More than 5,000 human remains, including 71 complete bodies, have been found by activists in the past two years in clandestine graves in Vera Cruz, a state in eastern Mexico that has been in a humanitarian emergency for a decade.
The founder of Colectivo Solecito, Ángeles Díaz Gaona, revealed that activists continue to unearth human remains in clandestine graves related to the violence emanating from cartels involved in drug trafficking.
“The situation in Vera Cruz is what we always have, the issue of the disappeared continues to be the central issue of human rights violations,” said the activist in statements to the Efe news agency.
Members of the Colectivo Solecito, who carry out a search for the disappeared, located in 2016 in the port of Vera Cruz (Gulf of Mexico) the largest clandestine grave in Latin America with 302 bodies.
Gaona said that they continue to be confronted with the absence of genetic profiles of the relatives of the disappeared, the delay in the identification of remains in forensic services and the lack of investigations.
In the last decade, a total of 642 clandestine cemeteries were located in different regions of the state of Vera Cruz, according to official information.
During that period, the Vera Cruz State Attorney General’s Office registered a total of 609 corpses recovered from graves, as well as another 381 corpses and 56,000 human remains.
Veracruz has been the scene for more than 15 years of the effects of violence motivated by the presence of groups linked to drug trafficking, and the fight against it by police, military and naval forces.
Intelligence reports even detected the presence of at least five criminal organizations: the Los Zetas cartel, Gente Nueva Generación, Jalisco Nueva Generación, El Golfo and Grupo Sombra.
The situation in Veracruz is a reflection of a national crisis, and when last May the barrier of more than 100,000 people disappeared and not located in Mexico since 1964 was crossed.
The National Commission for the Search of Persons of Mexico registered 5,377 disappeared persons in the state of Vera Cruz.
In this context, Díaz Gaona lamented that despite the efforts of the families to locate their relatives in illegal burials, the authorities continue without providing the identity of the victims of violence.
“We find these victims very often and the authorities still haven’t identified them,” he said.
Source: TSF
