An unspecified number of dismembered bodies were found in two vehicles parked on a bridge in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz, prosecutors said Monday. A banner attached to one of the vehicles appeared to contain a warning message from a powerful cartel.
The bodies were found on Sunday in the town of Tuxpan, not far from the Gulf Coast. On board the two trucks, the body parts were apparently packed in Styrofoam cooler boxes.
A printed banner on the side of a truck containing some of the remains suggested that the victims may have been Guatemalans and identified “the four letters,” or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, as the perpetrators of the crime often referred to by its four initials in Spanish, CJNG.
Click here to view related media.
Click to expand
Prosecutors said police found “human anatomical parts” in the vehicles and investigators were conducting laboratory tests to determine the number of victims.
A photo of the banner published in local media showed part of it reading “Guatemalans, stop believing in Grupo Sombra and stay in your hometowns.”
Grupo Sombra appears to be a faction of the now splintered Gulf Cartel and is fighting with Jalisco for territory in the northern part of Veracruz, including nearby towns such as Poza Rica.
“There will be no impunity and those responsible for these events will be found,” the Veracruz state attorney general’s office said in a social media post.
In the past, there have been cases in which Mexican cartels, particularly the CJNG, recruited Guatemalans as gunmen, particularly former special forces soldiers known as “Kaibiles.”
“Settlements”
The Interior Ministry of Veracruz state said the killings appeared to be a “settling of scores” between gangs.
“This government has made it a priority not to allow the so-called 'settling of scores' between criminal gangs to affect public peace,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. “For this reason, those responsible for the criminal acts between organized crime groups in Tuxpan will be prosecuted and security will be strengthened in the region.”
Veracruz was one of Mexico's most violent states when the old Zetas cartel battled rivals there, and killings linked to the Gulf cartel and other gangs continue.
The state has one of the nation's largest illegal corpse dumps, where cartels dump their victims.
On September 17, 2018, officials cordoned off the site where a mass grave was found in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, a region plagued by bloody drug cartel turf wars. Getty Images
The discovery of mutilated bodies dumped in public or hung from bridges with threatening messages has increased in Mexico in recent years as criminal gangs seek to intimidate their rivals.
Last July, a violent drug cartel was suspected of leaving behind a severed human leg found on a pedestrian bridge in Toluca, west of Mexico City. The torso of the body was left on the street below near the city center, along with handwritten messages signed by the Familia Michoacana cartel. More parts of the bodies were later found in other neighborhoods, also with handwritten drug cartel signs nearby.
In 2022, the severed heads of six men were reportedly discovered on the roof of a Volkswagen in southern Mexico, along with a warning sign tied to two trees at the scene of the accident.
That same year, the bodies of seven men were found on a road in the Huasteca region. Written in marker on the bodies was: “This happened to me because I worked with the Gulf,” an apparent reference to the Gulf Cartel.
AFP contributed to this report.