4 US Citizens Found Among the Dead in Jalisco's "Trailers of Death"

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Universal

Approximately 15% of the bodies that the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office has managed to identify after it became clear that the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (IJCF) is overrun with regard to the handling and safeguarding of corpses, had a report of disappearance and died violently, revealed in an interview the central prosecutor, Fausto Mancilla.

He indicated that so far just over 100 of the 444 bodies that the IJCF was guarding have data that would allow their full identification and the location of their relatives to inform them of what happened, and explained that 144 of them have been buried in drawers of the Guadalajara pantheon.

The official said that since September 21, when groups from several states of the country protested outside the institute for the way in which the bodies were safeguarded in a couple of refrigerated trailer boxes, 15 units of the Specialized Prosecutor's Office The Disappeared have concentrated on trying to locate the relatives of the people who have been identified.

So far, this work has allowed 17 bodies to be delivered to their families, said the prosecutor; He also explained that 12 other people who have gone to the IJCF to look for a family member have found it, so in total 29 bodies have been delivered in these three weeks.

Without specifying the number, Mancilla said that it has been found that some of the bodies identified are of people who had their residence in other states, so they requested support from the authorities of other entities to locate their families.

"We also have the case of four Americans, so the US Consulate has already been notified to contact their relatives; They have told us that they will take time to come for them, so we have to preserve the bodies immediately to deliver them later, " he said.

There have also been cases in which some person recognizes a relative among the bodies that the IJCF protects, but does not claim it due to lack of resources to bury him. In those cases, the government of Jalisco has offered support to be given a dignified final destination.

"In cases where we do not find any identification or data in the place where a deceased person is located, we have to wait for the experts to make a DNA or fingerprint test to have a name and start the search," he said. 

In recent days, during an interview with EL UNIVERSAL, the current director of the IJCF, Carlos Daniel Barba Rodríguez, revealed that many of the unidentified bodies that were under the protection of the institute were subjected to various expert tests, but the results had not been crossed by lack of coordination between the different internal areas and poor communication with other institutions responsible for the procurement of justice.