wives and children are 13 of the 19 victims of the first massacre that was reported in Mexico in 2021. According to local media reports , these people left for Santa Anita in mid-January.
Camargo, the municipality in which this city is located, is an area of dispute between the northeastern cartel, which emerged from Los 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 the United States from Guatemala, but is dangerous because of gangs that kidnap, extort and kill migrants.
And even where the authorities are looking for explanations, because the cremated trucks were under the protection of the National Institute for Migration (INM) before being set on fire. What happened? The other mystery he is trying to solve is why one of the vehicles had 113 shots, but authorities did not find a single case at the crime scene.
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From the outset, it was 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 (Acnudh) compared the events to the 2010 San Fernando massacre, in which 72 migrants were killed. killed in the same region.
Tamaulipas government security spokesman Luis Alberto Rodríguez said the involvement of a smuggling network with migrants, police and immigration authorities is being investigated. On Tuesday, 12 state police officers were captured, according to Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios. They are accused of participating in the crime, of qualified homicide, abuse of authority, poor performance of administrative functions and false reports.
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Barrios did not elaborate on whether the police officers committed the crime or covered up the criminals and explained that on the day of the events, other trucks loaded with Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants passed through the area heading to the United States.
The press reported that the National Institute for Migration (INM) is also being investigated. Mexico’s Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero, the ministry responsible for the INM, said “dozens of immigration officials” had been fired and reported to the prosecutor’s office for the events.
“We have had problems with many of the immigration officials, precisely in this type of violation of rights, and we need to recognize it in order to move forward,” Sánchez Cordero said. Just yesterday, 49 migrants from Central America were rescued in another city in Tamaulipas, who were locked in a building and asked for help. “The traffickers did not let them go because they refused to pay more money than they agreed,” authorities said.
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Mexico is facing a wave of violence linked to organized crime, especially drug cartels challenging routes to the United States. Since December 2006, when the federal government launched a controversial anti-drug operation, there have been more than 300,000 violent deaths, mostly in criminal acts, according to official figures.