Iguala: "We've found about 300 bodies in two years"

Borderland Beat Chivis and Lala

 

The story that began on September 26^th, with the attack on the buses carrying the normalistas and one bus with a futbol team, took time but eventually became a huge global story.  But this story is not the big story and journalists should not be satisfied with this event and not dig further.

This reporter went back 6 months in Iguala regional newspapers hunting for stories about fosas.  I restricted my search for 6 months and only in the area where the recent fosas were found.  In April and August I posted articles of two fosas found, one had 28, the other 32 bodies.  The total for 6 months was over 100 bodies.  100 bodies in and near a town with just over 100k population.  If there were 100 bodies discovered, many times that figure are yet to be found. The photo above is from one of those discoveries.

The government could and should bite the bullet and ask for assistance of  countries with technology and skilled personel to search for bodies. People of Iguala report that the killings have been transpiring for over 4 years

 

Below is a translation by Lala Milenio

Inhabitants of Las Parotas, the closest community to the area where the clandestine mass graves were found, tell us how they live.

Life in las Parotas, the town closest to the clandestine graves in the vicinity of Iguala. The peasant village of thirty shacks built between small fields in the foothills of the mountains where an unknown number of human remains were found. Las Parotas and its gigantic clandestine cemeteries in the middle of thick vegetation: "Here, to tell you the truth, in all these hills we have found about 300 bodies in the last two years," says a commander of the Guerrero Ministerial Police, while smoking a cigarette. He guards the paths leading to the crime scene.

But, how is life for the rural families living in the vicinity? Some of the settlers, fearful, tell stories like this...

A mother and her two daughters chatting outside their humble home. The oldest and more vivacious daughter speaks first, she is in her twenties, dressed like an urban girl rather than a young peasant woman:

"At night and in the morning we used to hear cars heading up. Armored cars (with tinted windows). We thought it was people going to check their fields, we didn't think they were coming to throw dead people. At night we would hear shootings. Since there are deer up there, we thought it was hunters. But it wasn´t deer. The blasts could be heard and, yes, we were scared, but bah... - makes a dismissive gesture."

The mother reveals:

"It didn´t happen daily, just now and then." We thought they were coming for the deer, because at night they come down to drink water. It is ugly to live close to where they bury the dead, but we have nowhere else to go. Here a bit further they threw a dead body. Two years ago some human bones were found. And up in the hills, clandestine graves. We want peace already.

A mother of three children  who play all around, among ducks, chickens and goats, lets us inside her home. One of the children hangs two rattlesnake skins from a nail on the wall. They grind the insides of snakes to feed their cows. So they give better milk. The woman tells us:

"We sometimes hear the shots, but not always because I turn on my music, the dogs bark and I fall asleep. They are not from here, they come from elsewhere, and here they make their mess. I close my door and that's it. Six months ago they came from Iguala following a guy at five am. A boy went outside, he had no bathroom inside his home, and those who were following the other guy thought it was him and shot him. Yes, it is dangerous. And then down there they threw a body and buried it. The police said that the man was all tattooed. 

How did they know that,  if they were yet to retrieve the body? 

They (the police) were the same ones who came to throw it. My children are afraid of the police. When the trucks pass by my husband says to me: ' whatever you see or hear, don´t come out of the house. Do not go out, they are throwing them (bodies), and they will shoot you to keep you silent '.
 

So, yes, the mere truth, yes, we live in fear. And then right there, where that rancho is, a band came about a year ago. And from here they were removing them, the dead bodies, to take them up there (to the hills where the graves are). My husband said to me: ' Don´t even think in talking, don't talk, because if you do they will come for us '.
 
All day they were up and down. When they were caught, we tored down the house they had put up. They kept their abductees there. Young men. Three months ago some local men went up there to fetch firewood (to the area where the graves were found), but they weren´t allowed to go up there. The first and the second time they were warned not to go there again, and the third time they were beaten up badly so they wouldn´t go there again. 
 
These men were going to hunt deer, but the two legged kind", the woman giggles nervously.

His son, who is a preteen, wants to talk. He says:

"They kept them also in the caves up in the hills. There are pots, cans of beans, fish (tuna) in there. They beat them. There are ropes hanging too (where the kidnapped people were tied, the boy presumes). You can see blood on the floor. Spread all over (he moves the hands pointing out a large portion of the soil). You can see up there where they were thrown. We don´t go there anymore". The mother chides him and insists him to not go to the hill anymore.

Life in las Parotas, there, at the foot of the hills with clandestine graves and caves of blood...