Nayarit: A Nightmare of Disappearances and Mass Graves

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Proceso

Special Report by: Patricia Davila
Mexico City, Jan 27, 2018

The Nayarit nightmare does not end with the new governor. Antonio Echevarría García (PAN-PRD), who took office in September, has maintained the prosecutor's office that was controlled by Édgar Veytia, arrested in March at the US Border, accused of drug trafficking. There in lies the problem because the agency continues to work for the cartels, according to complaints from the Familias Unidas de Nayarit Collective, made up of those who have lost children, brothers and fathers during the wave of kidnappings that has not stopped since last June; with and by their own means, they have begun to discover clandestine pits.

Search dogs led authorities to the grisly discovery of four clandestine graves containing at least 33 bodies in a sugarcane field in Mexico’s Pacific coast state of Nayarit and officials said Wednesday the killings were likely linked to the drug trade. The Familias Unidas group's story differs somewhat.

Former State Attorney General of Nayarit Arrested at the US Border for Drug Trafficking
Edgar Veytia not only has Dual Citizenship but maintains a home in Chula Vista
or did before he was arrested on a US Federal Warrant at the Cross Border Express POE Bridge in Otay Mesa which connects with the Tijuana Airport

Before his escape and subsequent capture and arrest in the United States in March 2017 on charges of drug trafficking, the former State Attorney General of Nayarit : Edgar Veytia , "Diablo" or "Lic Veytia" betrayed the Beltrán Leyva Brothers cartel by leaving the state in the claws of the Jalisco Cartel Nueva Generación, CNJG,  after a long dispute. Now, the ravages of that alliance has come to public light in the form of human remains located in clandestine graves.

After the state elections, in June of 2017,  a wave of disappearances of young people between 16 and 35 years of age in the State of Nayarit was unleashed. The families of these victims estimate that 350 cases have accumulated since then. The graves were found in the township of Xalisco, which has long been the home base of a black-tar heroin trafficking ring that supplied the U.S. West Coast. 

Those who are looking for their children, brothers and fathers denounce elements of the State Attorney General's Office of Nayarit who they claim are involved in the uprisings and point to Governor Antonio Echevarría García, who took office last September, to maintain such a dependence as Edgar Veytia left it. 

The interviewees for this special report recall that the state leader, the newly elected Governor , in his inauguration, promised arrests of corrupt state policemen and a cleans against the authorities who ransacked the state. Neither has happened, they say.

In addition to the nightmare of the disappearances of loved ones, mostly young men, each time these families go to file a complaint or try to ask about the follow-up of their cases, they claim they must tolerate threats and mistreatment by the authorities.

The federal authorities have also mistreated them: last June, a group of relatives went to the delegation of the Attorney General's Office (PGR) in the state. In the first instance, the delegate Efraín Alonso Gastelum Padilla refused to receive his complaints. A month later, after the then governor Roberto Sandoval intervened, Gastelum only accepted 21 cases. Most versions of the victims agree that their children were taken by force with vehicles of the Nayarit Prosecutor's Office.

Other relatives say they have reports that their children were taken to the Sierra Nayarita to cultivate drugs and that the youths are under the power of Luis Antonio Torres Valdivia, former commander of the prosecutor's office and ex-prosecutor's man, a topic that this weekly published in Issue 2113 under the text entitled Activa, the mafia network of ex-prosecutor Édgar Veytia.

Some parents, who preferred to have their identity reserved, assure that members of the prosecution are in collusion with the cartels that operate in the entity.

Current state Attorney General Petronilo Diaz said local gangs have been engaged in power struggles since Veytia’s arrest.

“The assumption is that these were people who were involved with one of the various criminal groups, but I can’t say which one,” Diaz said, referring to the bodies in the graves. He said some of the bodies had apparently been dismembered before burial.

“This breakdown among the drug gangs we are seeing now in Nayarit comes as a result of the arrest of , Edgar Veytia, from the previous administration,” Diaz said. “That is when these criminal groups start fighting, and that’s when this mess we’re seeing started.”

Corrupt officials in Mexico have sometimes enforced a sort of rough peace by favoring one drug gang over the others or dividing territories.

The burial pits came to light when some families searching for missing loved ones found remains on Saturday after receiving a telephone tip from local residents. The first pit contained nine bodies and was located near a stream in a sugar cane field. Trained dogs then led searchers to three other pits nearby.

 The bodies were so badly decomposed that neither their gender nor identity could be immediately established. The remains had been buried for about an average of six months, investigators believe.

Only one body still had a legible tattoo that might help identify it; the others are being subjected to DNA testing, officials said.

But the investigations have not progressed and given the impotence for not getting answers from the state and federal authorities, this group of people asked for help from lawyer Mayela Ruiz Madrazo, who in 2016 asked the Ministry of the Interior to activate an alert of general violence .

In an interview, he assures that there are indications of the relationship of the authorities in the kidnappings and that, for this reason, on August 25 he filed a complaint with the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) against the state prosecutor's office and the PGR, dependencies denounced for actions or omissions to the detriment of the victims.

In the complaint, the lawyer states that in Tepic alone 103 people have disappeared, 63 of which are still missing, 32 victims died and eight were found wounded; however, of these the last two were  taken again. On October 9, the CNDH admitted the complaint and opened file CNDH /1/2017/6930Q 

The Relatives Found the Grave Pits:

Sierra del Nayar to the NE of the State of Nayarit

Again, the lack of progress led this group of victims to form the Familias Unidas Collective in Nayarit and to create a Facebook profile that became an alternative option for other families to make reports who have lost someone. So far, on Facebook there are 80 files with photos and detailed information of the missing persons whose families are searching for them.

Santiago Pérez Becerra is one of the founders of this group that has already found clandestine graves in the area known as El Pantanal, where 33 bodies were discovered on Tuesday, January 16, 2018.

He says that his son Santiago Eloir disappeared on June 22, 2017. "He is a welder and worked at the  Nayco Company. This has nothing to do with the case, but he was separated from his wife, they decided to talk and they wanted to see each other on Friday afternoon. He did not answer my calls on Thursday or Friday. On Saturday, I called my daughter-in-law and she told me that he did not answer her calls either. "

Santiago Becerra confesses that he was alarmed and unsuccessfully went to look for him at his job and at the places he used to frequent with his friends. Immediately, Santiago Becerra went to the Prosecutor's Office to file a complaint, but the official there only took a note, a number written on a small paper.

It wasn't until July 7 when the state authorities contacted Mr. Santiago Becerra  to officially file the complaint.

"When I went in again, they treated me with arrogance and scolding. I do not remember their names, the officials who attacked me, but they intimidated me. Public ministries, commanders and police are all bothered when you ask for information. All these anomalies occur because the current authorities  keeps the staff of the ex-prosecutor, " he says.

While the state authorities took their time with the cases, some members of the collective heard rumors that, between orchards of mango, avocado and yaca, there could be clandestine graves.

They did not wait any longer: via WhatsApp the members of the collective organized to leave on Saturday Jan 13th to El Pantanal, in the municipality of Xalisco.

"We began to look at eight in the morning. In the garden there were 10 women ahead and three men who followed them.  Suddenly, we heard a man's voice who asked us: ''Where are you all, such pretty  women going ?" One of our colleagues , one of the men , answered that they were coming with us. "

The stranger apologized and asked what they were looking for. "We explained to the man that we were looking for an orchard and that we were relatives of the disappeared and  we had come  out to look for signs of a burial.

"The man replied that there was nothing where we were, but three months ago it smelled really bad, over where there where there is a stand of bamboo. He assured us that it was not an animal, because those are left on the surface of the ground and are eaten by vultures. He told us to follow him. "

And so they did. The members of the Familias Unidas collective advanced until they ran into another man who said he was "an Army major" and that was what he called himself: El Mayor. He also warned them that they were on someone's property and that he would not let them pass.

Santiago Becerra explains that they went around the place and that 40 minutes later they came to an area of ​​avocado trees and they continued for 2.5 kilometers. Among plots of sugarcane they found  bamboo stalk and then another more leafy , to the right was an avocado tree.

"We knew how and what to search for because of talks with other groups that shared their experiences with us and YouTube videos. At that place we pounded rods of 1.5 meters long into the earth which  we had brought along. When we took out the tip we could see if it had a putrid smell. A companion pointed to an area, I stuck a rod and at the time of taking it out, by the smell, we knew it was the place ..........

"We dug about 70 centimeters. The first thing we discovered was a skull and the part of the left shoulder; apparently the body was lying on his right shoulder. We stopped working and asked a woman to call the prosecutor's office, where Commander Alfonso Salazar Velasco, who answered told us that they were coming out there. "

"The Pantanal is about 20 minutes from the authorities offices, but it took almost an hour and a half to for them to arrrive. They sent  Commander Miguel Villegas. He wanted to know who was in charge and  the people answered that I was their leader. He asked me to come closer, he wanted to know who told  us about the graves. I told him about meeting the man and with the Army Major, but he did not believe me. He wanted to know if it had not been for an anonymous call. I told him no.

"He insisted that I not lie to him and he threatened me saying that if he found out that it had been a call or by other means, there would be consequences and even arrests. Again I was frightened. In Nayarit nobody trusts the prosecution. When Veytia was arrested, there were many people who worked in complicity with him, " says Santiago Becerra.

 The bodies found were buried since the time of  Edgar Veytia?

From the grave discovered on Saturday, the bodies seemed to have been buried months ago. They were like mummified but complete. Some could see part of the bones, others had dry skin. From pit number one nine bodies were removed; of the second, six, they seemed to have been buried for longer, because they no longer had tissues, no fat, only bone. From pit three, 18 bodies were removed, making a total of 33 already recovered. Apparently, there are 30 men and three women.

"Most of the bodies were bound hand and foot, their eyes were covered with a metallic gray tape. In pit three, on Monday and Tuesday, the forensic services people took 9 mm caliber and AK-47 shell casings. In those three pits the work has been concluded.

"Some 28 families were allowed to be present at the time of exhuming the bodies. Then, the forensic services of the PGR were absent on the last day when they recovered four skulls and the body of another person, " Santiago Becerra went on to explain.

"Jara was taken by the PGR":

Mrs. Rosa Jara is the mother of Alejandro López Jara, who disappeared in the Villa del Prado subdivision. The woman recounts: "He was taken on Thursday, June 22, 2017 at 6:30 p.m. in Tepic, along with three other young men and a young lady. I live in Mazatlan, Sinaloa. He went to Nayarit to study gastronomy.

"That day we were to call each other in two hours. I dialed him and he did not answer me. I only got his phone's mailbox. I spoke with his friends later and one of them, Paco, told me around 10 pm  "please come, because Jara was taken by the PGR. "

It was midnight, but the woman went straight to the PGR; as in the other cases, she says, the federal authorities received her with abuse. In the state prosecutor's office they tell her  the usual: they have be missing for  76 hours to be able to make a denouncement.

The case of Mrs. Rosa Jara stands out because she says that the day after she filed the complaint with the prosecutor twice she called her son's cell phone and a man answered her. "When I asked for my son, they stopped talking to me, and on a second call I heard what sounded like gagged people."

But there is more: the profile of her son on Facebook is still active. A month after his disappearance they published a photo of a hill. "For the past three months I have had a constant fight with the PGR for the cyber police to investigate, but they ignore me," Rosa Jara complains.

Jesus Maria in the Sierra del Nayar
the Sierra del Nayar is home to the Indigenous Cora 

The collective has received rumors, such as those who warned them of the clandestine graves they had just discovered. They tell them that in the Sierra del Nayar many young people work cultivating poppies. "In the area of Jesús María we met with some indigenous Coras. They say they see vans coming in with many young people. I want to think that those pictures of hills that appear on my son's Facebook account are from the sierra where they have him, "says Mrs. Jara.

"We have insisted to the PGR, the Marina, the Army, or the state government to do an aerial survey operation to the Sierra del Nayar, but they have refused. Commander Villegas says he went up and found nothing, but we do not believe him. "