Janice R. Andrews
In a chilling reminder of the escalating gang violence in Mexico, 19 bodies were discovered on an isolated dirt road in Chiapas state. Social media users in Mexico have been circulating a video showing a tangle of bloodied bodies, some in tactical gear, lying in a dump truck. The narrator in the video claims the carnage was orchestrated by the Sinaloa Cartel, notorious for its drug-smuggling empire once led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The guys were shot dead, according to the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, which was confirmed by Mexican officials this week. Among the fatalities, at least six had identification from Guatemala.
The deaths, according to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, were “lamentable” and resulted from a conflict between two armed organizations. “What motivates this?” Inquired López Obrador. “The traffic of drugs and also the traffic of migrants, of people.”
The Sinaloa Cartel and its main adversary, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, are engaged in a bloody trafficking battle in Chiapas, the poorest and southernmost state in Mexico, over control of profitable smuggling routes. Chiapas is a prominent conduit for the trafficking of cocaine from South America and migrants from all over the world, as the two countries share a long and largely desolate border.
“Unfortunately, Chiapas has been caught in the middle of this trafficking war for both drugs and migrants,” said Mike Vigil, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s international operations. For the cartels, smuggling migrants is now a multimillion dollar industry.”
Thousands have been displaced, many have died in the Chiapas turf war, and the once-thriving tourism sector has been completely destroyed. Violence has “spread like a cancer,” according to an April report from the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center of Human Rights in Chiapas. The research details how criminal gangs are using terror to control the social, economic, and political life of communities.
The bodies were discovered in La Concordia, a community in Chiapas that has seen waves of violence in recent months. At least 16 people were killed in a series of attacks on mayoral candidates and their entourages in the days before last month’s elections, including Lucero Esmeralda López Maza, a 28-year-old contender.
Local communities are disproportionately affected by the ongoing war, which is centered around control of drug and human trafficking routes in the once calm state of Chiapas.
