Home > Our Blog > Mexican Drug Cartel Massacres 72 Migrants, Ecuadorian Survivor Says

Blog Post

Mexican Drug Cartel Massacres 72 Migrants, Ecuadorian Survivor Says

Posted August 25, 2010 by Ted Hesson
Categories: Federal Immigration Policy

In what the Associated Press called “the most horrifying example yet of the dangers faced by immigrants trying to get to the US,” 72 migrants believed to be from Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, and Ecuador were found slain on a Mexican ranch 100 miles south of the US border on Tuesday, according to a survivor’s account.

A wounded Ecuadorian man told marines of the alleged murders at a highway checkpoint, and the marines proceeded to the location that the man referenced.

From the AP:

The marines fought the cartel gunmen at a ranch in the northern state of Tamaulipas on Tuesday, a battle that left one marine and three suspects dead. They found the bodies of 58 men and 14 women in a room, some piled on top of each other.

The Ecuadorean migrant told investigators that his captors identified themselves as members of the Zetas drug gang, said Vice Adm. Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican Navy.

If the allegations are true, the massacre represents a significant escalation of violence against migrants in migration corridors that have been increasingly controlled by drug gangs.

The New York Times reports:

The discovery of the bodies was the largest of at least three such finds this year.

In May, 55 bodies were pulled from an abandoned mine south of Mexico City and in July 51 bodies were discovered in a field near Monterrey, a vital industrial and business hub also in northeast Mexico that had been relatively quiet until this summer.

A shootout last week in Monterrey outside the American School Foundation, a private school popular with American expatriates and Mexican business executives, prompted the American consulate to advise families to keep their children home pending an assessment of security at the school.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown against organized crime in 2006.

Tags : cartels, los zetas, mexican cartels, migration, tamaulipas

Permalink Comments