Loop of death: The search for oldest known mass grave in Veracruz

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Sin Embargo 

                    

Kilometer 13 and half was a construction project launched during the Government of Felipe Calderón that connects the port of Veracruz, the most important in Mexico, to the old Federal highway to Xalapa and the highway to Cardel. Throughout its route, from TAMSA to the entrance area to the port, there are companies, gaps, trailer yards and countless sand dunes, ready to hide almost anything.
 

There could even be clandestine graves dating from Fidel Herrera Beltrán's government, when the Zetas ruled the region after gaining control of the area through seperating from the Gulf Cartel, estimate the Solecito Collective, in search of the disappeared.
 

That area, announced Lucia de los Angeles Diaz Genao, founder of the group, is in their sights for a search of clandestine graves. The area also borders Colinas de Santa Fe, the clandestine grave from which more human remains have been exhumed: at the moment there are at least 265 skulls. 

By Ignacio Carvajal 

Veracruz / Mexico City, August 9 (BlogExpediente / SinEmbargo) - On the eve of January 6, 2013, President Enrique Peña Nieto prepared his first visit as a federal executive to Veracruz and the Zetas cartel leaders knew it. 

Hours before the arrival of the President, several people allegedly linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel were abducted in different parts of the city. 

On the morning of that January 6, elements of forensic services arrived at the point known as Casas Fantasmas, in the municipality of Veracruz, to exhume the bodies of at least twelve people who had been slaughtered and their bodies thrown in a sandy area near the road that leads to Casas Fantamas and the point known as Kilómetro 13 and a half, a work inaugurated by the administration of Felipe Calderón. 

The reporters that day tried to cover the incidents but were threatened by presumed assassins of the Jalisco Cartel and nothing reached the press. 

The President's event to commemorate the enactment of the Agrarian Reform Law went perfectly, and Javier Duarte de Ochoa, Governor, was a great host. 

It is this area that the Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz has in its sights to start their search for clandestine graves, supposedly much older than those found in Colinas de Santa Fe, also in the municipality of Veracruz, said the spokeswoman of the movement, Lucia de los Angeles Díaz Genao.

She commented that the search in Colinas has surpassed expectation and to date there are 295 skulls found in the various collective and individual graves. 

To work on the last phase in Colinas, heavy machinery had to be used for the depth of the burials. In fact, there was support and training from the National Institute of Forensic Sciences of Guatemala (INACIF). 

The members of the group, says Luci Díaz, have timely information about the existence of signs that could be another finding of graves and buried victims. 

The estimates, based on the data, is that near those graves criminals operated long before the Jalisco Cartel in the openly turbulent zone after having displaced the Zetas. 

That is to say, there could be pits that date back to the times of Fidel Herrera Beltrán, when the Zetas ruled the region after gaining control of the area due to seperating with the Gulf Cartel. 

And more relevant because Lucí Díaz indicates that in Veracruz there are about 20 to 30 thousand disappeared persons within the unknown figure range, that is, those gone unreported.

Casas Fantasmas

The data contributed anonymously to the group indicates the presence of burials near the land of the port construction project, the lands of Ruiz Anitúa, and properties of the Barradas and Abascal family developements.

They would be areas used by criminal groups much earlier than those of Colinas de Santa Fe, and therefore, the state of those alleged corpses, could be of greater deterioration. 

One of the points that generates more interest among the searchers are the Casas Fantasmas, a non-municipalized housing division where people who do not have access to housing live, and that for many years was abandoned and in the hands of criminals who hid and operated there.

A relevant sight is neighboring land around an elevated water tank behind a small chapel erected in honor of San Judas Tadeo. 

Among their data is that in years not too long ago, a "kitchen" was operating in some houses of this division used to dissolve countless people in acid, whose remains were then thrown in a ravine in the middle of hills of dunes covered by nopales. 

It was in this area that in 2015 the searches began on behalf of the State Attorney General's Office, in the times of Luis Ángel Bravo Contreras, long before Colinas de Santa Fe. The information indicates that in this area adjoining the 13 and a half and Casas Fantasmas, it was favored to cook and bury people. In case there is any doubt, a report delivered by the Attorney General's Office, responding to the information request 01597217, confirms that in September 2011 there were 27 clandestine graves, with more than 50 human remains. 

This is the same area where Solecito is waiting on permission to enter with their search brigade in order to continue documenting the horror during the increase in human rights violations by criminal organizations and authorities. 

NEGLECTFUL AUTHORITIES

In May of 2017, the reporter Ana Alicia Osorio documented the presence of authorities of various levels who made omissions during their duties to monitor security in Jarocho Port, from the Navy, Army and the SSP of the government of Veracruz: 

"From December 2011 to October 2012, Rear Admiral Mauricio Crispin Hernandez, was commander of the Naval Police to head the Veracruz Security, then he was replaced by Rear Admiral José Pedro Ladino Bonilla, from October 2012 to September 2013. 

"Rear Admiral Francisco Javier Castaño Suárez, held the position from September 2013 to January 2015; Captain Antonio Morales Hernández, was commander January 2015 to March 2016.

"All of them in charge of providing security to the conurbation, did not see or stop the creation of the clandestine cemetery. 

"In the coordination of Intermunicipal Police of Veracruz, Gregorio Cuéllar Morales, from August to December 2011; Noé Campuzano Rodríguez was Commander of the State Police from 2013 to 2016; Gonzalo Martínez Alvarado Commander of the Veracruz Grouping in Support of the Naval Police from April 2015 to April 2016 and Jorge Vidaña Méndez who stayed one day in the position of Support to the Naval Police, were in charge of the security in the region on the part of the Government of the State and did nothing to stop the creation of graves with hundreds of bodies that were transported to a rural property adjacent to the urban area. 

"In March of last year, Felix Quiroz Javier Naval Police arrived at the front of the station, and he also did not see the entrance of trucks that had to travel on the Veracruz-Xalapa highway to an urban subdivision and from there to the plots where the pits are."

And Miguel Angel Yunes Linares' government' outlook does not change noticeably. The Solecito management have complained about the slow advance of  permits in order to enter properties that could be searched, as well as the lack of adequate areas to store the corpses and the identification process. 

The surveillance in those areas north of the Jarocho Port remains the same. The companies that are settling in the vicinity of the port look more worried about following proper construction steps to avoid a possible violation of victims' rights, if they place a concrete plate to build industrial buildings where there could be a clandestine grave.

LOOP OF DEATH 

Kilometer 13 and half was a construction project launched during the Government of Felipe Calderón that connects the port of Veracruz, the most important in Mexico, to the old Federal highway to Xalapa and the highway to Cardel.

Throughout its route, from TAMSA to the entrance area to the port, there are companies, gaps, trailer yards and countless sand dunes, ready to hide almost anything.

One of its neighboring towns is the town of Villarín, which witnessed the bloody highways of March 2007 in which 'Zeta 14' died, giving rise to the narco war that Veracruz has not been able to overcome. 

It also borders Colinas de Santa Fe, the clandestine grave from which more human remains have been exhumed from in all of the Americas. 

It does not have local authority surveillance booths and it is not entirely lit; it is a loop of death.