Morelos: :Boy survives after being left for dead with father's body

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat republished from CNN

By the time he was found, the boy was barely alive. The ten-year-old's neck had been cut, leaving a nearly 3-inch (7cm) wound. Disturbing photos taken by the authorities who found him and obtained by CNN show the boy in jeans, a US football sweatshirt and a light jacket, lying in the curve of his dead father's arm.

The travelers were Guatemalan, according to President of the Morelos State Human Rights Commission Raúl Hernández. The boy, Cristian, and his father Rudy, 37, left from Guatemala on May 28 this year. Cristian's uncle and teenage cousin were also on the trip. In total, it was a small group: Two brothers traveling together, each bringing a son.

They had hired a smuggler in Guatemala that would take them all the way to the United States, but the smuggler abandoned them in Mexico, Hernández said, where they were kidnapped.

Their kidnappers were members of Los Zetas drug cartel, according to Morelos State Secretary of Interior Pablo Ojeda Cardenas. They allegedly called their victims' relatives in the United States, demanding a ransom of $12,000, he said. The family was able to send $8,000, but didn't hear back from the kidnappers.

A few days later, on July 6, Cristian and his father were found lying on the side of a dirt road in Morelos state, left for dead. The man's throat had been slit, but his son was still breathing.

Authorities later said that the uncle and cousin managed to escape, and are now in the care of Mexican authorities, according to a spokesman for the Morelos Governor's Office.

Cristian was taken to a hospital in the city of Cuatla, where he is getting psychological treatment, in addition to medical care. He "[...] underwent surgery and is currently in good health," the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry said.

Migrants traveling through Mexico are routinely the victims of crimes that range from theft and extortion to rape and murder. [12k disappear each year]

In 2010, the bodies of 72 migrants, 58 men and 14 women [BB archive foto above], were discovered in a mass grave in northeast Mexico. Mexican authorities said then they believed most of the victims were from Honduras and El Salvador, although some came from as far away as Ecuador and Brazil. The mass grave was discovered about 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state, near the border with Texas.

Los Zetas has long been feared by Central American migrants traveling through Mexico, and was originally composed of a group of former Mexican elite forces that acted as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.

In the mid-2000s, they splintered to form their own drug trafficking criminal enterprise in the mid-2000s, but have since branched out into multiple criminal activities. Kidnapping for ransom, security analysts say, seems to have become one of their specialties.

Guatemala's Foreign Ministry has issued a statement expressing condolences to Cristian's family [above] and promising to pay for all costs related to the repatriation of his father's body.

Reporting contributed by Oscar Guadarrama Torres, Kiarinna Parisi, Tatiana Arias, and Radina Gigova.