Written by Olga R. Rodriguez
MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Authorities struggled Monday to identify the 49 people found mutilated and scattered in a pool of blood in a region near the U.S. border where Mexico’s two dominant drug cartels are trying to outdo each other in bloodshed while warring over smuggling routes.
The bodies of 43 men and six women with their heads, hands and feet chopped off were dumped at the entrance to the town of San Juan, on a highway that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.
At the spot where authorities discovered the bodies before dawn Sunday, a white stone arch that normally welcomes visitors to the town was spray-painted with “100% Zeta” in black letters — an apparent reference to the fearsome Zetas drug cartel that was founded by deserters from the Mexican army’s special forces.
Only one couple looking for their missing daughter visited the morgue in Monterrey where autopsies were being performed Sunday, a state police investigator said. Authorities said at least a few of the latest victims had tattoos of the Santa Muerte cult popular among drug traffickers.
The bodies, some of them in plastic garbage bags, were most likely brought to the spot and dropped from the back of a dump truck, Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said.
Domene said the dead would be hard to identify because of the lack of heads, hands and feet, which have not been found. The remains were taken to a Monterrey auditorium for DNA tests.
The victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, a town in the municipality of Cadereyta, about 105 miles (175 kilometers) west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, and 75 miles (125 kilometers) southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing, state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said. San Juan is known as the cradle of baseball in Mexico.
The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said none of the six female bodies matched the missing daughter’s description. He said some of the bodies were badly decomposed and some had their whole arms or lower legs missing.
De la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility that the victims were U.S.-bound migrants. Authorities said they also may have been brought from other states, because there had been no recent reports of mass disappearances in in Nuevo Leon state.
The killings appeared to be the latest salvo in a gruesome game of tit-for-tat in fighting between the Zetas and the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
Mass body dumpings have increased around Mexico in the last six months of escalating fighting between the Zetas and Sinaloa, which is led by fugitive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and its allies, the federal Attorney General’s Office said in statement late Sunday.
The two cartels have committed “irrational acts of inhumane and inadmissible violence in their dispute,” the office said, reiterating it is offering $2 million rewards for information leading to the arrests of Guzman, Ismael Zambada, another Sinaloa cartel leader, and Zetas’ leaders Heriberto Lazacano Lazcano and Miguel Trevino.
Under President Felipe Calderon’s nearly six-year offensive against organized crime, the two cartels have emerged as Mexico’s two most powerful gangs and are battling over strategic transport routes and territory, including along the northern border with the U.S. and in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.
Cadereyta has been the scene of escalating drug violence, authorities said Monday. Killings in the municipality stood at 74 through April, compared to 27 over the same period in 2011, and 7 in 2010.
Across Mexico, in less than a month, the mutilated bodies of 14 men were left in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo, 23 people were found hanged or decapitated in the same border city and 18 dismembered bodied were left near Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara. Nuevo Laredo, like Monterrey, is considered Zeta territory, while Guadalajara has long been controlled by gangs loyal to Sinaloa.
“This is the most definitive of all the cartel wars,” said Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.