Sao Paulo
Authorities in the Mexican state of Zacatecas found this Wednesday (27) six bodies of teenagers kidnapped three days earlier in this central region of the country. A seventh boy, who also went missing, was found with head injuries and a broken nose.
The disappearance of the victims, who were between 14 and 18 years old, mobilized public opinion in Mexico, a country that has recorded more than 420,000 dead and around 100,000 missing since former President Felipe Calderón’s controversial antidrug military offensive began in December 2006.
Jorge Alberto René Ocón Acevedo (14), Óscar Ernesto Rojas Alvarado (15), Diego Rodríguez Vidales (17), Héctor Alejandro Saucedo Acevedo (17), Gumaro Santacruz Carrillo (18), Jesús Manuel Rodríguez Robles (18) and Sergio Yobani Acevedo Rodríguez (18) was arrested by an armed group in the early hours of last Sunday (24) during a party at a farm in the city of Villanueva.
The six bodies and survivor Acevedo Rodríguez were found by agents in a helicopter during an inspection “in a difficult to access area” in the rural area of the same municipality. According to local government secretary Rodrigo Reyes, Acevedo is being treated at a hospital in the city of Zacatecas, the state capital, and is “stable” despite bruises on his head and face.
This Thursday morning (28), Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador regretted the incident and said that the injured young man would make a statement to help in the investigation. The motives for the crime are still unknown, as is the name of the armed group responsible for the kidnapping.
Two men suspected of being connected to the disappearance have been arrested since Tuesday (26).
According to Zacatecas prosecutor Francisco Murillo, the boys were sleeping when members of a criminal group arrived in vehicles around 4 a.m. and took them away. The group, made up of three cousins, had spent the day at the El Potrerito farm, owned by the parents of Héctor Alejandro Saucedo Acevedo.
The prosecutor’s office has not yet revealed the reasons for the case. In the state, several cartels compete for drug trafficking routes and accuse them of extortion. However, the authority initially ruled out that this was a case of forced recruitment by criminal groups, a practice that tends to affect young Mexicans.
The case came amid a wave of violence.
At the beginning of August last year, the kidnapping of five teenagers in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco state, shocked the country because of its brutality. At the time, images of captivity where childhood friends were forced to torture each other were posted on social media. None of them were found.
A month later, on September 1, another seven people, including members of the LGBTQIA+ community, disappeared from a rehabilitation center in the southern state of Guerrero.
This week the climate of insecurity worsened in several regions of the country. On Wednesday (27), armed groups blocked several roads in the state of Nuevo León, on the border with the United States, and set fire to vehicles. The day before, at least seven dismembered bodies were found in different parts of the city of Monterrey, Mexico’s most industrialized capital.
Finally, last weekend in Chiapas in the south, an unprecedented parade of members of the Sinaloa Cartel, which is vying with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for control of the population on the border with Guatemala, sparked outrage.
“We are in a state of siege, in social psychosis, with drug blockades that use civil society as a human barrier,” said the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas in a statement released on Saturday (23).